Using Local Wisdom to Foster Community Resilience During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Study in the Sasak Community, Indonesia

Abstract

Each tribe has local wisdom that is used in dealing with various problems and challenges that arise. This local wisdom is passed down from generation to generation. In the current pandemic era, local wisdom becomes social capital to deal with uncertain conditions as a result of COVID-19. The purpose of this research is to explore various local wisdoms possessed by the Sasak community that can be used to develop resilience in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study used a naturalistic approach with ethnographic type. The informants of this study were traditional leaders and cultural actors in the Sasak community who were determined by using the snowball sampling technique. An ethnographic interview was used in collecting the data which was then analyzed by using interactive model analysis covering three stages: data condensation, data presentation, and drawing conclusions and verification. There is a lot of local wisdom in the Sasak community that can foster the study of the Sasak community in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, they are; besiru, begundem & awik-awik, sereat, and sembek. Those local wisdoms constitute resilience in two aspects, namely; physical and psychological. Besiru and begundem & awik-awik constitutes physical endurance, while sereat and sembek constitutes psychological resilience. In addition, it was also found that Sasak local wisdom offers two approaches in overcoming the COVID-19 outbreak, namely; preventive and curative approaches. The preventive approach is represented through awik-awik while the curative approach is represented through sembek. Therefore, by returning to the values of local wisdom, the community would have a better resilience in facing the COVID-19 pandemic.