Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

ABSTRACT

This article looks at the environmental discourses articulated by university students attending Universitas Sriwijaya (UNSRI) in Palembang, South Sumatra, during the 2014 annual burning season when land is illegally cleared to extend palm oil plantations. The smoke was so thick it was hard to breathe. Yet the young activists often made no initial reference to the smoke. When asked directly, they used normalising discourses to talk about the smoke. Below, the three main discourses about smoke that emerged from the interviews are discussed in detail. It is argued that these three identified discourses point to a specific regime of truth (Foucault) about the annual smoke that may point to local thinking about this important environmental problem.

KEYWORDS:

• Discourse
• Palembang
• regime of truth
• smoke haze
• student environmentalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Pam Nilan is a Professor in Sociology at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. She has researched extensively on youth, gender and education in Indonesia, Australia and Fiji. Her most recent book is Muslim youth in the diaspora: challenging extremism through popular culture (Routledge 2017). Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 There are detailed definitions and an extensive discussion of these discourses in Milne et al. (2016: 5–6).

2 Environmental Non-Government Organizations.

3 For example: Astra Agro Lestari, Austindo Nusantara Jaya, Bakrie Sumatera Plantations, Dharma Satya Nusantara, Eagle High Plantations, Golden Plantation, Gozco Plantations, Indofood Sukses Makmur, Jaya Agra Wattie, Multi Agro Gemilang Plantation, Perkebunan Nusantara III (SOE), Perkebunan Nusantara IV (SOE), PP London Sumatra Indonesia, Provident Agro, Salim Ivomas Pratama, Sampoerna Agro, Sawit Sumbermas Sarana, SMART, Tiga Pilar Sejahtera Food, Tunas Baru Lampung.

4 Defined as: ‘farmers who grow oil palm, alongside with subsistence crops, where the family provides the majority of labour and the farm provides the principal source of income, and the planted oil palm area is less than 50 ha’ (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil 2016).

5 All figures obtained from Indonesia-Investments.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP130100051 (2013–2016), ‘Fostering pro-environment consciousness and practice: Environmentalism, environmentality and environmental education in Indonesia’, L. Parker, G. Acciaioli, P. Nilan, S. Affif and Y. Winarto.