The Impact of the Oil Palm on Adat Social Structure and Authority: The Case of the Medang People, Indonesia

Abstract

Using a case study of the election of an adat head (kepala adat) in a Medang Dayak community in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, this study investigates the effect of large-scale oil palm land acquisition on the social structure of an adat community in terms of the ability of adat leaders to consolidate their positions within the social hierarchy. The findings highlight that the introduction of the oil palm to the community has weakened adat authority. However, it has also raised the community’s hopes that the ideal form of adat authority will still be able to handle internal tensions and external pressures.

Keywords:

• Adat Authority
• Local Election
• Social Structure
• Large-scale Land Acquisition
• Oil Palm
• East Kalimantan

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank her supervisor, Dr Makoto Inoue, and the Center for Social Forestry at Mulawarman University. The author would also like to thank Dr Mariko Urano, Dr Martua T. Sirait, Dr Mia Siscawati, and Tessa Toumbourou (PhD candidate, School of Geography, University of Melbourne) for their fruitful comments on an earlier version of this paper presented at the 7th Southeast Asian Studies Symposium at Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, in March 2018 under the title ‘The Impacts of Large-Scale Oil Palm Development on the Governance Capabilities Of Customary Leaders—From a Medang Dayak Community, in East Kalimantan’, and their organisation of the panel discussion. The author appreciates the valuable feedback for improving the manuscript provided by the anonymous reviewers. The author also expresses deep gratitude to Dr Antonio J. Guerreiro for his valuable advice especially about the Medang’s hierarchy system. Lastly, the author owes a very important debt to all of the villagers who participated in this research.

Notes

1 The Dayak are the indigenous people of interior Borneo (Rousseau 1990).

2 Also referred to as ‘Modang’ in the English literature (e.g., Guerreiro 1993b) and classified as ‘Kelinjau Modang’ ethnolinguistically (Smith 2017). In this article, the author uses ‘Medang’ to refer to the Modangs along Kelinjau River in accordance with the local use, as the term ‘Modang’ could be an exonym derived from Kutai Malay with some pejorative connotations in this Kutai-influenced region (Guerreiro, pers. comm., 2017).

3 See the further complex subdivision in Guerreiro (1983, 65–66).

4 According to one Bugis descendant, his uncle first found a cacao tree at the house of the adat head in the Medang community; the tree was not planted purposefully as the Medang had not known how to develop or market the crop. As these Bugis had already succeeded at growing cacao trees and gaining access to the market in South Sulawesi, starting in the 1980s, they spearheaded cacao production in LB.

5 Agricultural development for small farmers is also supported in LB by agricultural extension workers (PPL: Penyuluh Pertanian Lapangan) from the Ministry of Agriculture, who have introduced several cash crops such as soybeans, candlenut, cotton, coffee tree, rubber and oil palm. However, these extension workers have not been enthusiastic about promoting oil palm development for small farmers because of the lesser benefit to be gained compared with that of cacao (field interviews, 2014 and 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the K. Matsushita Foundation.