Gaji Sejuta : Moral experiences and the possibilities for self in a community-driven development program in Indonesia

Abstract

This article explores the moral experiences of volunteers working in a ‘community driven development’ program in Medan, Indonesia. Reframing development as a moral experience helps to illuminate its potential as a site for self-becoming: a potential that lies not only in the ethical dilemmas that development provokes but also in the affective and emotive responses made possible in scenes of development. For low class volunteers who are excluded from other forms of virtuous action, their participation provides an opportunity to enact an understanding of self in relation to others, and before God. It is in the minutiae of acts of care that overt representations and affective responses bear upon the ‘self-in-relation’, and as such, invite possibilities for new self-imaginaries. A focus on the experiences of local volunteers who come from modest socio-economic backgrounds reveals an unacknowledged consequence of community driven development: the expansion of possibilities for self.