Gaharu King – Family Queen: material gendered political ecology of the eaglewood boom in Kalimantan, Indonesia

Abstract

Framed with the concepts of material gendered political ecology and the Wirkmacht (agentive force) of gaharu (eaglewood), I give empirical insights into the intertwinement of power, marginality, identity and gender linked to natural resource governance in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Wirkmacht comprises the properties and functionalities of the resource, and includes gendered roles and identity formation connected to it. Material gendered political ecology therefore analyzes gender-specific governance and power structures by taking socio-natures and the materiality of resources into account. Currently, the extraction of gaharu as a boom commodity provides material gain, enhances prestige and functions as a marker for a specific masculine indigenous identity. Eaglewood is extracted without state regulations, meaning high autonomy and the uncontested control of the resource by villagers. Young male adults of marginalized Punan Murung communities thereby turn their spatial marginality into an advantage as their geographic location offers them control and access to wild gaharu. They counter their political, economic and social exclusion with the establishment of a niche in the margins, thereby twisting and reformulating marginality. Punan Murung thus could change the derogatory identity of a formerly isolated community towards positively connoted indigenous people.

Keywords:

• gaharu
• Kalimantan
• Indonesia
• Punan
• materiality
• gender
• feminist political ecology
• socio-natures

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Michaela Haug, Andrea Höing, Suraya Afiff, Rebecca Elmhirst and Martina Padmanabhan who provided me with valuable information and who never tired of discussing this topic. I am deeply thankful to the families who hosted me, and the villagers, traders, state officials, and members of civil society organizations who were warmly welcoming and helped me. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The comparison is made in reference to the records by Sellato (1986) and Hoffman (1986/1983).

2 Other villagers belong to the ethnic groups of the Ot Danum, Ngajau, Bakumpai, Siang, and Maanyan.

3 The majority form the ethnic group of the Muslim Bakumpai; other villagers belong to the ethnic groups of the Siang, Ot Danum and Kahayan.

4 Between Christian/Hindu-Kaharingan groups and the Muslim Bakumpai the relationship regarding everyday activities and work is good and affirmative. In terms of language and marriage usually the Christian/Hindu-Kaharingan groups adopt Muslim Bakumpai, and in regards to food culture there are obvious separations (Großmann 2017).

5 There is no systematic and clear-cut differentiation between Punan and Penan. The autonym (self-designation) Punan or Penan is used in relation to other groups and is situational (Brosius 1991). Scholars mostly use Penan for hunter-gatherers living predominantly in Sarawak, Malaysia and Brunei. Penan are generally distinguished as Eastern and Western Penan, differing in regards to language and social institutions (Brosius 1991, 1997a, 1997b; Needham 1972).

6 These ascriptions refer to gendered divisions of labor regarding natural resources and the linking of labor to gendered connotations, and thus the making of social meaning as described by e.g. Padmanabhan (2007) concerning the remaking of gendered crops, or elaborated on by Sillitoe (2003) in his analysis of the gender of crops and the construction of the division of plants into male and female categories.

7 The monetary and social gains and loss connected to boom resources are also described by Münster (2015) in the case of ginger in Wayanad, India. He elaborates on the emergence of farmers or rural entrepreneurs known as ginger kings, who have become millionaires over just a few years by cultivating the boom crop ginger.

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Kristina Großmann

Dr Kristina Großmann currently works as an assistant professor at the Chair of Comparative Development and Cultural Studies (focus: Southeast Asia) at the University of Passau, Germany. She completed her PhD in anthropology at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Her main research interests are: environmental transformations, dimensions of differentiation in ethnicity and gender, and civil society organizations in Southeast Asia. Recent publications include the articles ‘Perceptions towards companies and forest conservation in two villages of Uut Murung, Murung Raya, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia’ (2015) by Andrea Höing et al., and ‘How nature is used and valued by villagers in two villages in Uut Murung’ (2015), also by Andrea Höing et al., both in the Journal of Indonesian Natural History (JINH); the book chapter ‘The (ir)relevance of ethnicity among the Punan Murung and Bakumpai in Central Kalimantan’ in Arenz Cathrin, Michaela Haug, Stefan Seitz, and Oliver Venz (eds.) Change and continuity in Dayak Societies (Springer, 2016); and the article ‘Exclusions in inclusive programs: state-sponsored sustainable development initiatives amongst the Kurichya in Kerala, India’ coauthored with T.R. Suma (2017), in Agriculture and Human Values. Journal of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society.