Political and Economic Dynamics of Land-Grabs in Indonesia:
Indigenous Resistance against Palm Oil Expansion in Sumatra and
Borneo
Master Thesis by Abdelkabir El Mandili 11286040 MSc Political Science: Political Economy Supervisor: Dr. S.J. Lim Second reader: Dr. P. Schleifer a.mandili@me.com June 23, 2017UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
Political and Economic Dynamics of Land Grabs in Indonesia Indigenous Resistance against Palm Oil Expansion in Sumatra and Borneo Master Thesis by Abdelkabir El Mandili
List of abbreviations
AIPP Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact AMAN Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago) APHRIC Asia-Pacific Human Rights Information Center CIFOR Center for International Forestry Research CPO Crude Palm Oil EoF Eyes of the Forest FPIC Free and Prior Informed Consent GDN Geo Data Nasional ILO International Labour Organization IPAC Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict IWGIA International Work Group of Indigenous Affairs KKI Warsi Komunitas Konservasi Indonesia Warsi NGO Non-Governmental Organization OMI One Map Initiative RSPO Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil SEA Strategic Environmental Assessment TuK Transformasi Untuk Keadilan Indonesia WALHI Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia WB World Bank WWF World Wildlife Fund
Preface and Acknowledgements
After a remarkable journey as a graduate student at the University of Amsterdam, the finest moment is here presenting you my master thesis in the Political Economy. Looking back on this period gives me an immense satisfaction for the academic atmosphere in which I could develop my interest in the development economy during the different research seminars and lectures. This resulted into a gradual growing curiosity on private land grabs in Indonesia, and the various avenues for marginalized communities to resist against extensive private land accumulation in the archipelago. It was therefore an open door to delve into this subject matter, considered as one of the country’s contemporary challenge. This master thesis attempts to define the political avenues and different resistance approaches used by the marginalized indigenous communities and their alliances in protecting customary ancestral land from private expansion. It tries to understand the various forms and approaches used by indigenous alliances against private land grabs and forest land expansion in the most affected islands of Borneo and Sumatra from the palm oil industry. This thesis has two overriding aims. The first aim is to shed light on the various tenurial conflicts that take place at the expense of indigenous communities in Indonesia, and on the communities’ agency in protecting ancestral land. The second aim is to contribute to the existing theory and literature on rural resistance, as it is the duty of social scientists and social science students in general to engage in a meaningful and scientific discussion on who is benefiting from globalization and who are those who are lagging behind. Writing my master thesis has never felt as a lonely exercise. It is therefore my pleasure to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Sijeong Lim for her incredible support and engagement throughout the whole research process. Thank you for your guidance, scholarly advice, and for the meaningful debates we had. Furthermore, I am greatly indebted to my respondents. My sincere thanks to Jenito Johanes, Agustinus Karlo Lumban Raja, Dimas Aritongan, Emmy Primadona Than, Diki Kurniawan, Rahmawati Rento Winarni, Arie Rompas, and Merel van der Mark for their participation and patience during my interviews with them. Last but not least, I owe a deep sense of gratitude to my family and friends. Thank you for your support and encouragement, it is worth more than my words could ever express.
Table of contents
List of abbreviations
2
Preface and Acknowledgements
3
Abstract
6
1. Introduction
7
1.1 Palm-oil deforestation and human right abuses 81.2 Impact on indigenous communities 9
1.3 Private land grabs and land conflicts in Sumatra and Borneo 10
1.4 Social and scientific relevance 12
2. Background: Private land grabs in Indonesia
14
2.1 Indigenous developments in Indonesia 142.2 Land grabs in the Archipelago 16
2.3 Intergovernmental policy on indigeneity 19
3. Paradigms and forms of resistance
21
3.1 Three paradigms of resistance 213.2 The various forms of resistance 22
3.3 Studies on Indigenous Resistance in Indonesia 24
3.4 Studies on Rural Resistance in the Global South 26
3.5 Silences and research gab 27
4. Methodology
29
4.1 Case selection 294.2 Spatial planning databases 33
4.3 In-depth interviews 33
4.4 Data collection, validity and reliability 34
5. Developments in customary land forest loss
35
5.1 Indigenous forest developments in Borneo 355.2 Indigenous forest developments in Sumatra 38
5.3 Conflict background 41
6. Indigenous alliance resistance approaches
44
6.1 Lobby for sustainable regulations 446.2 Conflict resolution dialogue 47
6.3 Policy and market standards 49
6.4 Reflection on the forms of resistance 50
7. Factors affecting indigenous resistance
52
7.1 Internal factors affecting resistance 527.2 External factors affecting resistance 55
7.3 Reflection on the paradigms of resistance 57
8. Conclusion and Discussion
60
8.1 Major findings 608.2 Theoretical reflection and generalizability 61
8.3 The way forward 62
Appendix: Indigenous alliances and the interviewed representatives
64
Reference
67
Abstract
Indigenous communities in Indonesia are facing daily arbitrary interference from the expansionist palm oil industry, leaving many community members landless. The affected communities organized themselves through different indigenous alliances, and started to resist the extensive private land grabs after the collapse of the authoritarian regime of Suharto. Indigenous resistance is according to Borras and Franco (2013) ‘’too often assumed rather than demonstrated in the existing literature, thereby leaving many inconvenient facts undetected and unexplained.’’ This thesis tries to respond on the call of scholars in the field of rural resistance to understand the grass root political reaction from below in the era of widespread global land grabs. This thesis will answer the following inquiry: What are the strategies employed by indigenous alliances in protecting the affected communities in Kalimantan (Indonesia’s Borneo) and Sumatra from palm oil expansion, and what are the internal (within communities) and external factors (from government agencies and private industries) that are affecting the trajectory of indigenous resistance? Additionally, this study contributes to the literature on minority and rural resistance against land grabs in the Global South, by examining the three existing theoretical perspectives on the trajectory of resistance – Collective action, Marxism, and Heterodox social movement paradigms – in the context of Indonesia.
1. Introduction
‘’A bright morning in 1994. Indigenous villagers from the Buol District of Central Sulawesi were walking to their farms when they came upon a team of workers, guarded by soldiers, chopping down trees in the surrounding forests. They were told that a road was being built. But soon they came to understand that this was just the beginning of a much larger operation. All of their customary lands and forests had been signed away without their knowledge or consent to one of Indonesia's richest and most powerful families for the creation of a massive 22,000 ha palm oil plantation. Over the next three years, the farmlands and forests used by over 6,500 indigenous families were destroyed. Community members stood in front of trucks and attached themselves to trees, but with the military backing the operation, there was little that they could do’’ (Grain, 2014).
Unfortunately, this is for many indigenous villagers in the outer islands of Indonesia an everyday reality. High rates of deforestation and livelihood destruction of indigenous peoples are one of the main consequences of Indonesia’s position as the world largest crude palm oil producer. National forests are cleared for palm oil plantations, and indigenous communities are forced to relocate from their ancestral lands. A recent report from Greenpeace (2017) shows that many Western private companies are funding palm oil plantations and destroying large areas of rainforests. The British financial service HSBC is the largest funder of multiple shady palm oil companies in Indonesia, with forest-trashing company called Noble Group among others (Greenpeace, 2017).
Social tensions between palm oil industries and indigenous communities are significantly growing for many years, as private industries continue to exploit and violate indigenous ancestral land rights, without any compensation for the loss. A local member of the Sembuluh village in Central-Borneo states: ‘’It would have been different if they had shown us some respect or taken some interest in the indigenous community when they first came here. They keep saying the compensation will be discussed next week, but it is always next week’’ (Down to Earth, 2000).
After decades of land conflicts and forced relocation, indigenous communities started to organize themselves across the archipelago in late 1999. Communities started to resist against the land acquisition from palm oil industries and organized themselves through different indigenous alliances. These alliances were established in order for communities to collectively resist and take their land back through conflict resolutions with government authorities and palm oil industries.
This master thesis tries to understand the various forms and approaches used by indigenous alliances against private land grabs and forest land expansion in the most affected islands of Borneo and Sumatra from the palm oil industry. This will be done by answering the following research question: What are the resistance approaches of indigenous alliances in Sumatra and Borneo against private
land grabs and forest land expansion, and what pattern do private land allocations and indigenous forest losses follow in the last decade of indigenous resistance? This introductory chapter provides an overview on the social tensions and human right abuses caused by the palm oil industry in the archipelago, and on the land conflicts in the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. Furthermore, this chapter explains how this thesis could contribute to the literature on minority and rural resistance, and how the affected indigenous communities could benefit from the results derived from this study.
1.1 Palm-oil deforestation and human right abuses
Palm oil is a type of vegetable oil of which production is rapidly growing across the world. It is used in more than 50% of consumer products such as packaged bread, breakfast cereals, chocolate, margarine and in other household products like soap, shampoos and in biofuels (Amnesty International, 2016: 4). Carbon-rich forestlands are being cleared in order to meet the rising global demand for palm oil, releasing carbon into the atmosphere to drive global warming with severe consequences for the indigenous habitats and endangered species in Indonesia (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2016). Indonesia’s forestlands store more carbon per hectare compared with the Brazilian Amazon, which makes forest destruction for palm oil plantations responsible for 9 percent of worldwide emissions between 2000 and 2010 (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2016). One of the biggest palm oil agri-business ‘‘Olam International’’, with Nestle, Kelloggs, and Unilever as its largest Western costumers, continues to clear rainforests as they can still find a black box and traffic the crop into the global market without any sustainable measurement (Higonnet, Hurowitz, Bellantonio, and Lapidus, 2016: 7).
Figure 1: Palm Oil’s rapid growth (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2016).
Additionally, more than two million hectares of Indonesian forest and peatland went up in smoke in 2015, due to unsustainable targeted burning in the Islands of Sumatra and Borneo (Higonnet et al.,
2016: 6). Next to the high rates of deforestation are the human right abuses by powerful multinationals. A recent example of indigenous rights violation is the case of the world’s largest palm oil trading company, Wilmar International Ltd., against the communities of Sumatra and Borneo. The palm oil giant is put under scrutiny for human rights violation and harassment of the Minangkabau community in West-Sumatra (RSPO, 2015). Amnesty International found several cases on Wilmar’s palm oil plantations, in which forced labour and ‘’the involvement of children in the worst forms of child labour’’ structurally occurs (Amnesty International, 2016: 83). With exploitative and dangerous working practices that put the health of workers at risk, and low level of wages where workers are paid based on tasks completed rather than hours worked (Amnesty International, 2016: 5). A daily labourer responds on the working conditions: ‘’If I don’t finish my target, they ask me to keep working but I don’t get paid for the extra time or get any bonus. I have to finish all the sacks before I can leave’’ (Amnesty International, 2016: 8). 1.2 Impact on indigenous communities These human right abuses manifest cruel inequality, driven by the rising global demand for palm oil as a cheap vegetable commodity. This brutal inequality is, like the ‘’Global Value Chain’’ literature asserts, caused by the power imbalance between the multinational industries, who are benefitting from this commodity at a higher stage in the value chain, and the plantation workers who are exploited during the low-value stage of the production (Baldwin, 2013). There is also an embedded political dimension to the story. The important players in the palm oil industry were companions of former President Suharto, and are now using their political network to justify the land grabs of Indonesia’s most marginalized indigenous communities (Grain, 2014). The archipelago’s indigenous communities have relied on recourses from customary state forest lands, and are victims of the arbitrariness of the legal system. Land rights are transferred by the government to palm oil industries without applying the process of free, prior and informed consent from the affected communities (Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact, 2012: 6). Privileges, in the name of development, provided by the government to private industries resulted in high level of poverty among those communities and ethnic minorities in the outer islands of the archipelago (Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact, 2012: 7). Indigenous communities in Indonesia were marginalized and culturally diminished during Suharto’s ‘’New Order’’ regime (1967- 1998). It was Suharto officially stating that Indonesia is a republic without indigenous peoples, or that ‘’all Indonesians are equally indigenous and therefore entitled to the same rights’’ (Murray Li, 2000). Discourse on indigenous rights started to gain mass attention in the public sphere after the collapse of Suharto’s ‘’New Order’’ regime. The Post-Suharto era, often referred to as ‘’Reformasi’’, is the current political order aiming to adopt a new social and liberal approach on reforming the republic, while opening domestic markets to the global economy. The Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago – Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (AMAN) –
determined in 2015 to embark on reconciliation with the current government of President Joko Widodo (IWGIA, 2016: 264). The president invited AMAN to the negotiation table, for a draft Task Force assigned to protect indigenous land rights (IWGIA, 2016: 264). This could be seen as a new political era in which room for discussion and dialogue became possible, and small steps are taken by the government to restore the for decades disturbed relationship with indigenous communities. Despite all good intentions from proceeding governments, indigenous land conflicts did rise in a linear way until last year (Abram, Meijaard, Wilson, and Davis, 2017: 39). According to Murray-Li (2015: 4) such conflicts hinge on three main areas of concern. The first concern is on environmental damage affecting indigenous communities due to land acquisition (Murray-Li, 2015: 4). Most of the palm oil plantations (97%) are planted in secondary forest lands, e.g. land formerly used by indigenous customary landholders for personal agroforestry purposes (Murray-Li, 2015: 4). Clearing secondary forestland for palm oil expansion reduces the opportunity for independent farming and causes pollution of rivers, health risks, and loss of food and income among indigenous communities (Murray-Li, 2015: 4).
The second concern is, according to Murray-Li (2015), the degradation of customary institutions and the undermining of customary authority by palm oil industries. Companies strike deals for land release with government officials without applying prior and informed consent. This diminishes the capacity of customary leaders and customary institutions to protect the interests of landholders as a community (Murray-Li, 2015: 5). In addition to land issues, indigenous communities suffer from lack of employment opportunities due to limited access to plantation jobs. This third concern is caused by plantation companies who pay wages below the provincial minimum to plantation workers – formerly indigenous landholders – insufficient for a decent standard of living, especially in Sumatra and Borneo (Murray-Li, 2015: 5).
1.3 Private land grabs and land conflicts in Sumatra and Borneo
Fundamental to the aforementioned concerns is the lack of indigenous customary land rights, which is observed in any local context where resource extraction is needed for private accumulation. The Global South suffered for decades from extensive land grabbing involving large-scale capital, and shifting the use of natural resources into an extractive character for international and domestic destinations (Mutolib, Yonariza, Mahdi, and Ismono, 2015). This phenomenon is threatening according to the Forests People’s Programme at least 663 communities in Indonesia who are in land disputes with more than 172 companies (Mutolib et al., 2015), affecting land rights and livelihoods of smallholder farmers, pastoralists, indigenous communities, and other vulnerable minorities (Liversage, 2010). Sumatra and Borneo (Kalimantan) are Indonesia’s islands with the largest natural recourses, where ‘’macro-economic policies have focused on the use of forests and other land types
as catalysts for a structural transformation of the Indonesian economy, and as sources of wealth accumulation for the privileged actors’’ (McCarthy, Vel, and Afiff, 2012: 524).
The islands of Borneo and Sumatra are characterized by there cultural diversity with a population of respectively 18 million and 50 million people. Borneo's natives are referred to as Dayak, while Sumatra is home to a multitude of ethnic groups, including the Batak, Minangkabau, Krui, Pelalawan-Petalangan, Talang Mamak, and the Orang Rimba (WWF, 2016). Private interests and rapid economic changes have threatened the traditions of those minorities who traditionally rely on forest resources. The islands richness in natural resources attracted large-scale of international financiers and multinationals, who are focused on the expansion of palm oil plantations (WWF, 2016).
As tensions on land rights are rising in Indonesia due to extensive private land grabs, many authors have examined the role of law and policies in protecting indigenous customary rights. Widespread literature on indigenous land rights show that, even after the constitutional court decision of May 2013 – which confirms the constitutional rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral rights (AMAN, 2016) – land conflicts are rising in a linear way with the majority of those conflicts (75%) associated with the palm oil industry (Abram, Meijaard, Wilson, and Davis, 2017: 39). Data in land conflicts from the ‘’Geo Data Nasional’’ show that only in Borneo, 265 land conflicts occurred in 2016 (Abram et al., 2017).
Alongside Borneo, poor rural communities in Sumatra have been displaced due to rapid deforestation, and agrarian change from forest to timber concessions into what is now considered as a cultivation in palm oil plantations (IPAC, 2014). While in 1968, 120.000 hectares of Indonesian land was used for palm oil cultivation, the expansion of palm oil has now made up for 10.8 million hectares in the last decades, with 600.000 ha added each year (IPAC, 2014). This yearly expansion is causing land conflicts with major demographical shifts, leaving indigenous communities landless (Institute of Policy Analysis of Conflict, 2014).
However, local people have attempted to resist against land grabs through various indigenous alliances representing different communities in Borneo and Sumatra. Among those groups are the Orang Rimba and the Talang Mamak communities who live in the dry lowland forests in East-Sumatra, and Borneo’s indigenous communities referred to as Dayak. Those communities are represented in their battle by several indigenous alliances among them Komunitas Konservasi Indonesia Warsi, TELAPAK, Sawit Watch, Transformasi Untuk Keadilan Indonesia (TuK Indonesia), and WALHI. This thesis tries to examine the various avenues used by those indigenous alliances to resist against the extensive land grabs in Borneo and Sumatra, and the tendency in which private land
allocation is developing in the last decade of indigenous resistance. Choosing the communities in Sumatra and Borneo relies on the scientific findings that those indigenous groups (Talang Mamak, Orang Rimba, and Dayak) are strongly affected by the natural resource policies of the government and private industries in the last decade, as they live on land that is needed for recourse extraction and plantation expansion (Duncan, 2007: 715). The main research question for this master thesis is as follows: What are the resistance approaches of indigenous alliances in Sumatra and Borneo against private land grabs and forest land expansion, and what pattern do private land allocations and indigenous forest losses follow in the last decade of indigenous resistance? 1.4 Social and scientific relevance
The purpose of this master thesis is to examine and explain the different resistance approaches employed by the indigenous alliances against private land grabs. On the one hand, it tries to understand the situation in which indigenous communities are exposed to private interests and the arbitrariness of private industries, and what the possible reactions from indigenous alliances are. On the other hand, it examines the development in private land allocation and indigenous forest loss in the last decade of indigenous resistance. This thesis will answer the overall fundamental inquiry: What are the strategies employed by the organisations in the field in protecting the affected communities in Kalimantan (Indonesia’s Borneo) and Sumatra, and what internal (within communities) and external (the way private industries approach land grabs) factors are affecting the attempt of indigenous alliances to successfully resist?
As Borras and Franco (2013) rightly point out: ‘’resistance scenarios are too often assumed rather than demonstrated in the existing literature, thereby leaving many inconvenient facts undetected and unexplained’’ (Borras and Franco, 2013). This master thesis gains its scientific relevance by systematically exploring the communities’ bottom up reactions against land grabs, and therefore filling in the addressed gap in the literature by Borras and Franco (2013). More broadly, this study contributes to the literature on minority and rural resistance against land grabs in the Global South, by examining the three existing theoretical perspectives – Collective action, Marxism, and Heterodox social movement paradigm – in the context of Indonesia. The results derived from this thesis could also have an added value for NGO’s in the field, who are assisting indigenous alliances and communities in their battle against the dominant conglomerates, and in maintaining a sustainable forestry livelihood benefiting the rural poor.
This master thesis maintains the following structure. The upcoming chapter will provide a historical, political, and social context on the private palm oil acquisition in Indonesia, and on the countries
continued struggle to acknowledge indigenous customary land rights. The theoretical chapter describes and conceptualizes the existing forms and paradigms of land grab resistance in the Global South, and divides the research question into sub questions. The method section provides a broad outline on the followed research strategy in answering the research questions. The empirical chapters are divided into several sections. The first section presents data on private land transformation and deforestation during the last decade of indigenous resistance in Sumatra and Borneo. This data will be derived from CIFOR and EoF spatial planning databases. The following empirical chapter addresses the empirical findings derived from the interviews with the alliances on the various resistance approaches used to prevent land grabs and secure indigenous customary land. The last empirical chapter complements the observed resistance strategies and puts the observed data on private land transformation and deforestation rates in perspective, by analyzing the internal (among communities) and external factors that affect the applied strategies of resistance. Finally, these empirical findings will be summarized in the conclusion chapter and discussed in relation with the existing theories on rural resistance, together with policy recommendations on indigenous customary land protection.
2. Background: Private land grabs in Indonesia
Indonesia is with more than 1000 ethnic minorities and indigenous communities one of the world’s most diverse country, yet indignity is still a sensitive topic in Indonesia’s public discussion. The government discourages indigenous recognition through discourse and public policy, as it argues that ‘’the international legal category of indigenous people is not applicable to the nation, as almost all Indonesians are indigenous’’ (Duncan, 2007: 714). There are no special legal privileges for ethnic or indigenous minorities, although the government is recently conducting development programmes for groups that are socially and economically lagging behind.
Indigenous resistance in Indonesia was during the regime of President Suharto (1967-1998) impossible, with military coercion as consequence. The Basic Forestry Act in 1967 did recognize the customary local owned forests, but stated that local communities could not resist against the government’s development agenda and land relocation (Duncan, 2007: 715). Authorities considered communities who resisted against land allocation as activists damaging the best interest of Indonesia’s economy instead of victims trying to re-grab their land back (Duncan, 2007: 715).
After the collapse of the Suharto regime, the Basic Forestry Act is replaced by the Forestry Act 1999 stating that ‘’as long as indigenous peoples still live in an area and their presence is recognised, they have the rights to collect forest products to meet their everyday needs, carry out forest management practices according to customary laws which do not conflict with official legislation, and receive reimbursement to improve their well-being’’ (Down to Earth Indonesia, 1999). The question however remains: when is their ‘’presence’’ recognized and how does this relate with the presence of private industries?
2.1 Indigenous developments in Indonesia
The government of Indonesia is one of the signatories to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This declaration is non-biding but is however the most widely accepted international statement on the self-determination of indigenous peoples within their territory (Fay and Denduangrudee, 2016: 93). There is no universal definition used for indigenous peoples, however the ILO convention No. 169 defines this group as those ‘’who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonisation or the establishment of present state boundaries and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions’’ (ILO No. 169, 1989). It also states that the government is directly responsible for ‘’the protection of the rights of indigenous communities and has to fully promote the social, economic and cultural rights of the communities with respect for their customs,
traditions and their institutions’’ (ILO No. 169, 1989). However, the convention does not clearly state how this protection should be executed.
The Indonesian government refuses to use the English term ‘’indigenous peoples’’ in international conferences, as they state that all Indonesians are equally indigenous (Fay and Denduangrudee, 2016: 95). When referring to indigenous peoples, the Indonesian government uses the term customary law communities (masyarakat hukum adat) and defines this group as follow: ‘’A Customary Law Community is a group of people who for generations have lived in a certain geographical area in the Republic of Indonesia because of ties to ancestral natural resources and have traditional governance institutions and an indigenous legal structure in their traditional territory’’ (Law 39/2014 on Plantation Development, article 1(6)); (Fay and Denduangrudee, 2016). Up until today the forest areas in the outer islands of the archipelago are considered by the Indonesian government as state land, shifting land entitlements to private industries while leaving indigenous people without any formal ownership. The reported cases by McCarthy (2010: 837) in Sumatra show that a 188 household village suffered severely from the palm oil industry ‘’when the government facilitated access to forest and village lands’’ (McCarthy, 2010: 828). According to village respondents, only 10 of the 188 households – those close to the village head and other key village leaders – did manage to respond to the challenges of palm oil expansion (McCarthy, 2010: 837). Another case in Kalimantan (Indonesia’s Borneo) illustrates the dilemmas for indigenous communities in reacting against palm oil expansion. Some villagers simply oppose the alienation of their lands and the environmental degradation, while others hope to engage with the palm oil industries demanding a greater profit share as smallholders (Acciaioli, 2012). However, indigenous villagers in Borneo are not able to compete against the conglomerates, as their daily life choices become limited when they are forced to ‘’incorporate within the relentless proliferation of the oil plantation economy and the implacable expansion of global capital’’ (Acciaioli, 2012).
International aid agencies tried to address the problem of indignity in Indonesia in the 1990s, and local groups started to organize themselves, with in 1999 the foundation of the Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Archipelago (Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara, or AMAN). The alliance represents the political marginalized indigenous communities that are most affected by the politics of development and the private land grabs at a national level (Duncan, 2007: 715). Alongside the national indigenous alliance are the alliances at the province level, representing the communities from different regions. Borneo and Sumatra are according to McCarthy, Vel, and Afiff (2012: 524) the islands with the largest land conflicts in Indonesia, due to a structural transformation of forest lands as a primary sources of national wealth accumulation. This master thesis therefore focuses on the two islands with the largest deforestation density and land conflicts as the following map shows (Global Forest Watch, 2016).
Figure 2: Deforestation density 2001-2014 (source: Global Forest Watch, 2016).
Among those communities are the Orang Rimba and the Talang Mamak tribes who live in the dry lowland forests in East-Sumatra and are represented by the alliance Komunitas Konservasi Indonesia Warsi and Sawit Watch. Those groups are affected by the natural resource policies of the government as they live on lands that are needed for resource extraction and plantation expansion (Duncan, 2007: 715). The other indigenous group that are represented in this study are Borneo’s indigenous communities referred to as Dayak. This indigenous community is represented by the alliance TELAPAK, Transformasi Untuk Keadilan (TuK), and WALHI Kalimantan Tengah. A study on the resistance of indigenous alliances against land grabs requires a comprehensive analysis on the the characteristics of land acquisition in Indonesia, and on the various existing paths of resistance. This will be discussed in the upcoming sections. 2.2 Land grabs in the Archipelago Critical scholars in the field made a substantial progress in analyzing the variation and characteristics in which land grabs occur in the Global South. The most prominent focus in literature is the relationship between land grabs and the creation and expansion of capitalist social relations for the purpose of land accumulation (Hall, 2013: 1594). Wolford, Borras, Hall, Scoones, and White (2013: 197) define land grabs as a process ‘’whereby direct producers were separated from the means of production, common property rights were privatized, and non-capitalist modes of production were either harnessed or destroyed.’’ Along similar lines is the definition of Mehta, Veldwisch, and Franco (2012: 198) who argue that land grabs can be understood as ‘’a particular form of accumulation by dispossession under neo-liberalization leading to the commodification and privatization of resources, the eviction of certain groups, and the conversion of various forms of property rights into exclusive private property rights.’’ Both definitions acknowledge the privatization of land owned by capitalists as the main driving force of global land grabs. However, the role of the state as a facilitator is remarkable, especially in the Global South where large scale private land accumulation takes place on state claimed land.
Private investors get access to customary state territory through leases and enterprises which results according to Hall (2013: 1595) in capitalist social relation expansion, separating vulnerable communities from their means of production, and make natural resources available for capitalist extraction. Indonesia has a long tradition in private land transformation, especially in Sumatra and Borneo with high natural wealth compared with other less fertile islands (McCarthy et al., 2012: 524). The country shifted in the 1980s from logging and food estates to an economy that is highly dependent on the export of crude palm oil. The government has always supported this transformation, even when indigenous interests were at stake.
There are according to McCarthy et al. (2012) several reasons why the Indonesian government allowed land acquisition in the Archipelago’s outer islands. First of all, the outer islands – islands outside the central island of Java – are considered as having ample uncultivated land, with low population density (McCarthy et al., 2012: 525). Furthermore, customary land rights are not formally recognized by the state, whereas legislative requirements for land transaction governance are poorly implemented (McCarthy et al., 2012: 525). Resource rich areas in the outer islands, as well as marginal lands are due to weak state institutions ceded to capital accumulation.
The idea of marginal land is a central claim to the land grabs in Indonesia. The term ‘’marginal land’’ has according to McCarthy et al. (2012: 525) various meanings. Economists tend to see the result of a cost-benefit analysis as leading when assessing the productivity of land, whereas government authorities consider land as marginal when it is landlocked, arid, and when it lacks infrastructure (McCarthy et al., 2012: 525). When land is considered as marginal, e.g. not sufficiently used to contribute to the country’s GDP, land acquisition is likely to occur. Although often promises are made by private industries regarding poverty alleviation and rural employment, only in a few cases economic prosperity among communities is observed (McCarthy et al. 2012). The Gini coefficient for land distribution in Sumatra and Borneo increased in the last twenty years from 0.48 to 0.58 (McCarthy et al., 2012: 526). This implies a fast growing inequality in land ownership, in which the Ministry of Forestry claims the legal authority to assign land licenses to private companies for palm oil expansion.
These private industries are able to grab land from the country’s vulnerable groups due to weak and unjust legal frameworks. The pattern in which land grabs in the archipelago occur varies from case to case. Nonetheless, there is according to a report of Friends of the Earth (2008: 38) a commonly followed pattern in the majority of land conflicts in Indonesia: the allocation of indigenous land to private companies happens without free and prior informed consent (FPIC); companies and local officials promise compensation for land alienation but fail in doing so; communities take action after nothing is done to meet their demands, protest against local officials and plantation staff take place;
companies hire local police or military officials to demobilize the protests with more violence as consequence (Friends of the Earth, 2008: 38).
The origins of land acquisition for palm oil plantations in Indonesia is rooted in the fact that large proportion of Indonesia’s rural communities are governed by customary law. This includes the customary regulation of land access, and the use of forest lands and other natural resources. Most land assigned by district authorities for large-scale palm oil plantations are used by indigenous communities since many generations. The customary land rights for indigenous people are partially recognized by the Indonesian Constitution, but are put underneath national development and interest (Friends of the Earth, 2008: 25). The lack of a full recognition of indigenous customary rights leads to a clash of interpretation, as the government considers customary law to be hampering economic development, whereas local communities consider customary law to justify their land rights (Friends of the Earth, 2008: 26). This ongoing clash of interpretation is a major reason for conflicts in land allocation for palm oil plantations in the outer islands of Indonesia (Friends of the Earth, 2008: 26). This tendency to deny communities’ customary rights has accelerated, especially after the ‘’investment law’’ is put into practice in 2007. This law allows investor demands to be put above the customary rights of indigenous communities, and ‘’extends the initial land use permit for palm oil industries to 60 years, with the option of a 35-year extension’’ (Friends of the Earth, 2008: 30).
The majority of palm oil investors operating in Indonesia are corporate groups from Malaysia and Singapore who benefitted from the privatization of state owned palm oil plantations in the forests of Sumatra and Borneo (Cramb and McCarthy 2016). The archipelago succeeded in achieving its position as the world largest crude palm oil (CPO) exporter by opening the national market to foreign investments, with Malaysian and Singaporean groups controlling approximately two-third of the countries total palm oil production (Pacheco, Gnych, Dermawan, Komarudin, and Okarda, 2017: 6). Private and public actors are collaborating in the process of decision-making, leaving the system open for political patronage, weak policies, and corruptive practices in which the private palm oil industry could flourish (Pacheco et al., 2017: 6).
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), established to preserve the sustainable production of palm oil, has adopted together with member companies improved standards for palm oil production, but in practice not much has changed (Colchester and Chao, 2013: 7). The Roundtable, established in 2004, has 32 company members in Indonesia with around 131 palm oil mills with an RSPO certification (Pacheco et al., 2017: 33). According to Schleifer (2016), RSPO mechanisms for sustainable palm oil production are based on Eurocentric ideas, as only a few palm oil groups from the emerging markets in Asia are part of the Roundtable. While Europe is an important player in
importing certified sustainable palm oil, the emerging demand from the Asian markets for crude palm oil is one of the main drivers of unsustainable palm oil expansion (Schleifer, 2016). Nevertheless, even RSPO member companies are involved in land conflicts and are grabbing indigenous land for palm oil expansion, which makes the intended sustainable approach failing in practice (Colchester and Chao, 2013). The unjust legal and government practices in Indonesia make land grabs in the archipelago possible and fail in protecting local communities and indigenous peoples’ ancestral land rights. Equal access to justice through the courts is according to Colchester and Chao (2013) limited for indigenous communities, as corruption and unfair land deals are persistent.
2.3 Intergovernmental policy on indigeneity
In an attempt to reduce land conflicts in the Archipelago, the World Bank focuses on promoting participatory land projects in twelve Indonesian provinces. These projects are designed to facilitate institutional participation of indigenous communities in land planning processes that will promote the registration of customary territories (World Bank, 2012). While doing so, the Bank promotes transparent land planning processes, and entrepreneurial skills of village-based organizations. This would facilitate, according to the World Bank, the dialogue between local governments, indigenous community alliances, and private industries on issues related to sustainable customary forestland planning (World Bank, 2012).
The results of the twelve participatory land planning projects show so far a lower output of direct participation of indigenous community members in local land planning decisions than expected (World Bank, 2014). There is, as the results illustrate, still no appropriate dialog between indigenous alliances, local governments, and private industries that could prevent extensive private land transformation. The coordination of the participatory land planning projects is according to the World Bank insufficient, and needs to be enhanced within the structure of the country’s institutions (World Bank, 2014). Alongside the participatory approach of the World Bank is the Indonesian Government’s One Map Initiative. This policy aims to reduce land conflicts by combining different overlapping land maps into one single state map. The initiative provides communities to participate in land mapping processes, and the opportunity to evaluate and include their territory into the state map (Mulyani and Jepson, 2016). Though the initiative aimed to resolve land disputes, it does according to Myers, Sanders, Larson, Prasti, and Ravikumar (2016) little in enabling legitimate decision procedures on conflicting land claims between private interests and indigenous communities.
However, by only analyzing whether or not previous intergovernmental or national policies on indigenous land securitization did succeed in protecting ancestral land rights is according to Edelman,
Oya, and Borras (2013) insufficient to understand this long going pattern of land grabs in Indonesia. It is also critical to understand the position of indigenous communities, and the avenues for indigenous alliances to voice their grievances against the ongoing palm oil expansion. Analyzing the resistance of indigenous alliances against private expansion would contribute to a better understanding of the possible opportunities for communities to successfully contest land grabs within the boundaries of law. Many land conflicts in Indonesia occur at a local scale, and therefore differ at the village level (Meijaard, Abram, Wells, Pellier, Ancrenaz, 2013). Analysing land conflicts at the village level would make it possible to identify the conflicts, and the possibilities of community resistance in a profound manner. An analysis starting from the perspective of indigenous communities and their alliances will provide information that would explain why national policies as well as intergovernmental approaches failed in protecting indigenous land rights. In addition to that, forests that are managed by indigenous communities are according to FORCLIME (2015) more sustainably used and more successful in reducing greenhouse emissions caused by deforestation. Successful resistance would therefore allow sustainable forest management and climate change mitigation in the world’s fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
3. Paradigms and forms of resistance
In the era of widespread global land grabs, academic debates on land rights in developing countries have underlined the importance of the political reaction from below, and the grass root resistance from communities (Hall, Edelman, Borras, Scoones, White, and Wolford, 2015: 467). In a highly globalized world, commercialization of land and natural resources in the Global South have generated tensions on marginal lands, with political reactions ‘’from below’’ against private land acquisition (Hall et al., 2015: 467). Land deals in Indonesia have triggered complex political climaxes both within the state apparatus and in society. Recent research on political resistance of indigenous communities is complex to understand. Land issues are negotiated in an interaction between social groups and state agencies and are distinguished along lines of class, gender, generation, ethnicity and nationality, which could result in different approaches and traditions of political struggles and different kinds of land deals (Hall et al., 2015: 468).
In order to profoundly understand the avenues of land grab resistance and the dynamics that influences the form in which it takes place, a meticulous and rigorous analysis is needed. This implies the examination of the agency of affected communities, and the forms of grassroots resistance as key elements of shaping land tenure outcomes (Edelman, Oya, and Borras, 2013: 1517). This chapter serves as a theoretical framework and explains the existing theoretical paradigms and forms of resistance. Afterward, the paradigms and forms of resistance are put in perspective by analyzing findings from studies on resistance in Indonesia and the Global South in general.
3.1 Three paradigms of resistance
There are three broadly used models in explaining the trajectory of grassroots collective resistance against land grabs: the classical collective action paradigm, Marxism, and the heterodox theories of social movements (Hall et al., 2015: 469). Resistance in the classical collective action paradigm is seen as an almost impossible exercise due to individual rational behavior (Hall et al., 2015: 469). This paradigm follows the premises of the neo-classical economics and rational choice theory. Community resistance against land acquisition tends to be accompanied with high risks, and the calculating individual will, according to this approach, continue on a free riders’ modus, waiting to gain from the output of other risk-taking individuals (Hall et al., 2015: 469). Or as Oslon (1965) puts it: ‘’When the class-oriented action does not materialize, there would be no individual economic incentives for class action’’ (Olson, 1965: 108).
Individuals are, in the collective action paradigm, rational actors and would not participate in any form of collective resistance, because others could benefit from the communities’ efforts as a free rider, and in doing so ‘’assuring low-risk self-interest at the group’s expense’’ (Edelman, 2001: 288). This paradigm is, like the so called tragedy of the commons model, considering collective action as an
individual strategic decision, which can only take place through incentives or sanctions (Edelman, 2001: 288).
Marxists, unlike the classical collective action paradigm, believe that collective grievances will generate collective actions and resistance within class politics and political trajectories (Barker, 2014). This paradigm assumes that social mobilization occurs when grievances are shared among the same social class groups. Community alliances tend to mobilize a grassroots consciousness when, according to Marxists, class identities are salient in defending ancestral land. Collective action will take place when class capitalist production approaches are salient, while most of the social actors and collective groups will be defined by their social class relationships (Buechler, 1995: 442).
The last model in explaining land grab resistance is the heterodox theory of social movements. This paradigm combines the rational, calculating individual in the collective action theory with the Marxist assumption of consciousness, collective struggle, and collective resistance (Hall et al., 2015: 469). Advocates of this paradigm argue that both examples of free riders and collective action problems are based on the isolated individual, lacking in social relations, class, ethnic, religious, national or group identities and loyalties (Hall et al., 2015: 469). Importantly, the heterodox theory of social movements opposes Marxists economic reductionism which presumes that all political social actions are driven by ‘‘the economic logic of capitalist production, and that all other social identities are secondary at best in constituting collective actors’’ (Buechler, 1995: 442). The heterodox theory of social movements is fundamentally against this premise, and considers other logics like ideology, culture, ethnicity, and gender as the definers of collective identity and therefore collective resistance (Buechler, 1995: 442).
This paradigm considers a different social base for collective action than the Marxist social base defined by class structure (Buechler, 1995: 453). Precursors of the heterodox theory of social movements claim this paradigm to be newfangled compared to the other economistic paradigms as it assumes that class is not sufficient in explaining the trajectory of grassroots resistance. Whether ideology, culture, ethnicity, race or gender could explain collective resistance, this paradigm requires social scientists to think in terms ‘’of how these identities may be experienced simultaneously and how that experience will shape movement participation’’ (Buechler, 1995: 453). Moreover, the heterodox theory of social movements asserts that collective resistance is not only characterized by different social identities (e.g. ideology, culture, ethnicity, race or gender), but also by values and goals which individual resisters agree upon. (Buechler, 1995: 453).
3.2 The various forms of resistance
Next to the prominent paradigms are the everyday forms of resistance captured and defined by different authors on rural social movements. A prominent used distinction in the field of land grab
resistance is the paired comparison between the ‘’everyday form of resistance’’ (Scott, 1985: 34) and the ‘’rightful resistance’’ (O’Brien, 1996). The so called ‘’everyday class resistance’’ takes the form of a quiet disorganized process while the latter occurs with voiced grievances trying to challenge the property relation with the settlers (Scott, 1985: 34). However, both forms aim to redistribute control over land rights, they differ in the way they demand territorial recognition. The everyday form of class resistance aims unspoken de facto gains, by avoiding personal attention and using relatively safe techniques which require little formal coordination or organization (Scott, 1985: 34). Rightful resistance aims formal, de jure, recognition of territorial rights sometimes by eliminating or replacing officers (Scott, 1985: 34).
Everyday class resistance does not require to take the form of collective action, e.g. can be individually performed, and takes place in a variety of ways as Scott (1985: 36) argues. The various forms of everyday resistance have some features in common: ‘’they are always quietly executed, anonymous, disguised, and take place in an undeclared form imposed by claimants who have superior access to force and to public power’’ (Scott, 1985: 37). An example of everyday resistance is for instance the agrarian tax battle between peasants and the Malaysian government taxing the agrarian business with one tenth of the gross harvest (Scott, 1985: 40). Many peasants opposed this tax as a form of everyday resistance. Smallholders and farmers either refused to report their harvest to the tax agency, or reported a false declaration of their harvest (Scott, 1985: 40). This implies that everyday resistance is unorganized and most of the time individualistic without a revolutionary breakthrough, whereas ‘’rightful resistance’’ is to some extend organized and has a revolutionary purpose (Scott, 1985: 51).
The ‘’policy-based resistance’’ (O’Brien and Li, 2006) or better known as ‘’rightful resistance’’ (O’Brien, 1996) is a form of ‘’popular contention that operates near the boundary of an authorized channel, employs the rhetoric and commitments of the powerful to curb political or economic power, and hinges on locating and exploiting divisions among the powerful’’ (O’Brien, 1996: 33). Rightful resistance opposes in practice the exiting laws and policies that are in favor of the political and economic elites, and uses advocacy strategies to apply pressure on government authorities to establish certain professed ideals (O’Brien, 1996: 33).
This form of resistance combines legal strategies with political pressure, and grievances are addressed through approved channels while challenging government policies and the powerful elites (O’Brien, 1996: 34). Rightful resistance is, in contrast with everyday resistance, noisy and overtly executed, though it mitigates the chance of a harsh confrontation by following the core values of the judicial system (O’Brien, 1996: 34). This form of resistance is therefore considered as a product of the modern state that allows a certain form of state building through participatory ideologies, and is the contrary of unconventional resistance in which violent measure are used as a single strategy.
There is however an important condition for rightful resistance to emerge. Affected communities have to be granted with certain legal protection, and have to be aware of this protection. This implies that rightful resistance can only take place when its practitioners – in this case indigenous alliances – have the knowledge of legal tactics, use the vocabulary of the regime to strengthen their claims, and can mobilize followers (O’Brien, 1996: 35). This form of resistance is in contrast to everyday resistance more than decisions made by the individual ‘’homo economicus’’. It is according to O’Brien (2013: 5) a collective channel for practitioners operating in the same political economy and socio-cultural setting, and cope with the same issues caused by neoliberal marketization and alike. Edelman, Oya, and Borras (2013: 1527) argue that the agenda for the next stage of land conflict research must pay more attention to what the authors call the ‘’making sense period of research’’ by focusing on the ‘’complex issues of governance, democracy and environmental sustainability, as well as a detailed knowledge of the grabbers and their backers, and a genuine effort to hear the voices and acknowledge the views of the affected populations’’ (Edelman, Oya, and Borras, 2013: 1528). The varied forms of resistance to land grabbing need to be studied from the ground up rather than assumed a priori from a distance, as Edelman, Oya, and Borras (2013) argue. Political resistance from indigenous communities range according to Hall et al. (2015: 467) form community mobilizations seeking to improve the compensation for land grabs, to communities demanding from private industries to be included into land deals as workers or contract farmers. However, there is still a strong call by social scientists to assess the highly varied responses at the community level against land issues in the Global South (Hall et al., 2015: 467). 3.3 Studies on Indigenous Resistance in Indonesia Most of the research on indigenous communities in Indonesia focuses on the outcomes of either the World Bank programs or the national government policies in protecting indigenous customary lands (Mulyani and Jepson, 2016; Abram et al, 2017). Much less attention has been paid to the bottom up resistance of Indonesia’s indigenous communities and their alliances on private land grabs.
The government is, under the current presidency, trying to reduce land conflict by allowing indigenous participation in land planning processes. Though the government is positive on the way it is coping with indigeneity in the archipelago, civil society organizations and the national geo-spatial databases show that indigenous communities are still facing arbitrary interference from palm oil industries (Abram et al, 2017). Illegal operations by palm oil industries count as the major reason of land conflicts in Indonesia. This is still possible due to political and economic factors that simplify forest conversion to palm oil companies, while easily denying indigenous rights and informal land claims (Abram et al, 2017). Despite policy reforms from the government to reduce land conflicts in Indonesia, indigenous communities are still exposed to palm oil expansion.
After decades of land conflicts and forced relocation, indigenous communities started to organize themselves across the archipelago in late 1999 through the uprising of a variety of indigenous alliances, each representing regional indigenous communities. Despite this developments, land conflicts are still salient in Indonesia. This has according to Fay and Denduangrudee (2016) to do with three important considerations. First consideration has to deal with how the state can reconcile the recognition of customary rights in the outer islands of the archipelago with the overlapping land permits already given to palm oil and mining companies (Fay and Denduangrudee, 2016: 109). The companies have to be open for a reassessment of the legal validity of the awarded concessions, and the local communities have to be willing to negotiate with the private industries.
The second concern is related to the presence of migrants within indigenous lands, and their willingness to participate and abide by the rules defined by the indigenous communities (Fay and Denduangrudee, 2016: 109). This concern would be in practice less challenging than the negotiation process with the private industries, as the authors argue. The last concern is on the willingness of the indigenous community members to collectively manage the forest lands without selling its natural resources to external parties (Fay and Denduangrudee, 2016: 109). There will always be a gab between the demands of indigenous communities in Indonesia and the interest from the private industries and the government, but this gap can be according to Fay and Denduangrudee (2016: 109) narrowed down through indigenous consultations and conflict resolutions at the local level.
The spare studies on bottom up resistance in Indonesia tend to focus more on the approaches applied by peasant and farmers and are identified as a form of ‘’everyday resistance rather than an organized overt form of collective revolt’’ (Acciaioli and Dewi, 2016: 331). One exception is the work of Beckert, Dittrich, and Adiwibowo (2014). In their attempt to define the land conflicts in the Bungku village in the lowland area of Sumatra, they found that access to land is subject to competing institutions and power asymmetries between palm oil industries and affected communities.
This case study shows that indigenous resistance in this particular village takes place in the form of ‘’rightful resistance’’, trying to influence local government policies on land allocation. However, power asymmetries, social polarization, and spatial disparities between the grabbers and the affected communities are playing a major role in how land conflicts are negotiated (Beckert, Dittrich, and Adiwibowo, 2014: 88). Furthermore, the different actors – e.g. palm oil industries, government agencies, and local communities – understand their situation and their stand in the conflict as the only truth, which leads to the existence of multiple competing truths (Beckert, Dittrich, and Adiwibowo, 2014: 88). The authors argue that next research on the trajectories of indigenous resistance in Indonesia has to uncover the emerging social and power relations by dismantling the core and underlying unequal power trajectories (Beckert, Dittrich, and Adiwibowo, 2014: 88).
3.4 Studies on Rural Resistance in the Global South
Outside of Indonesia, studies on minority groups and rural poor across the Global South have made some important progress in identifying various challenges against private land grab resistance, and inherently complementing or challenging the three paradigms and forms of resistance. The ongoing politics of land commercialization is studied in Nepal with indigenous communities feeling subordinate as land deals are made without consulting the communities who are directly affected (Maharjan, 2017: 47). Authorities are using material sources of power in the form of financial and social networks to subjugate the local communities (Maharjan, 2017: 47). This dominance is however accompanied with community resistance uniting and fighting back against land grabs. This form of resistance in Nepal can be seen according to Maharjan (2017: 47) ‘’as unsatisfied locals grouping together with the collective solidarity to resist.’’ He found in a rural community in Nepal that resistance is based on collective actions with cultural codes as the driving factor.
Those culturally driven codes are adopted in the communal policy of indigenous alliances in order to mobilize collective actors based on the collective identity of the indigenousness, with their natural capital and property – traditional land, house and community resources – as the main source of power to message their resistance boldly (Maharjan, 2017: 47). ‘’They assume that the approach of selling land within the ethnic community would help to preserve their culture and resources with resistance against indifference towards cultural incompatibility’’ (Maharjan, 2017: 47). In this case cultural shared values are considered as a driving force for indigenous communities to collectively resist against land commercialization in Nepal, which is according to Maharjan (2017) more in line with the heterodox paradigm of social movements.
In rural Argentina, Brendt (2015) found the same results, arguing that territorial resistance is doomed to fail as different indigenous organizations maintain ‘’contextually specific and historically rooted divisions among and between them’’ (Brendt, 2015: 13). This division is according to Brendt (2015: 13) shaped by different political identities on the basis of culture resulting in ‘’politicized ethnic cleavages’’ among indigenous groups. Although culture and ethnicity are still shaping the way land grabs are opposed by communities, land occupation is considered as a common resistance strategy used by indigenous social movements despite the ethnic and cultural diversity in Argentina (Brendt, 2015: 15).
The case of indigenous resistance in Argentina shows that social movements have collaborated in adopting territorial collective strategies through the combination of indigenous movements in territory defense, physical land occupation, and through politicizing new legal spaces in demanding territorial rights (Brendt, 2015: 21). The indigenous alliances in Argentina are crucial in ruling out cultural and ethnic differences that constructs division, and strengthened the collective action
among indigenous communities in land grab resistance (Brendt, 2015: 21). There is however according to the author still a substantial amount of competing indigenous social movements that failed to resist due to cultural deviance, fault lines, and potential tensions among communities, which needs to be carefully assed in future studies on this subject matter (Brendt, 2015).
Not only are different cultural identities shaping the way in which communities resit, but so does the various class and power relations among them. Village leaders are sometimes collaborating with private industries and seek to be included into land deals (Hall et al., 2015: 471). The same pattern is observed in South Africa and the Philippines, where power relations between the rural poor and the powerful community members are reproduced and essentially hampering the cohesion of the community as a whole (Sikor and Nguyen, 2007). Next to cultural differences and class conflicts among community members, are external factors like the type of land deals that could also affect the mode of resistance. When private land investors are in need of land and labour, it is likely to include community members into corporate enterprises as workers or as contracted small-scale farmers (Hall et al., 2015: 470). These are all relevant propositions that have to be tested in the case of community resistance against land acquisition in Indonesia, and are revisited in this study.
3.5 Silences and research gab
As discussed above, most of recent research on indigenous communities in Indonesia focuses on the outcomes of either the World Bank programs or the national policies on indigenous rights protection (Mulyani and Jepson, 2016; Abram et al, 2017). Few studies have examined the bottom-up resistance of Indonesia’s indigenous communities and especially the collective dimension of their resistance. This master thesis tries to respond on the call of Borras and Franco (2013) to focus on the political reaction from below, as they argue that the ‘’resistance scenario is too often assumed rather than demonstrated, thereby leaving many inconvenient facts undetected and unexplained’’ (Borras and Franco, 2013). Classical sociologists tried, within the three resistance paradigms and the two forms of resistance, to explain why some groups succeed in defending their interest while others do not. Previous studies on indigeneity in the Global South have shown that local communities are socially and culturally differentiated and so does their reaction on land deals. What explain this variation, however, are not well understood by scholars, and require a much deeper inquiry. Question that have to be asked are: ‘’what is the particular range of political reactions from below to land grabbing in a given case and with what outcomes? What are the issues that unite and divide social groups? What are the political tensions and synergies within and between communities? How and to what extent are such political contestations (re)shaping the trajectory of global land deals?’’ (Borras and Franco, 2013: 1726). This master thesis departs from the notion of ‘’the making sense period of research’’, and tries to
