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Fruits of the Orchard: Land, Space, and State in Kepulauan Riau
Abstract
What gives somebody a right over land? Drawing on recent re-theorizations of "space", this paper ethnographically dissects a dispute over the illegal settling of an abandoned orchard in the Indonesian province of Kepulauan Riau. It demonstrates how parallel "rights", "duties", and claims of "belonging" can emerge from the multiple webs of social relationships in which land is enmeshed. Local incarnations of the state are similarly embroiled in these parallel social and spatial networks, fracturing the authority of the state as arbiter. The case thus offers fresh perspectives on land rights, spatiality, and the state in both Indonesia and social theory.
... 4 After the fall of President Suharto and the subsequent introduction of national decentralization policies, several new provinces were formed, including Riau Islands Province (Propinsi Kepulauan Riau, or Kepri), in an attempt to satisfy widespread calls to decentralize power. Motivated in part by economically fueled ethno-nationalism, 5 the formation of the new province has served as an opportunity for local elites to reinvent and reassert the Riau Islands' cultural polity while consolidating power. Recent assertions of Malay identity can be seen in school curricula, which now provide expanded lessons on local history and instructions on village games, crafts, and songs. ...
... While the state seeks to deploy an "authentic" and "pure" Malay architecture that masks syncretism for political reasons, this paper demonstrates that, despite recent attempts at ethno-nationalistic architecture and the policing of boundaries between Malays/Muslims and non-Malays/non-Muslims, a variety of changing local, regional, and global elements continue to shape these efforts. 5 This paper begins with a brief overview of the history and geography of the Riau Islands, from its position as a cultural crossroads and commercial hub, to its slide into a neglected backwater after Indonesian independence, and its re-emergence as a strategic national economic region in recent decades. We focus on the metropolitan area of Tanjung Pinang, a major city in the Riau Islands, which served as a colonial administrative base, regional trade hub, and the provincial capital since the formation of the province. ...
... 4 After the fall of President Suharto and the subsequent introduction of national decentralization policies, several new provinces were formed, including Riau Islands Province (Propinsi Kepulauan Riau, or Kepri), in an attempt to satisfy widespread calls to decentralize power. Motivated in part by economically fueled ethno-nationalism, 5 the formation of the new province has served as an opportunity for local elites to reinvent and reassert the Riau Islands' cultural polity while consolidating power. Recent assertions of Malay identity can be seen in school curricula, which now provide expanded lessons on local history and instructions on village games, crafts, and songs. ...
... While the state seeks to deploy an "authentic" and "pure" Malay architecture that masks syncretism for political reasons, this paper demonstrates that, despite recent attempts at ethno-nationalistic architecture and the policing of boundaries between Malays/Muslims and non-Malays/non-Muslims, a variety of changing local, regional, and global elements continue to shape these efforts. 5 This paper begins with a brief overview of the history and geography of the Riau Islands, from its position as a cultural crossroads and commercial hub, to its slide into a neglected backwater after Indonesian independence, and its re-emergence as a strategic national economic region in recent decades. We focus on the metropolitan area of Tanjung Pinang, a major city in the Riau Islands, which served as a colonial administrative base, regional trade hub, and the provincial capital since the formation of the province. ...
Since the implementation of decentralization policies following the fall of Suharto in 1998, Indonesia’s provinces have far greater autonomy, which they have leveraged to enhance aspects of their cultural identity. In the context of Riau Islands Province, a new province created in 2004, the pivot away from a centralized national focus has prompted policies that prioritize the revival of Malay culture in various spheres of life including education, the arts, and the built environment. This paper examines the cultural politics of recent state architectural projects created in the past fifteen years in and around the provincial capital of Tanjung Pinang, all of which are intended to evoke a sense of Malay cultural and religious identity. Recent state architecture seeks to channel and project an ‘authentic’ past, often through a selective amalgamation of various recognizable historical references. In the context of current local political, racial, and religious dynamics, we analyze how versions of Malay identity are appropriated by the state in a variety of ways and manifested in recent state architecture in Riau Islands Province, and examine how this contributes to a variety of social exclusions.
... Selling land allows them to draw out the productive potentiality from the unused lands and respond to the uncertain future. Long (2009) describes a similar case of a Malay family in the Riau Islands. He describes a woman's decision to sell land significantly below the market rate to Batak tenants, even though it had been inherited from her husband's ancestors and had legal certificates. ...
Rantau Baru, an old fishing village on the bank of the Kampar River in Indonesia, is surrounded by peat hinterlands. The village territory has been recognized by previous local states for hundreds of years, and the villagers have managed it as ancestral common space based on a matrilineal system and headmanship. However, since the 1990s, acacia and oil palm companies have encroached on the peatlands of the traditional territory. In this situation, many villagers have either sold or plan to sell peat hinterlands in the village territory. How has their ancestral territory transformed into tradable land, and why have they chosen to sell it? What is the relationship between the traditional values of customary space and the adoption of the perspective of land as a commodity? Based on historical research on local land governance and a present-day household survey of land use and attitudes toward peat space, this chapter argues that the privatization of peatlands has transformed a once-common space into a commodity. Villagers sell peatland to actualize its potential amid anxiety and economic difficulty to contribute to the stable future of their descendants.
... His thoughts fit the logic that the lands were opened up 'for our children and grandchildren'. Nicholas Long (2009) describes a similar case in an arbitration of land conflict between the Malays and the Batak in the Riau Archipelagos. A Malay wife, the husband of whom had the ancestral legal title of the orchard in conflict that was very far from their house, wanted to sell the land to the Batak, because she wanted to be "mother and grandmother […], enabling better provide for her family", emphasising importance on the value of Malay kinship. ...
This paper explores some of the ways in which the connection between people and space has changed among the Suku Asli (‘Indigenous People’) living in Sumatra. The eastern coasts of Sumatra, Indonesia, are low and marshy lands, which are divided by numerous brackish rivers, and covered by vast mangrove forests. This region was a largely unpopulated area where some orang asli (‘indigenous’) groups and a few Malay people lived before the colonial era. ‘Suku Asli’ are one of the orang asli groups who were known as ‘Orang Hutan’ (Forest People) in the past - they lived along the banks as well as estuaries of rivers. Although their space was always somewhat of a ‘niche’ and did not exhibit any clear boundaries in terms of individual or collective ownership, the Suku Asli were confronted with the necessity to establish the boundaries after the state independence. However, their way of ensuring their land was not a simple one to claim their antecedent right of the land. At first in the 1960s, they joined the government deforestation programmes of hinterland ‘for giving lands to our children and grandchildren’. More recently, through the involvements with the ‘indigenous movement’ and environmentalism, they have tried to claim the rights of economically-worthless coastal marshy lands as their ‘ancestral lands’. In this paper, I try to describe the historical changes in the relation between the Suku Asli and the space surrounding them by focusing on the cultural 'logic' that is used to explain and support their connection to it - a 'logic' that enables the Suku Asli to conceptualize their relationship to land as both an embodiment and a manifestation of their collective identity.
... People in Riau have long lived in complex confluences (Andaya 1997). Yet, the expansion of Singapore, and the investment of Singaporean capital in local industries, agribusiness, and tourism, has affected local societies in unprecedented ways, leading, among other important developments, to a massive influx of immigrants (mostly from other parts of Indonesia) and fierce contestations about resources (see, e.g., Colombijn 2003; Long 2009;MacLeod and McGee 1996). These changes are apparent in the ways in which people talk about their lives. ...
This article uses material from "Recording the Future: An Audiovisual Archive of Everyday Life in Indonesia in the 21st Century" (RtF) in order to explore the creative and emotional processes through which ordinary Indonesians try to make places "their own." Employing the notion of "makeshift" as an analytical category, I analyze how modes of improvisation and senses of temporariness are visualized in the RtF archive. By doing so, I centralize the everyday conditions and experiences of a seemingly amorphous but increasingly significant class of Indonesian domestic migrants in search of an income and a place to live. Integrating visual materials and textual analysis, I argue that these experiences are based, on the one hand, on a willingness to leave and the ability to adapt and, on the other hand, on a fundamental desire for a stable and regular life.
Achievement is a highly political issue. Under the conditions of contemporary globalisation, in which citizens of different nations are faced with the prospect of ving against eah other for lucrative and prestigious jobs in the 'global knowledge economy,' securing 'international competitiveness' is a priority governments around the world. Indeed, the rise of achivement indicators that rank nation-states and regions according to how 'competitive' they are globally - something measured in terms of economic performance, poverty reduction and levels of 'human development' or 'well-being' - means that more than jobs and income are at stake. Success in these rankings is also a matter of national pride, and politicians wishing to prove themselves competent at governing will do all that they can to maintain or improve the standing of the area under their jurisdiction.
This thesis argues that the phenomenon known as Melayu is not a solidary unit, but rather, in its very nature, a hierarchical gradation of being. In this study, I explore the implications and consequences of such hierarchisation. I argue that in Riau the basis of hierarchy is the sultanate. Even without the existence of the sultanate as an institutional reality, an ideology of statehood seems to suffice. Such an ideology derives from the mythologised past when the sultanate did exist institutionally.
Such mythologising is not value-free: it is a means of expressing vested interests in motivated forms. I will draw out contrary views and examine the perspectives of the specific informants concerned. Such differences are not just interpersonal but also intercommunal. I explicitly acknowledge the active role of an ethnographer in putting together the different bits of information into one coherent picture. In this respect, Bateson's information theory has been of relevance to me. (See Bateson 1973, 1980.) Of primary concern to me is the hierarchy of contexts encapsulating infinite levels of text-context relationships. Adopting a reflexive principle, the writing of this thesis is also hierarchically organised. I begin with the discussion of the larger context in space and time; I move on to the mythologised past that is contextualised in the present; I then discuss the realisation of this mythologised past in the everyday present. I end by re contextualising the ethnographic reality in Riau in the worldwide pattern of change that I shall refer to as 'the civilising process.
While migration studies scholars have paid considerable attention tointernal migration within Indonesia, as well as to international labour migration flows from Indonesia, they have rarely considered the intersections between these two processes. This paper addresses the gap through a close analysis of migration flows in one of Indonesia’s key transit areas – the Riau Islands. We argue that in the borderlands the processes of internal and international migration are mutually constitutive. The Riau Islands’ status as a transit zone for international labour migrants and as a destination for internal migrants determines its demographic profile and policies of migration control. Bordering practices are strongly influenced by the fact that not everyone who comes to the Riau Islands has the intention of moving on, and not all international migrants returning to the islands intend to go home. Our analysis demonstrates that internal migration cannot be understood as a solely national phenomenon, and that international migration cannot only be explained by push and pull factors in sending and receiving destinations. These complexities necessitate research and policy responses that take into account the unique character of the transit provinces, and the role that their geographical location plays in the formation of multi-ethnic communities and the management of migration.
The Orang Suku Laut consider themselves indigenous Malays. Yet their interaction with others who call themselves Malays is characterised on both sides by fear of harmful magic and witchcraft. The nomadic Orang Suku Laut believe that the Qur'an contains elements of black magic, while the settled Malays consider the nomads dangerous, dirty and backward. At the centre of this study, based on first-hand anthropological data, is the symbolism of money and the powerful influence it has on social relationships within the Riau archipelago. The first major publication on these maritime nomadic communities, the book also adds fresh perspectives on anthropological debates on exchange systems, tribality and hierarchy. It also characterises the different ways of being Malay in the region and challenges the prevailing tendency to equate Malay identity with the Islamic faith.
In this article I attempt to do an ethnography of the state by examining the discourses of corruption in contemporary India. I focus on the practices of lower levels of the bureaucracy in a small north Indian town as well as on representations of the state in the mass media. Research on translocal institutions such as “the state” enables us to reflect on the limitations of participant-observation as a technique of fieldwork. The analysis leads me to question Eurocentric distinctions between state and civil society and offers a critique of the conceptualization of “the state” as a monolithic and unitary entity. [the state, public culture, fieldwork, discourse, corruption, India]
Compared to locals, migrants are more likely to be risk takers and have a stronger "fighting" spirit. Therefore, migrants tend to win in the competition with the local people. If the migrants win and they come from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, social jealousy may arise and conflicts can be easily provoked by outsiders. Indeed, many conflicts in Indonesia have been provoked by outsiders, utilising the relatively "balanced" ethnic and religious composition as well as socio-economic disparity among them.
Riau Archipelago is one of the richest provinces in Indonesia. It has become a magnet for people within Indonesia. Because of its history, the Malay often claim to be the putra daerah (the son of the land, the "owner" or "stakeholder" of the land) of the province of Riau Archipelago. However, the rising flow of migration to the province has changed the ethnic and religious composition of the province. With only 37.44% of the total population, the Malay no longer constitute the dominant ethnic group.
This paper analyses socio-economic strata of the population by ethnic and religious groups and finds out that difference by ethnicity seems to be stronger than that by religion. Furthermore, the situation of changing ethnic composition is similar to the changing ethnic and religious composition of the population in Maluku in Eastern Indonesia. Maluku used to have an equal number of Christians and Muslims, but the large flow of Muslim migrants has changed the ratio between the numbers of Muslims and Christians. Being provoked by outsiders, Maluku had suffered a prolonged "religious" conflict since 1999. This paper serves as an early warning signal to policymakers in the Riau Archipelago and cautions that the changing ethnic composition in the region may become a fertile ground for violent conflicts.
The Domestication of Desire: Women, Wealth, and Modernity in Java. Suzanne April Brenner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. 302 pp.
This article is about space and social relationships. More precisely, it is about the space of and in social relationships. It is also about the efficacy of social relationships in segregating their own contexts of meaning and value. The article also addresses the question of how agency comes about. This ‘coming about’ of agency, its swelling and appearance in a structure of meaning, is what I call ‘capacity’. Social relationships have ‘capacity’. That is, they have both spaciousness and potency. They accomplish things, and accomplish things ‘somewhere’. In this respect, space (or the capacity of social relationships) is something very different from idioms that we have come to think of as forms of space, like landscape or place. This article is also, therefore, a critique of the way in which some anthropologists have recently theorized landscape and place. My argument is based on an ethnographic account of the dimensions through which people construct urban space in the Chilean city of Antofagasta.
Batam Island, Indonesia, located a short ferry ride away from Singapore, is a place where tourism and industry have been developed simultaneously and a border area where “developed” and “developing” nations meet. Government officials, investing international corporations and the “factory women” who work in the island's industrial estates arrive in Batam ‐ native to none of them ‐ with their own preconceptions and goals. When challenges not foreseen through master planning arise, the authorities cling ever more tightly to their physical and structural development model: the nearby city‐state of Singapore. Conversely, the factory workers who travel intranationally to work in this export processing zone (EPZ) find their objectives contested in the face of the Master Plan, corporate agendas and ethnic fusions characterising this transnational capitalist space.
Entering into the homes of three groups of women migrants living and working in Batam, the relationship between the private realm that they inhabit and the social contexts in which they participate publicly is investigated. Some of the choices that women make at and about home are identified, and their ability to “micro‐resist” these external structures is explored. At home, the dynamic relationship between the Batam development project and the women's own hopes and visions of the place ‐ sometimes parallel and sometimes incongruous ‐ are revealed. As they experience life on Batam, their “social imaginaries” of it are shaped into various new realities, and their homes, removed from the confines of the factory floor, thus become spaces of release from these tensions.
In this article, I highlight the spatial dimension of social life. I analyze the shepherding practice of "going around the hill," a practice central to sheep farming in the Scottish borderlands. I distinguish between, on the one hand, the more rationalized space of fields and the commoditized sheep raised in them, and, on the other hand, the wild but meaningful hills and the sheep living on them. Using Heidegger's concept of "dwelling/' I describe how, through the practice of going around the hill, sheep farming people in the Scottish borders create an attachment to the land that defines the farm, the farming way of life, and the historically formulated borders region as places in which they "feel at home/' Together these places comprise the spatial dimensions of locality and identity for sheep farmers,
In this article, I investigate the ongoing battle between villagers on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, and the state development agency attempting to expropriate their land. This battle has been waged through the medium of documents, particularly lists, which villagers and colluding officials have used to defraud the Pakistani government of the equivalent of millions of dollars. Through this case study, I develop an approach to contemporary state governance as material practice, showing how government discourse is shaped by the material forms it takes and highlighting the issue of reference and predication (or how words relate to things). [governance, documents, state, semiotics, technology, materiality, South Asia, Pakistan]
Thesis (doctoral)--Stockholm University, 2002.
This paper explores the continuing labour market dilemmas resulting from the expansion of upper secondary and higher education in Indonesia. The situation is more acute in the poorer provinces such as East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) with their limited demand for high school graduates. The findings presented here are based on a sample of 800 high school students in the West Timor region of NTT. The authors point to the problems inherent in the Indonesian government's goal of nine years' compulsory education by the year 2004, and suggest policy measures to avoid the wastage of talent in provinces such as East Nusa Tenggara.
Land issues in most countries have major social and economic implications, more so in rapidly growing economies such as Indonesia. The Asian Development (ADB) Bank's post-evaluation findings reveal that a large number of ADB financed projects across sectors is seriously affected by land acquisition difficulties. The paper attempts to highlight some aspects of the current land administration system which are the causes of such delays and are of direct relevance to the implementation of Bank-assisted projects, with particular reference to the issues of land registration and land aquisition. The paper suggests that the ADB should provide financial assistance to Indonesia to accelerate the process of land registration and titling as well as provide technical assistance for codifying and simplifying the laws and procedures with regard to land transfers and use. -from Author
During the 1980s, Singapore's policy-makers perceived that the continued expansion of the Singapore economy required more spaces and workers beyond the 680-square-kilometre territorial limits of the city-state. While planning to extend these limits through further land reclamation, Singapore also began to foster economic cooperation with regional neighbours, most famously in the form of a so-called Growth Triangle incorporating proximate areas of Malaysia and Indonesia. The empirical focus of this article is on the tourist enclave developed on the Indonesian island of Bintan, a 45-minute ferry ride from Singapore. This enclave embodies complex re-territorializations. We specify how, despite a decade of re-fashioning zones of Bintan into quasi-enclaves and the literal and metaphorical cultivation of a tourist haven, other claims on these transfrontier zones resurfaced in the form of resistances and struggles over the terms of access to land and resources. It is argued that the trajectory of Bintan is symptomatic of wider transformations and epitomizes new configurations of sovereignty, urbanity and 'gated globalism'. Copyright (c) 2006 The Authors. Journal Compilation (c) 2006 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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