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- Convenors:
-
Rajindra Puri
(University of Kent)
Roy Ellen (University of Kent)
Dario Novellino (University of Kent)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Within a Southeast Asian context, this panel will assess the complexity and multiplicity of local voices and indigenous communities responses being deployed to ensure ecological and cultural integrity of their territories, especially in relation to threats from conservation and development schemes.
Long Abstract:
Indigenous resource management strategies are often opposed and/or seen as a solution to strict and top down conservation schemes being proposed by large environmental NGOs and governments alike. Similarly, recognition and enactment of customary rights is generally perceived as effective means for countering expansion of large scale development schemes. Although these assumptions might prove to be correct, indigenous and local communities' responses to conservation and development programmes cannot be seen as a panacea to environmental protection. Such responses, in fact, are continuously adjusted over time to socio-political and environmental changes, are shaped by contingencies of the moment and by opportunistic choices not necessary free from factionalism, political alliances and other factors. Within a Southeast Asian context, the authors of this panel aim at assessing the complexity and multiplicity of local voices and indigenous communities responses and coping strategies which are being deployed by the people to ensure the ecological and cultural integrity of their territories, especially in relation to threats posed by large-scale conservation and development schemes, transitional biocultural zones, etc. Our contention is that communities' micro-responses to these external factors may vary greatly from region to region and their assessment requires, not only an in-depth understanding of particular political and legislative contexts, but also of international processes and hegemonic global discourses. We believe that the assessment and comparison of this information within the specific geo-political milieu of Southeast Asia may provide best lessons for both advocacy and conservation, while adding new stimulus to current anthropological debate over these issues.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 October, 2021, -Gregory Acciaioli (University of Western Australia)
Paper short abstract:
The establishment of the Lore Lindu National Park has provided an arena of opportunities for Indigenous To Lindu to reassert and governmentalise their local authority based on mobilising their local custom (adat) to counter a series of livelihood expansions among migrants to the Lindu plain.
Paper long abstract:
This paper traces the circuitous course of contestations, alliances and identity assertions in the reactions of local peoples in the Lindu plain to their encompassment within the Lore Lindu National Park. Beginning with the initial impacts of the park upon people’s livelihoods when it was first declared a candidate park in 1982, it analyses how, once the park was fully established a decade later, the Indigenous To Lindu used the opportunities offered by a community conservation agreement to revitalise their local custom (adat) as an instrument to reassert their authority over resources uses in the Lindu plain and thus limit the opening of land and intensification of fishing by migrant communities in the plain. Institutions such as village conservation organisations have recast alliances among communities in the Lindu plain, pitting formerly opposed longer-term residents, including earlier Bugis and Kulawi migrants, against more recent migrants from Tana Toraja who have been opening gardens beyond park enclave boundaries. The establishment of Lindu as a conservation subdistrict in 2007, along with the codification of Lindu adat in written form and the elevation of the local customary council to official status within the new subdistrict government, has solidified To Lindu dominance and governmentalized their control of local resources as a commons rather than open access system. The paper ends by considering how this dominance has affected the current efforts to obtain recognition of customary forest (hutan adat) and to prevent the initiation of gold mining in the plain by migrants.
Sofyan Ansori (Northwestern University)
Paper short abstract:
Focusing on the way fire infrastructures are perceived, embraced, or contested, this paper seeks to explain the complexity of indigenous people's responses toward the environmental/developmental interventions and the future imagined by the state and its experts within fire governance in Indonesia.
Paper long abstract:
Responding to the massive forest fires in 2015, Joko Widodo, the Indonesian president, promised to solve such an environmental catastrophe by creating the Peat Restoration Agency (Badan Restorasi Gambut, BRG). Supported by the national budget and international donors, this agency constructed extensive fire infrastructures to mediate and regulate future interactions between people and nature. It also institutionalized community-based fire control groups through which villagers were expected to maintain and operate these new facilities. Focusing on the way fire infrastructures are perceived, embraced, or contested, this paper seeks to explain how the indigenous people orient themselves toward the environmental/developmental interventions and the future imagined by the state and its experts. Instead of preventing fires, the new infrastructures have actually inadvertently facilitated the occurrence of fire since people did not engage with fire infrastructures the way the BRG imagined. My ethnographic experience in the dry season of 2019 in Central Kalimantan suggests that community-based fire governmentality does not necessarily produce the intended subjects. Ngaju people, an indigenous community who engage with BRG-led fire governance in my field sites, can orient themselves differently to the future anticipated by BRG. Contrasting this vernacular anticipation with the prevention foregrounded by BRG is essential for recognizing the significance of temporal dimension in the formation of environmental subjects. In so doing, this paper provides a different window to understand the complexity of indigenous responses within fire governance and other contemporary conservation projects that demand people's participation and local engagement in Indonesia and elsewhere.
Umar Baihaqki (Universitas Negeri Jakarta)
Paper short abstract:
This article describes how tourism has become an alternative economy for the locals besides agriculture in Samiran village, Central Java, Indonesia. There are several concerns regarding the authenticity of traditions and the share of benefits for the villagers.
Paper long abstract:
Village tourism is a means of locally driven development. The concept emphasizes the commodification of cultural and environmental resources in the village for tourist consumptions. Tourism objects and their supporting facilities are managed by village residents. Such characteristics of a tourist village make this type of tourism an example of community-based tourism. The success of tourism in supporting the well-being of the locals is on par with the community's effectiveness in organizing themselves to run the tourism business. This article describes how tourism has become an alternative economy for the locals besides agriculture in Samiran village, Central Java, Indonesia. Samiran village is located between Mount Merapi and Mount Merbabu. The first mountain is an active volcano and the latter is a national park that is popular for hiking. Samiran village is the gateway to the Merbabu mountain hiking route, which makes it frequented by guests. In 2006 the villagers started to build other tourism potentials so that Samiran became a tourist village. The practice of tourism brings new meanings of local culture for the host. Younger villager starts to practice traditional dance and performs in front of tourists. Local villager renovates their properties into local guesthouses for guests. However, the performative delivery of tourism experience raises several concerns regarding the authenticity of traditions and the share of benefits for the villagers.
Roy Ellen (University of Kent) Hermien Soselisa (Pattimura University)
Paper short abstract:
To understand conservation threats, interventions and local responses in the Moluccas we must acknowledge their biocultural distinctiveness, transitional biogeography, and varied socio-cultural forms. In this review of selected issues we suggest revising received notions of 'biocultural diversity'.
Paper long abstract:
International conservation attention, local responses to ecological degradation and the application of global environmentalist rhetoric came relatively late to the Moluccas. This is largely because these Indonesian islands were among the last frontiers to be opened-up for resource extraction and economic development in modern times, and because they were politically as well as geographically marginal. This paper argues that if we are to understand the shape and implications of these new social and scientific interventions, we need to take into account what is bioculturally distinctive about the area in relation to the transitional biogeography of Wallacea. The special characteristics of the Moluccas are contingent upon – and encompass – a diversity of socio-cultural forms which reflect connections both with New Guinea to the East, and a complex history of contact with global currents coming from the West. In examining the emerging pattern of conservation discourse we find a cacophony of different voices marking various aspects of this conjuncture, but which are all strangely innocent of the long-term dynamic of historical ecology which underpins them. The paper tries to show how different ecologies and human cultural populations interact to produce particular conservation impacts. It suggests that this might require rethinking what we mean by 'biocultural diversity' from a comparative perspective.