ABSTRACT
In Bali, rapid conversion of agricultural land has been framed by opinion leaders and mass media as an indication of an agrarian crisis. The government responded by nominating subak (a traditional water management system) landscapes for world heritage status, which was achieved in 2012. Instead of mitigating land conversion, world heritage status has incentivized local farmers to sell their agricultural land. This article examines market-based conservation strategies by investigating their conceptual foundation. It argues that a romantic characterization of subak, combined with neoliberal assumptions which conceive of the land crisis in Bali through a rational choice lens, has led to a counter-productive market-based solution managed in a technocratic manner, ignoring the structural conditions which have been the main cause of land conversion. Thus, the neoliberal response to Bali’s agrarian crisis, rather than conserving subak landscapes and empowering local farmers, has contributed to the further marginalization of local farmers and their landscapes.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. Carol Warren, anonymous reviewers, and the editor of Critical Asian Studies for providing constructive comments and feedback on earlier drafts of this article. All weaknesses of this article are solely mine.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Agung Wardana is an assistant professor of law at Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. He holds a doctorate from Murdoch University, Australia, and a master degree in environmental law from the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Contemporary Bali: Contested Space and Governance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
Notes
3 The bank recognized that it had previously underestimated “the intrinsic economic capacity of the cultural sector for empowering development … [thus] the economic resources of the cultural patrimony have been seldom mobilized” due to “insufficient information and inadequate pricing mechanisms” World Bank Citation2001, 33.
4 Subak is a collaborative irrigation management system that dates from the ninth century CE. It links water supplies and terraced rice paddy fields via a complex network of tunnels, canals, weirs, temples, and villages.
30 Tempek Telabah Gede, Tempek Besi Kalung, Tempek Kedamaian, Tempek Uma Dui, Tempek Uma Kayu, Tempek Kesambih, and Tempek Gunungsri.
32 Interview with Nyoman Sutama, the Pekaseh (Chief) of Subak Jatiluwih, on November 7, 2013.
35 Geertz Citation1980. See Lansing [Citation1991] Citation2007 and Hauser-Schaublin’s Citation2003 critique of Lansing’s autonomy thesis. In the nomination dossier it states that the “subak is a unique Balinese social and religious institution; a self-governing, democratic organization of farmers who share responsibility for the just and efficient use of water to grow paddy rice.” See the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Government of Bali Province Citation2011, I–7.
41 Interview with Pak Rebo, the leader of peasant groups of Pecatu, on August 5, 2014. Rabo himself was put in detention twice due to organizing protests against the BPG project.
43 On its website, the company states, “I Wayan Puspa Negara is a member of the Indonesian Parliament, based in the island of Bali, with direct connections to the government and handling all legalities and future information regarding new laws, changes and transportation links. His participation makes everything easier to access. Also, an asset for future investments in other parts of Indonesia, as the island of Bali is just the beginning of a massive investment expansion.” See: http://balilandinvestment.com/application-request/.
44 See Rigg Citation1997. Within the Catur Angga Batukaru’s subak landscape, Karyn Fox Citation2012, 73, found that the issue of small financial returns was only considered a challenge for farming by ten of the 156 farmers she interviewed. In contrast, forty-four farmers regarded water shortages as their biggest concern.
47 Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Government of Bali Province Citation2011, III-1.
51 By basing the allocation for operational costs on a percentage of gross revenues, rather than on the actual costs spent by the body, the amount of operational costs would predictably increase with growth in gross revenues. This option appears to be designed to extract more resources for district and local elites involved in the body.
53 Nyoman Sutama, the former Pekaseh of Subak Jatiluwih, has argued that subak as the focal point of the listing should receive at least forty-five percent of the revenue for the local institutions. Personal communication, October 17, 2019.
55 Personal communication with Nyoman Sutama, October17, 2019.
Additional information
Funding
Research for this article was funded by the Australian Research Council project “Intangible Cultural Heritage across Borders: Laws, Structures and Strategies” (DP130100213 C. Antons, W. Logan, C. Warren, J. Chen) and by Murdoch University.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3687-9219
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