Social tolerance as social hybridity: interfaith practices among Chinese, Malay, and Baweanese in Tanjungpinang, Indonesia

This article examines social tolerance as a lived and hybrid practice through a qualitative ethnographic study in Senggarang, a multiethnic village in Tanjungpinang, Indonesia. Rather than emerging from institutional prescriptions, tolerance develops through everyday rhythms such as greetings, reciprocal exchanges, and shared rituals. Guided by a hybridity framework, the study employed in-depth interviews with ten purposively selected informants, participant observation, and visual documentation. A role-based sampling strategy was used because the research sought experiential depth from key community actors rather than numerical representativeness, which aligns with the logic of focused ethnography. Findings show that residents negotiate cultural and religious differences through overlapping spatial arrangements, multilingual conversations, and reciprocal practices that cultivate emotional familiarity and a sense of belonging. The findings also show that tolerance is narrated by residents as a lived practice rather than an abstract ideal. At the same time, this hybridity is not free from asymmetry, since communal harmony is mediated by recognized authorities, economic resources, seniority, and dominant narratives of coexistence. This form of grassroots hybridity challenges binary identity categories and unsettles normative discourses of pluralism in Southeast Asia. While Senggarang does not provide a universal model, it illustrates how pluralism is enacted through affective labor, everyday negotiation, and embodied recognition within postcolonial contexts marked by diversity and exclusion. The study acknowledges its contextual limits and calls for further research on similar hybrid practices in other settings, especially amid digital transformation and cultural commodification.