Relational self and farmworker law reform: the case of Indonesia

Abstract

This article celebrates and explores Keebet Benda-Beckmann’s important work on the centrality of “relationality” in legal pluralism, in Indonesia in particular, and more generally in the non-Western world. We aim to extend Benda-Beckmann’s argument on the centrality of relationality and legal pluralism into our analysis of an urgent project of Indonesian law reform: farmworker protection. We make an interpretive claim on the status of “relational self” as an organizing idea in the Indonesian legal consciousness. To build that interpretive claim, we provide qualitative context drawn from our field research in two farmworker communities in rural West Java, Indonesia. With the situation of Indonesian farmworkers as its case study, this paper presents how relational self-construal can be a starting point for the introduction of a greater access to justice. To build its argument, the paper first identifies relational self as the Indonesian farmworkers’ central notion of self. Ultimately, the paper develops a model of law reform proposal that takes relational self as its overarching supposition.

Keywords:

• folk psychology
• phenomenology
• interpretive fieldwork
• conceptual analysis
• religious mysticism
• immanentism
• Eastern communalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).