A Study on Marine Folklore of Karimunjawa Community for Strengthening the Social Integration

This article is based on a research study entitled: A Study on Marine Folklore of Karimunjawa Community for Strengthening the Social Integration. This research is a qualitative research that studies a relation between marine folklore and social integration in Karimunjawa community. As a marine archipelago, Indonesian community has a lot of folklores related to marine life and culture. The marine life has created marine culture. The marine culture creates the ideas, behavior/activities, and physical infrastructure used by marine community to cultivate the natural resources for their lives. Folklore, for the community, especially the young generation, is understood as illogical past stories and considered unimportant and has no relationship to the present life. It should be understood that folklore, especially the marine folklore is created because of the dynamics of social activities related to geographical factor, social interaction, social culture and historycal dynamics. Marine folklore has an important role in tightening the social relationship among social groups and as a national defense. In addition to have the beauty of nature, Karimunjawa also has a lot of ethnics such as Javanese, Bajo, Bugis, Madurese, Flores, Mandar and Buton. The dominant ethnics in Karimunjawa are Javanese, Bajo, Bugis and Madurese who can get along peacefully and harmoniously. There are some factors that make the ethnics live peacefully and harmoniously, one of them is marine folklore. In Karimunjawa, marine folklore that comprises legends of figures, places, flora, fauna, traditional ceremonies, philosophies and advises contains goodness values for creating harmony and strong social integration in Karimunjawa community.