The campaign to save the Bandung city forest in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

In 2007, Babakan Siliwangi city forest in Bandung came under threat of privatisation from a local corporation, PT EGI, which proposed hotel and commercial development. In the period 2012–2013, the anti-corporatist, environmentalist group Backsilmove emerged to fight a successful campaign to save the forest for public use. Employing the ‘cognitive praxis’ approach pioneered by [Eyerman and Jamison (1991. Social movements: a cognitive approach. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press)] to understand the work of social movements, this article explores the tactics and ideology used by young city forest activists in Bandung as they sought to educate and mobilise local residents. Through in-depth interviews and fieldwork from 2014 to 2015 with young activists from Backsilmove it became evident that, as a manifestation of cognitive praxis, certain repertoires of protest were mobilised to inculcate environmental values in the public about protecting the forest from commercialisation. Repertoires included: (a) a ‘long march’ to attract public interest; (b) an enacted pantomime to draw attention to the profit-seeking capitalist alliance between the city government and the private sector; (c) production and free distribution of a scientific research publication outlining the impact of destructive development of the city forest. These protest repertoires had been acquired by the activists through previous structured training and actions with Greenpeace.

KEYWORDS:

• Bandung
• city forest
• cognitive praxis
• environmental protest

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Meredian Alam is a youth and environment researcher. He received his PhD in Sociology and Anthropology from the School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Email: [email protected]

Pamela Nilan is a professor of Sociology at the School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Email: [email protected]

ORCID

Meredian Alam http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7585-7568

Notes

1 Gramsci’s (1991) framing of the term praxis rests on the nexus of practical-theoretical; the theory in practice, the practice in theory, for example, in the work of leftist intellectuals.

2 Apri, interview, 2014

3 Interview, January 2015.

4 Adel, interview, 2015.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant number Discovery Grant, ‘Fostering Pro-Environment Consciousness and Practice: Environmentalism, Environmentality and Environmental Education in Indonesia’ (DP130100051)].