Conflicting Notions of Land in Indonesia

Abstract

Coal mining in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, evokes not only struggles on the control of land but also conflicts between different notions of land. Based on ethnographic research in a mining area, I describe a relational attached notion of land which is subdued by a detached, monetary-based understanding in the course of increased mining. In negotiations on the compensation of land with representatives of the mining companies, members of the village elite, which are entangled in patronage networks with the companies, ignore the various notions of land by other villagers and sideline those who are critical. With my article, I contribute to the ontological dimension of environmental conflicts with insights from Southeast Asia thereby giving a diversified picture of the struggles on access and the lacking acknowledgement of different notions of land.

Keywords:

• Attached
• Blaser
• coal
• Country or Region
• Country or Region
• detached
• environmental conflict
• forest
• human-environment
• Indonesia
• Ingold
• land
• ontology
• relationality
• resource
• review areas
• review areas
• Southeast Asia

Acknowledgements

I am deeply thankful to the families in Central Kalimantan who hosted and warmly welcoming me. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

1 The term kaharingan comprises the belief system of Dayak people and includes cosmological aspects and a set of ritual practices. Rituals related to life milestones such as birth and marriage, healing rituals, and rituals to appease the spirits are an integral part of kaharingan.

2 After independence in 1945, the Indonesian state installed itself as the exclusive authority with the right to exercise control over land and resources. Article 33 Indonesia’s Constitution of 1945 states that the state controls the country’s land, waters and natural resources, which must be utilized for the benefit of the Indonesian people. That means that generally all land and resources are under the control of the state and even if citizens have the right of “ownership” to certain plots of land, the Indonesian government has the right to take this land off the owner if it is needed in the national interest such as large-scale coal mining.

3 In Indonesia, historically, patron–client relationships played an important role in the country’s highly hierarchical society, for example in the relationship between peasants and the local elite in pre-colonial times in the mid-twentieth century, as described by Scott (1972).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under Grant 01UL1708X.