Ngenger Landscape in Javanese Fiction: A Bourdieusian Reading of Cultural Capital

Abstract

This study examines the ngenger landscape in Javanese fiction as a socio symbolic terrain where characters pursue recognition through cultural apprenticeship, moral discipline, and class coded refinement. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field, and cultural capital, the study analyzes six Indonesian novels published between 1980 and 2000 that foreground ngenger culture: Para Priyayi, Canting, Pengakuan Pariyem, Sekar, Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk, and Tirai Menurun. Using qualitative document analysis and thematic coding, the research identifies how ngenger is narrated as a pathway for acquiring embodied cultural capital (e.g., linguistic registers, etiquette, self restraint), institutionalized cultural capital (e.g., schooling, professional legitimacy), and objectified forms of capital (e.g., cultural artifacts, ritual practices, and artistic labor). The findings show that ngenger operates as a mechanism of social mobility while simultaneously reproducing hierarchy through symbolic recognition that depends on dominant norms. The texts also reveal gendered tensions, where feminine refinement can generate symbolic esteem yet constrain autonomy. By conceptualizing ngenger as a landscape rather than a fixed role, this article contributes to Indonesian literary sociology and cultural studies by clarifying how local moral vocabularies are converted into cultural capital and negotiated within modernizing social fields. The study suggests that Javanese fiction functions as an archive of cultural reproduction and critique, offering a grounded framework for reading tradition, aspiration, and inequality in postcolonial narratives.