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Presentation short abstract

Drawing on Wawonii and Poco Leok, this paper argues that resistance to green extractivism is not only a struggle over land, but also a defense of the social and ecological relations through which collective life is reproduced. Collective care practices emerge as both means and ends of that struggle

Presentation long abstract

Across Indonesia's green transition, environmental defenders increasingly confront shrinking civic space in areas targeted for nickel mining and geothermal development. Existing scholarship has largely focused on overt forms of repression, including criminalization, intimidation, and restrictions on political participation. Yet less attention has been paid to the collective practices through which communities sustain resistance over time, despite their importance to the endurance of social movements.

Drawing on feminist participatory field research in Wawonii, a site of late-stage nickel extraction, and Poco Leok, where geothermal development remains halted due to community opposition, this paper examines the collective practices through which communities sustain resistance across different phases of extractive development. These include collective care practices such as ritual gatherings, pooled financial support, communal food provision, and affective strategies such as ‘resisting with joy’.

Engaging social reproduction theory, the paper argues that these practices should not be understood simply as supportive mechanisms operating behind resistance. Rather, they help reproduce the social and ecological relations that communities perceive to be under threat. Resistance therefore emerges not only as opposition to extractive development, but also as an effort to defend and continue particular ways of life rooted in territory, collective obligation, and intergenerational continuity.

The paper contributes to debates on civic space and environmental defense by showing how communities sustain political agency through practices that are simultaneously the means and ends of resistance.