The Political Ecology of Extraction and Extractive Reserves in East Kalimantan,Indonesia

Extractive reserves established in the Amazon have given development professionals hope for solving two critical problems in conservation and development: the empowerment of indigenous people and the conservation of tropical forests. The extraction of non-timber forest products has provided an important part of the livelihood strategies of rainforest dwelling people and of the regional economy of East Kalimantan for some two millennia. The specific political-economic and environmental circumstances of Indonesia and interior Kalimantan, however, preclude applying the Amazonian model for extractive reserves. Using a political ecology framework, this article analyses sociological and environmental factors emerging over the past two and a half decades and influencing contemporary rattan production and trade. Based on this analysis, the author concludes that the politics of forest management, at both the national and local levels, are more conducive to village level extractive reserves than to regional, labour-based organizations.     

Spaces of protest: gendered migration,social networks,and labor activism in West Java,Indonesia

This article examines the gender geography of labor activism through a comparative investigation of two communities in West Java, Indonesia. Based on in-depth interviews and a survey of workers carried out in 1995, 1998, and 2000 in the two sites, it explores the place-specific meanings attached to migrants’ social networks and gender relations, and their roles in mediating the gendered patterns of labor protest in the two villages. Previous analyses of labor protest in Indonesia have occluded scales and processes that are critical to understanding how gender dynamics are linked to the geography of protest. By contrast, attention to the gender- and place-based contexts of women’s activism illustrates the complex interactions between migrants’ local interpretations of gender norms, social network relations, household roles, state gender ideology, and global neo-liberal restructuring. Through examining these interactions, gender is conceptualized as ontologically inseparable from the production of specific activist spaces, rethinking the uni-directional spatial logic and deterministic views of gender and place put forth in theories of the New International Division of Labor.     

Making Territory and Negotiating Citizenship in a Climate Mitigation Initiative in Indonesia

For almost two decades, the concept of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) has been widely adopted in Indonesia, in policy initiatives ranging from pilot projects to more established PES schemes and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) programmes. Drawing on a case study of a REDD+ initiative in Aceh, Indonesia, this article analyses how the initiative became an avenue to renegotiate political authority, territory and citizenship. Analysis of relevant documents, combined with focus group discussions and interviews at local and national levels, reveals the complex processes by which the authority to govern forest is claimed and legitimized through the revision of provincial land-use plans, and shows how citizenship is rearticulated through participatory mapping processes. The article demonstrates that the initiative has been negotiated and reshaped to conform to local aspirations for greater control over forests and to achieve broader development goals. The discourses of green economy and REDD+ have provided the Aceh government and communities with a new ‘surface of engagement’ to express Acehnese struggles over territory and citizenship by aligning with global climate change issues.     

Death and the Making of West Berlin, 1948-1961

This essay traces shifts in attitudes towards death, practicesof burial, and rituals of mourning in West Berlin from the 1948currency reform to the 1961 construction of the Berlin Wall.It shows that West Berliners in the years immediately followingthe Second World War maintained an arduous devotion to theirdead—particularly the war dead. Yet as the war becamea less immediate experience over the course of the 1950s, broadcultural shifts took shape, including a renewed sense of optimismand an emerging feeling that the suffering associated with thewar could be and was being redeemed. Meanwhile, a cult of thedead long venerated as part of the very foundation of Germanculture gradually became ‘less German’ and ‘moreWestern’ over that same period. In this way, it also becamea means of distinguishing West Berlin from its Communist neighbourto the East. By focusing on shifts in perceptions and practicessurrounding death, the essay reveals part of the process bywhich moral and ethical values were reconstructed after Nazism,and how the racist collectivism of the Third Reich graduallygave way to the broadly individualist, democratic-socialisthumanism that would form the basis of an expressly West Germanpolitics and society.     

Somebody Else, Somewhere Else: Racisms, Racialized Spaces and the Popular Geographical Imagination in Sweden

In conjunction with recurrent economic dislocations and the restructuring and melting of national capitalisms into one another, there has been a resurgence of racisms in Europe; even in Sweden, a country long stereotyped as an international champion of equality and economic and political justice. An array of concrete and racialized spaces has emerged and contributed to the further spread of racism. Deeply enmeshed in this process is a disjuncture between racist attitudes and behaviors, and a widely held image of the self and the nation as altruistic and just. Confronted by such internal dissonance, many, if not most, Swedes resolve matters through denial and projection: believing or asserting that the country's only racists are either skinhead youths or right-wing extremists, "somebody else." The contradiction between the racisms and national identity is also commonly culturally reworked through projecting upon other locations as well as other groups. To demonstrate the complexities and internal contradictions of this popular geographical imagination, this paper provides a detailed depiction and critique of one of its elements—the municipality of Sjöbo.     

Land,Law and Courts in India: Tracing Land Rights Debates through Processes of Judicial Decision Making

The pace of industrial and allied infrastructure development in India is encumbered by scarcity in the supply of land. As a result, the state in India has frequently resorted to expropriation of land through conversion of land away from its traditional uses and through displacement of communities. Consequently, land acquisition in the country is mired in disputes over human rights and environmental rights violations. In the face of continued political support for infrastructure‐led development in India, those who stand to lose their land have often resorted to judicial recourse for pressing their rights. This article draws on empirical evidence from court cases related to two urban development projects in the states of Karnataka and Kerala to examine how courts have responded to the question of violation of land rights and appeals against land acquisition for the two projects. The author argues that the courts, while responding to the claims against the two projects, have refrained from holding the implementing agencies or the state governments accountable even in cases where there were recognizable incidents of malfeasance. The article illustrates that the inability of the courts to confront the state lends a tacit assent to the development agenda of the state.     

Political History and Political Philosophy: Making Sense of the West

Abstract

The old Western synthesis, the coming together of self-government, the Christian proposition, modern equality, and the commitment to relieving man's estate, appears to be unraveling. In the European context, it is being replaced by a “pure democracy” that cannot do justice to the continuity of Western civilization. Rejecting the twin temptations of Progress and Decline, Pierre Manent recovers the perspective of the human agent. While the polis or classical city is no longer available to us, the self-government of free human beings remains at the heart of the Western enterprise. Manent shows that the Christian notion of conscience preserved the classical analogy between the soul and the political association and is at the hear of Western liberty. The West as a whole rests on the synthetic and mediating notion of conscience.     

Styling the revolution: masculinities, youth, and street politics in Jakarta, Indonesia

This article explores the changes to urban political culture in Jakarta, Indonesia, from 1998 to the present. By tracing the contributions of youth activists, and middle-class university students in particular, to the production of the street as a political and public space, the author demonstrates to what extent the democratized post-Suharto era naturalizes the place of youth in nationalist politics. Central to this inquiry of youth identity formation is the elision of class and gender as analytical categories. Student movements in 1998 and after have relied on a specific masculine style that draws on both the authenticity of nationalist historical narratives and the street as the domain of the People, and in the process masks potentially contentious class and gender differences among progressive activists.     

Diversity in Peasant Economic Behavior: Transmigrant Households in South Sumatra,Indonesia

An important facet of peasant economics is the diversification of household labor among farm and off-farm activities. Using a sample of South Sumatran transmigrant households the diversification of household labor among various remunerative activities was analyzed. Employment diversity was related to three sets of theoretically based factors: demographic, human capital, and agricultural. Results from a discriminant analysis model reveal that the demographic set of variables is most powerful in distinguishing households with different levels of employment diversity. The ratio of consumers to workers in a household is particularly important. However, measures of entrepreneurship and on-farm agricultural intensity are also useful in explaining diversity behavior. Throughout our analysis we find evidence that the role of the spouse as an income producer is especially critical in the household employment diversification process.