Happiness in Times of HIV: An ethnographic exploration of waria experiences

19 Sekretariat Perizinan Penelitian Asing Kementerian Riset dan Teknologi DIREKTORI PENELITIAN ASING DI INDONESIA 2013 Abstrak Modern maritime piracy thrives in the conluence of bottlenecks, borders, and poverty. According to mariners in the Malacca Strait, piracy “is just business”–an aquatic counterpart to the commercial hub of neighboring Singapore. In 2004, the United States re-coined the antiquated epithet of “pirate” to the more modern scourge of “terrorist.” Malaysia and China argued this as a bid to extend American authority into this vital shipping region. Detractors claim that granting Americans this access would allow them to control the low of Chinese exports and energy imports through the strait, detaining ships on “suspicions of terrorism.” If piracy in the Strait is, as is often claimed, endemic to the region, so too is this strategy of state making. Using maritime piracy as an optic, this project charts how bio- political geographies are mapped and surveilled in state-saturated border zones, revealing the critical importance of specters in making, layering, and legitimating state authorities.

9.1 Mr. Ted Warren Biggs

Warga Negara : Amerika Serikat Jabatan : Ph.D. Candidate Instansi : University of California-Santa Cruz No. SIP : 208SIPFRPSMVI2013

10. Happiness in Times of HIV: An ethnographic exploration of waria experiences

Tujuan Penelitian : Melakukan eksplorasi fenomenologi mengenai konsep kebahagiaan pada waria di Denpasar dalam menghadapi HIV dan ambiguitas gender Bidang Penelitian : Antropologi Budaya Daerah Penelitian : Bali Denpasar Lama Penelitian : 11 sebelas bulan mulai 6 Februari 2013 Mitra Kerja : Fakultas Sastra Universitas Udayana Prof. Dr. I Nyoman Darma Putra, M.Litt 20 Sekretariat Perizinan Penelitian Asing Kementerian Riset dan Teknologi DIREKTORI PENELITIAN ASING DI INDONESIA 2013 Abstrak What is happiness? More speciically, what does “being happy” or “living a happy life” mean for subjects who are often associated with HIV and with gender ambiguity? This research aims to ethnographically explore “happiness” among waria in Bali. The discipline of anthropology has traditionally focused on “cultural human beings” and on cross-cultural comparisons. By using the unique methods of ethnography and long-term participant observation, anthropologists emphasize the importance of in-depth understandings and explorations of what it means to be human. As such, the discipline has produced a large body of on-the-ground, detailed accounts of the everyday lives and experiences of people from all over the world. However, although much anthropological attention has been paid to hardships, diiculties ,and sufering, very little is known about experiences of or ideas on happiness. This is a gap this research hopes to address. In particular, this research aims to explore “happiness” among waria, Indonesian male-to-female transgenders. Waria are a well-known part of the Indonesian social landscape. Nevertheless, both the public image and scholarly writing on waria often emphasize their connection to HIV and anomalous gender position. This is not entirely unwarranted: approximately one in seven waria nationwide is HIV positive. In Bali, moreover, HIV prevalence among waria is estimated to be over 20. This emphasis on illness makes the need for a more comprehensive and well- rounded understanding of the everyday lives of this visible part of Indonesian society all the more pressing. Instead of pathologizing waria, therefore, the goal of this research is to conduct a phenomenological exploration of “happiness” among waria in Denpasar against a backdrop of HIV and gender ambiguity. This research draws on theoretical insights from the anthropological subdiscipline of phenomenology - a micro-scale, interpretive approach to studying subjects in which “the body,” “the senses,” “temporality,” and “experience” are of central importance. The methodological tools used to complement this approach are long‐term participant observation in waria localities such as kos, mall, salon, HIV programs, interviews structured, semi-structured, unstructured, and life histories. By employing these methodological tools, this research hopes to obtain the kind of in‐depth, detailed, intersubjective accounts of everyday life and experiences so valuable within the phenomenological tradition in anthropology. 21 Sekretariat Perizinan Penelitian Asing Kementerian Riset dan Teknologi DIREKTORI PENELITIAN ASING DI INDONESIA 2013

10.1 Dr. Sylvia Tidey