A Javanese Metropolis and Mental Life

This article examines the practice of some Javanese men that they refer to as "the search for empty thoughts." Grounded in their experiences as working‐class men, empty thoughts capture and are captured by thoroughly modern stories of the ups and downs of city life that emphasize the effect of stres (stress) on mental life. Empty thoughts, as an expressive idiom and social practice, are remarkable in their mimetic faculty of Simmel's latest transformation of a bodily existence into a modern form, but empty thoughts are also remarkable for the conventionalities present in this expressive form and practice as well. Empty thoughts point toward the merging of regimes of identity linked to cultural notions of order, control, and danger. With empty thoughts, Javanese contemplate the unexpected, moving between the domains of a Javacentric traditional identity to an Indonesian modern identity, simultaneously a venture into the uncharted currents of globalisasi (globalization) in a place without order.