The Meaning of Javanese Adolescents' Involvement in Youth Gangs During the Discoveries of Youth Identity: A Phenomenological Study

Yogyakarta is a part of Javanese society. Javanese culture, which always enforces moral values, has a practical implication toward adolescents' views about their self-identity. Yogyakarta adolescents are well known to have positive self-identity, good behavior, and tend to become successful persons in their youth. In the past years, a phenomenon of youth gangs that often conduct irresponsible acts such as brawls, stabbing terror, and even murder has emerged. The question of the research is how adolescent members of a youth gang give meaning to their involvement in a youth gang. To answer the question, we used a phenomenological research method. We employed a modified Colaizzi method as defined by Moustakas (1994) to analyze the data. The participants of the research are adolescents with criteria as follows: coming from the Javanese family, living in Yogyakarta, a high school student, a member of a youth gang, had been involved in law violation. The research results show that Javanese adolescents, members of a youth gang, value their involvement in the gang as a means of showing their self-existence because the gang is the only place that provides wiggle room to express themselves, adolescents failed to construct values about self-existence, and also they lacked appreciation from their closest people and their environment.