Collective vs. Individual Identity and How to Create It
The speed of modernity and globalization affecting Indonesia has made its people scramble for some time to find their own identity. Of what entails the ideas of “Made in Indonesia,” including its visual culture.
Indonesian visual culture carries one of the most debatable meanings of the “Made in Indonesia” label, especially when the government or a national institution resorts to one identity (out of hundreds of Indonesian indigenous or ethnic identities). Javanese Batik, for example, always comes in handy every time there is a task to represent Indonesia. With nothing against Batik or the culture where it derived from, we kept questioning, what is the collective identity we can recall as Indonesian? Or is the individual identity of anyone or anything which is used to represent Indonesia all this time truly singular that it can’t be used to express a whole?
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When a human baby is born, we often dub it pure. As if it is a blank canvas that has no tendencies to any personality color. But actually, it was born with a baseline, a predefined color or shape, and texture of the canvas. It was born with some handed-down identity embedded in the parents' genetics, behavior, and the mother’s living environment while the baby is in the womb. After being born into this world, that inherited identity starts changing due to its interaction with its surroundings. It often grows to become something different from what was written in its body.
Looking at an identity that way, wouldn’t it be wrong if we call what has grown on the latter is truly an individual identity? Despite the seed of the identity coming from someone else? The same way goes for cultural identity. Can we say a Javanese culture is a singular identity and can only be used to represent Javanese people, not Indonesian? What sets apart individual identity versus collective identity?
Collective identity is ‘an interactive and shared definition’—evocative of a sense of ‘we.’ Still, it then highlights the process through which social actors recognize themselves as a collective, contending that this process is more vital to conceptualizing collective identity than any resultant product or property (e.g., Melucci 1989, pp. 34, 218, passim).
According to that definition, we assume that as long as Indonesian people do not share a sense of we towards an identity, it can’t be said as collective. Batik is not the collective identity we acknowledge since many still argue their identity relation to it. Moreover, Batik is the resultant product or property of the collective identity of Javanese culture. Still, it’s the process of conceptualizing the idea that pushes the outcome that matters more.
In order to grow a singular or a small collective identity into a collective national identity, constant interactions are needed between people and groups. In Indonesia, we need more interactions than we currently have to achieve a shared understanding of collective identity. Interactions can be achieved in myriad ways. People, communities, politicians, governments, and other stakeholders can contribute to discussions, open-minded debates, exhibitions, healthy social media interactions, etc. We can see a lack of these kinds of interactions in Indonesian society. Even though the numbers are growing, we still are keener on achieving practical skills that bring quick results.
Indonesia is one of the most significant social media users. It’s easy for us to make subjects go viral, but we are novices in creating healthy interactions and discussions through social media platforms. Because of our lack of skills, these platforms increase the disparity and widen the gaps in understanding things. This process pushes us further from finding our collective identity.
If Indonesian is keener on practical skills, then we argue that it’s best to develop the talent in personal digital information processing, including social media, as the catalyst in formulating collective identity.
Processing information doesn't only revolve around processing surface information but also what implies subtly. It doesn’t only stop in “receiving information” but also “responding to information.” We argue that the benefit for designers in improving this skill is that they will have better perception filters (processing) and reduce their tendencies to copy references (responding). We don’t want Indonesia to have a collective identity as a copying master, right?
What can be included in the “learning module” is reading information (the obvious and not), questioning information, and choosing the most appropriate tools to act/respond.
Interestingly, in doing so, we are building our identities in parallel. By learning to process and respond to the information, we can learn to develop our perspective toward information given to us and our environment. This makes the individual and collective identity one interacting growing subject.
