Paper short abstract:

The encounter of customary law and government agriculture and the National Park zoning systems. The strong-weak legal pluralism depends on the factoring point. This study adopts legal anthropology and socio-legal approach and ethnographic techniques in Kasepuhan communities in Sukabumi and Lebak.

Paper long abstract:

My research examines legal pluralism in adat/customary communities in western parts of Java, including their distinctions in the agriculture and zoning systems. These communities still maintain their traditional system, although with various practices as the result of their encounter and responses toward modern systems imposed by the government.

Customary law is significant to communities’ agricultural and zoning system because their annual agriculture and area management are arranged and legitimised by their law. Hence, when the modern and government systems were imposed through the agriculture national policy and the National Park system, the contestation and conflict between the two systems is unavoidable.

Findings show that, first, at the point of tension between legal systems, the local communities tend to privilege customary laws more. Thus, the understanding of strong-weak legal pluralism cannot be conducted solely based on the lawyerly or formal point of view, because the result will be different if we use community’s factoring point. Second, in terms of the community’s formal acknowledgment, it can strengthen communities and their law in securing their territory and political autonomy but not with regard to dispute resolution due to the continuing state law’s hegemony

This study adopts legal anthropological and socio-legal approaches to the study of legal pluralism in Indonesia, applying qualitative and controlled comparison using ethnographic techniques in three Kasepuhan communities in Sukabumi District-West Java and Lebak District-Banten. Their various encounters with formal laws and arrangements, thus exemplify different constellations of legal pluralism in Indonesian society