The Role of Indigeneity NGOs in the Legal Recognition of Adat Communities and Customary Forests in Indonesia

The main assumption of indigeneity NGOs in Indonesia is that state recognition will strengthen indigenous peoples’ rights to their land and forests against ongoing or future dispossession. In Indonesia, legal recognition has become central to the approaches of indigeneity NGO campaigns, while the local realities and problems among indigenous communities seem to receive less attention. Has legal recognition of indigenous communities turned into a national NGO project that does not solve the communities’ land and forest-related problems? In this article, we compare two locations where communities have succeeded in obtaining state recognition. By focusing our analysis on the steps in the recognition process, from articulating community problems to eventually solving them, we show how indigeneity NGOs have had a dominant role, but achieved limited success. Instead of resulting in community autonomy and tenure security, the legal recognition process reproduces state territorialisation over customary forests and communities.     

Changing Indigeneity Politics in Indonesia: From Revival to Projects

Through the discourse of indigeneity, rural communities around the world are joining a global network of rural justice seekers. By articulating grievances collectively, they demand state recognition while seeking support from NGOs and international development organisations. In Indonesia, the manifestation of indigenous ‘adat’ politics is no longer confined to the national struggle for the recognition of land rights, but instead, has proliferated into many localised short term ‘adat projects’. This introduction to the TAPJA special issue on adat demonstrates that both the rural poor and local elites can be the initiators or recipients of these adat projects but, at the current juncture, the latter are better positioned to benefit from such projects. The special issue shows that in Indonesia, where adat is often firmly entrenched in the state, the promotion of indigeneity claims can work in contradictory ways. Findings from across the special issue show that adat projects tend to reinforce the power of the state, rather than challenging it.     

Between Land Grabbing and Farmers' Benefits: Land Transfers in West Kalimantan,Indonesia

Rapid growth of oil palm cultivation in West Kalimantan, Indonesia has increased both the pace and size of land transfers from farmers to big companies and city-based investors. This process has been widely conceptualised as ‘top-down land grabbing’ but this perspective largely neglects the agency of the farmers. This paper seeks to shed light on the agency of farmers with respect to how they respond to land transfer schemes. Through a study of land transfers under nucleus estate schemes (NES), schemes that were introduced by the Indonesian government in which smallholding farms are integrated parts of a modern, large size plantation company, we will show that agrarian dynamics are shaped by notions of what is ‘fair’ and ‘just’.     

Rural restructuring in the American West: land use, family and class discourses

Migration patterns, technological developments, and altered human–land relationships are combining to precipitate tremendous changes in rural communities across the western US. These processes of restructuring, however, have been quite contentious and divisive for many of the region's small towns. While we are beginning to understand the causes of recent growth and development trends, the consequences of contemporary forces of restructuring on communities remain unstudied. This paper explores the reactions of residents to forces of restructuring in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, the Methow Valley, Washington, Kane County, Utah, and Teton Valley, Idaho. In depth interviews and survey responses give voice to community members by allowing them to articulate their perceptions and interpretations of recent events. The analyses demonstrate tremendous diversity in the ways in which individuals interpret the changes taking place around them. These diverse interpretations challenge singular conceptions of community and highlight the ways in which notions of land use, family, and class are negotiated in the context of contemporary rural restructuring. The analysis further demonstrates the need for a more synthesized field of rural studies spanning disciplinary and national divides.     

Gifts,commodities and corporeality: Food and gender in South Pentecost,Vanuatu

For the colonist the native is declared insensitive to ethics: he represents not only the absence of values but also the negation of values. He is, let us dare to admit, the enemy of values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil (Frantz Fanon, The wretched of the earth).     

Domestic Violence in Nusa Tenggara Barat,Indonesia: Married Women's Definitions and Experiences of Violence in the Home

This article contributes to cross-cultural understandings of gender-based violence by examining women's definitions and experiences of domestic violence in Eastern Indonesia. The research was part of a larger study of human rights in maternal and neonatal health and involved a survey that integrated common anthropological practices in its development and delivery. This survey measured the prevalence of emotional and physical abuse, violence during pregnancy, unwanted sex and fear of violence among a sub-sample of 504 married Muslim women. Standard human rights definitions of violence were adapted to create locally appropriate definitions of economic violence, husband infidelity and unwanted sex within marriage. Survey responses indicated that the majority of women believed verbal abuse, threats of harm, economic violence, physical violence, control of women's mobility and a husband's public infidelity to constitute domestic violence. Our exploration of how Indonesian women understand domestic violence reinforces the salience of cultural specificity for different women's definitions of violence, as well as the applicability of internationally recognised definitions of gender-based violence.     

Rural residential properties in China: Land use patterns, efficiency and prospects for reform

Rural residential land represents one of the most important land use types in China. However, the literature so far has paid insufficient attention to the patterns and efficiencies of this type of land use. To fill in this gap, this paper uses a national survey to analyze the institutional setups for rural residential land use, to assess the effectiveness of existing regulations, and to evaluate the efficiencies in rural residential land use. Farmers’ subjective receptiveness toward rural residential property regulation reform is also investigated. We find that rural residential properties are inefficiently utilized under the existing land use regulations, that those who are younger and who had previous migration experiences are more likely to support the free trading of rural residential properties while the village cadres are more likely to oppose it. A coordinated policy reform package that includes free trading of rural residential properties and Household Registration System to facilitate permanent migration out of the countryside is proposed to address the existing efficiencies in China’s rural residential land use.     

新农村住宅生态环保化的发展方向和设计趋势

我国幅员广阔,因地理区域不同建筑风格也多种多样.因此,在新农村住宅建设中,既要充分体现生态观,又要保持多姿多彩的建筑风格.优秀的规划和建筑设计方案对于村容村貌整治具有重要的先导作用,有利于改善现在新农村建设过程中随意建设、模仿严重的状况,有利于改变农村面貌、改善农民居住条件.新农村住宅应统一规划、合理布局、功能齐全.土地作为一种不可再生的资源,具有短缺性.新农村规划应以土地的集约使用为宗旨,以节约尽可能多的土地,为农村长远的发展留有足够的空间.     

The Right to Aid: Perceptions and Practices of Justice in a Flood-Hazard Context in Jakarta,Indonesia

Regular floods impact negatively on the health and wellbeing of slum dwellers in Jakarta and it is understandable that the victims seek access to justice. Fieldwork in one of Jakarta's most flood-prone neighbourhoods, Bantaran Kali, reveals that riverbank settlers there access what they perceive to be justice by engaging in a number of different social networks that are neither formal nor informal—they feature in between civil society and the state. In this article I explore the network ties that are used by individual slum dwellers to access justice. I will show that in the context of extreme flood risk and related uncertainty, this form of social capital makes a significant difference to the community and to households, and with respect to individuals' resilience. By exploring this particular avenue of access to justice, I show that a sense of justice is achieved not through the formal agencies of government but by means of social networks in a space that fits uneasily in the dichotomy of state and non-state.     

Justice in Indonesia: The Social Life of a Momentous Concept

In this article we argue that efforts in Indonesia to improve access to justice for the disadvantaged would greatly benefit from a pragmatic approach that takes local circumstances of custom, values and social relations into account at least as much as legal reform and bureaucratic transparency. We maintain that in post-Suharto Indonesia ‘justice’ can be conceptualised as the inverse of injustice and is manifested in terms of sovereign interests. Ideal justice, such as associated with rule of law implementing programs, assumes a functioning of government and judiciary that might bring about such results. Building on our own research as well as on the articles in this special issue we argue that engaging with the role and meaning of justice should involve solid ethnography of justice-seekers' life-worlds, understanding of the strategies and institutions that provide justice, and paying attention to the networks and interactions that connect actors in an ever moving field.     

The politics of marginality in Wallowa County,Oregon: Contesting the production of landscapes of consumption

The state of Oregon’s (USA) land use planning framework has long been characterized by tensions between state and local authority, between traditionally-defined “urban” and “rural” concerns, and between the competing interests of various landowners. An examination of Wallowa County, Oregon’s implementation of House Bill 3326, a 2001 law giving counties the power to define certain agricultural lands as “marginal,” and therefore exempt from restrictions on subdivision and development, illustrates the ways in which these tensions become magnified as rural communities attempt to govern private land use in the context of rural restructuring. Implementation of HB3326 highlighted the tensions between landowners interested in capitalizing on development opportunities afforded by HB3326, neighboring producers concerned about interference from future amenity migrants, and existing amenity migrants with interests in protecting their rural idyll. Contestations over nonfarm development took place in the context of a strong agricultural community identity, concerns about the effects of economic restructuring on producers, and local resistance to the rural gentrification process. The process of defining marginality came to encompass not only technical issues of land productivity, but also broader community contestations over the continuation of traditional land uses and the legitimacy of various actors to govern private land.     

The state and my happiness: Youth mental health,citizenship education and discursive contestations in contemporary Indonesia

Complementing studies on youth mental health that were mainly depoliticised, this article offers a discursive examination of youth mental health in an Indonesian educational context. We argue that subject positions enabled by the discourse of mental health were at odds with dominant constructions of an ideal Indonesian citizen. Drawing upon qualitative data from 22 teachers and 20 students in a junior high school in Indonesia and analyses of educational policies and textbooks, we identified three discourses underpinning the ideal(ised) constructions of young Indonesian citizen, namely, neoliberalism, (masculine) patriotism and (religious) moralism and discussed how these inhibited youth mental health.     

The impact of media on behaviour: Evidence from television coverage expansion and declining fertility in Indonesia

The media is increasingly recognized as playing an important role in affecting the behaviour of individuals. In this article, we examine the effect of an expansion of private television broadcast on fertility in Indonesia. Our district fixed effects estimation results show that increasing the share of population with access to private television by one‐standard deviation—from a 78% coverage to a universal coverage—reduces crude birth rate by 6.2%, equivalent to 190,000 fewer births. We find evidence that television causes an increase in the use of modern contraceptives, but no change in the use of traditional contraceptives. The finding that expanding television coverage increases the demand for modern contraceptives shows that policy‐makers need to ensure that modern contraceptive is easily accessible.     

Assimilation,multiculturalism, hybridity: The dilemmas of the ethnic chinese in post-suharto Indonesia 1

The dominant discourse in accommodating the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia during Suharto's regime was one of assimilation, which forcefully aimed to absorb this minority into the national body. However, continuous official discrimination towards the Chinese placed them in a paradoxical position that made them an easy target of racial and class hostility. The May 1998 anti-Chinese riots proved the failure of the assmilationist policy. The process of democratization has given rise to a proliferation of identity politics in post-Suharto Indonesia. The policy of multiculturalism has been endorsed by Indonesia's current power holders as a preferred approach to rebuilding the nation, consistent with the national motto: ‘Unity in Diversity’. This paper critically considers the politics of multiculturalism and its efficacy in managing cultural diversity and differences. It deploys the concept of hybridity to describe as well as analyze the complex identity politics of the ethnic Chinese in contemporary Indonesia.     

Compelling Evidence: Research Methods,HIV/AIDS,and Politics in Papua,Indonesia

Increasing calls for an evidence-based public health (EBPH) rely on forms of quantitative evidence to decide HIV/AIDS interventions. A major criticism of this method is it downplays the significance of experiential, cultural or political facets of HIV/AIDS. We apply the concept of ‘rendering technical’ to explore the relationship between methods used in HIV/AIDS research in Papua, Indonesia and current socioeconomic conditions. We analysed research methods used in sixty-two HIV/AIDS studies, assessed presentations at an international AIDS conference, and conducted ethnographic research in Papua. Nation-wide EBPH initiatives are implemented in Papua, yet there remains a critical mass of qualitative ethnographic studies carried out by indigenous scholars emphasising experiences of persons and culture, often within a colonial or post-colonial framework. We argue these studies partially counter approaches which render technical complex realities. In political conditions where indigenous minorities suffer inequities, qualitative ethnographic research may yield critical kinds of evidence, potentially contributing to more nuanced decision-making around HIV.     

Family Structure and Quality of Life of Elders in Rural China: The Role of the New Rural Social Pension

Using data from a survey in Ankang district of Shaanxi province of China in 2011, this article examines the protective effect of the New Rural Social Pension (NRSP) on quality of life of rural elders, as well the moderating effect on association between family structure and quality of life. An instrumental variable approach is used. NRSP is shown to significantly improve the quality of life of rural elders, and a robustness check shows that this effect is consistent across different sets of subgroups. Compared with the elders who have at least one son, the quality of life of those who are childless or have only one child is significantly lower. The NRSP is more likely to significantly improve the quality of life of one-child elders. In addition, the associations between the NRSP and the different facets of quality of life of the elders are significant except for the facet of sensory abilities.     

Indigenous Religion,Christianity and the State: Mobility and Nomadic Metaphysics in Siberut,Western Indonesia

Recent studies in the anthropology of mobility tend to privilege the cultural imaginaries in which human movements are embedded rather than the actual, physical movements of people through space. This article offers an ethnographic case study in which ‘imagined mobility’ is limited to people who are not mobile, who are immobile or sedentary and thus reflects a ‘sedentarist metaphysics’. The case comes from the island of Siberut, the largest of the Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, where government modernisation programs in the second half of the twentieth century focused on relocating clans from their ancestral lands to model, multi-clan villages and on converting people from the indigenous religion to Christianity. Recent changes in the national, regional and local political contexts have led many of the Christians in the villages to reclaim the indigenous religion by invoking the figure of the shaman, whose special skill is the mobility that village dwellers do not have—a mobility that produces and reproduces a spatial, social and cosmological continuity between home and forest. Many people who live on their ancestral land and practice only the indigenous religion argue that the Christians’ hybrid religious practice is not culturally ‘authentic’ because the indigenous religion requires a mobility that is not possible in the government villages. In this view, the shaman is a surrogate, and his ‘substitute mobility’ arises from a sedentarist metaphysics.     

Perceptions of Justice in the Making: Rescaling of Customary Law in Post-Suharto Maluku,Indonesia

This article questions how successful neo-traditional law has been in providing access to justice to Kei Islanders of Maluku, Eastern Indonesia during recent political transitions. It describes the prevailing model of justice in which traditional law draws some of its authority from the state but provides its own normative framework for addressing community disputes. After the fall of Suharto's New Order regime, people began to apply neo-traditional law to ethnic and resource conflicts, arguing that it took precedence over state law in these emerging domains. Although the neo-traditionalist revival affirmed the autonomy of traditional legal institutions, actual legal procedures and outcomes depended on the response of state authorities and national publics to newly activated traditional normative frameworks. The politics of legality in post-Suharto Indonesia have produced increasingly state-oriented models of justice, but legal outcomes still determine the choice between different normative frameworks.     

Still Striving for Modesty: Land,Spirits, and Rubber Production in Kajang,Indonesia

Questions of atavism have long confounded policy makers and nation builders. This is certainly the case in the vast and diverse Indonesian archipelago. Indigenous adat (customs and traditions) revivalism is a complex politicised process involving multifarious groups searching for rights and recognition. The Konjo-speaking inhabitants of Kajang Dalam are among the Indonesian communities being selectively portrayed as exemplars of premodern society. Kajang Dalam (the ‘inner circle’ of Kajang) is located in Bulukumba district, on the south-east peninsula of South Sulawesi province. Adat in this territory are aligned with the mystical belief system of the spirit cult of the Amma Toa. A variety of external actors have attempted to build a case against the palm oil and rubber plantation estates of PT PP London Sumatra Indonesia Tbk by invoking the name of Kajang Dalam.