The land exclusion dilemma and Sumatra’s agrarian reactionaries

Abstract

Even as millions of rural workers have organized into agrarian movements, their efforts to benefit from progressive social mobilizations often fail. To understand how agrarian movements can overcome these difficulties, this contribution acknowledges a dilemma: As agrarian movement members create ties to land they necessarily confront new forms of exclusion. We discuss this exclusionary land dilemma, with a focus on Sumatra’s agrarian reactionaries as an elite class possessing a potent exclusionary force that seeks to erase agrarian movement legitimacy and block rural workers’ mobilizations to reclaim and occupy land. We trace these agrarian reactionaries’ public life across a state–corporate–criminal apparatus and their repression of two agrarian movement mobilizations. We find agrarian reactionaries’ actions offer a partial explanation for the still-limited gains of Sumatra’s rural workers’ movements. Agrarian reactionaries legitimize their exclusions with nativist, ethno-territorial ideas that co-opt indigenous rights claims. In response, laborers and agriculturalists are now refining a more inclusive land politics – one of greater unifying influence that does not depend upon claims of indigeneity – to overcome reactionary repression.

Keywords:

• agrarian reactionaries
• social movements
• land exclusion
• Sumatra
• Indonesia

ORCID

David E. Gilbert http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3394-0050

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the help of two Indonesian research assistants. For their well-being, they must remain anonymous. We thank the journal’s four referees and Editor-in-Chief Saturnino Borras for their insightful comments. David Gilbert acknowledges the financial support of a Stanford Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies Student Grant.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Indonesia’s indigenous, peasant and environmental activists avoid ormas for its connotations of Suharto’s New Order militarized state organizations, and laskar for its militant tone. The progressive social mobilizations instead use the terms for unions (serikat) and political parties (partai).

2 Suku Anak Dalam is a term used by many Sumatran indigenous people. The Indonesian state has its own terminology; Remote Indigenous Communities (Komunitas Adat Terpencil) is currently the most common government term. The largest national indigenous rights organization, Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (AMAN), uses still another term, masyarakat adat, literally, people who live in customary ways. AMAN chooses to translate this term into English as ‘indigenous people’.

3 The strengthening of ties between peasant unions and indigenous peoples’ organizations is one of the greatest accomplishments of the Indonesian agrarian movement, and is not at all typical. Fontana (2014) provides a case in Bolivia where structural dynamics and a process of ‘political ethnicization’ complicate any such collaborations.

4 For reference: Government Instruction 04/INST.GUB/Dishut.5.3/2012.

5 The authors hold a cell-phone video taken of the eviction, 2013.

6 Laskar Jihad became the most widely known organization to revive the laskar symbology after the fall of Suharto, primarily because of its transnational ties to Afgani Mujahideen. It was a militant organization that participated in religious violence, primarily in the Moluccas and Sulawesi. It was disbanded after less than half a decade (Gross 2007, 128).

7 e.g. Kunangan Jaya representatives’ and other activists’ open letter on the importance of smallholder ties to the land and agrarian justice (Provincial Leadership Committee Serikat Tani Nasional Jambi 2014).

8 For example, see the work of the Coalition for Clean Justice (Koalisi Peradilan Bersih) that includes some 40 Indonesian social justice organizations.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David E. Gilbert

David E. Gilbert is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Stanford University. David’s dissertation examines how Sumatran agriculturalists work and mobilize to survive among processes of rural industrialization. Email: [email protected]

Afrizal

Afrizal is a professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology, Andalas University. Afrizal’s research focuses on agrarian and environmental conflicts and social movements in Indonesia. Email: [email protected]