Socio-Economic Analysis of Tourist Area Community: A Case Study of Kauman Batik Village, Solo, Indonesia

Abstract

Kauman Batik Village in Solo City, Central Java Province, Indonesia has been widely known as the center of Indonesian batik production and one of the leading tourist destinations in Indonesia. However, the lives of the people settling in the village still fall into poverty. Related to this fact, this research aimed to determine whether the existence of Kauman Batik Village has social and economic impacts on the community around the village. This research is a phenomenological research with a qualitative approach. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with several informants considered being able to represent and understand the socio-economic situation of Kauman Batik Village. Furthermore, the data were analyzed using the principle of data triangulation. The results showed that there were social and economic imbalances in the community of Kauman Batik Village. The social imbalance occurred because of the erosion of religious values upheld firmly by the village predecessors. Besides, the younger generation’s interest in becoming batik craftsmen was increasingly low. Instead, they preferred migrating outside the village. On another side, the economic imbalance emerged due to the decreasing batik production of Kauman Batik Village. Most of the batiks sold were machine-produced batiks, not handwritten batiks that have higher quality and price.

Keywords: Kauman Batik Village, socio-economic analysis, tourism