The Threefold Logic of Papua‐Melanesia: Constitution‐writing in the Margins of the Indonesian Nation‐State

Clashes over the status of West Papua and the political future of the territory proliferated markedly following the end of Indonesia's New Order regime in 1998. Amid a wide variety of demands for justice and independence, and a series of demonstrations, mass gatherings and prayers, only a few Papuans mused on how Papua could become a state and what would constitute its nature as being distinctly Papuan and/or Melanesian. One exception is the work put into the Constitution for West Papua entitled Basic Guidelines, State of West Papua, a document edited by Don A.L. Flassy, a bureaucrat, writer and thinker, with a preface by late Theys H. Eluay, then chairman of the Papuan Council. In this article I analyse this Constitution to show how a combination of Christianity and local customs, and a mimicry of elements of Indonesian nation building and symbols of the Indonesian nation‐state are reshaped to oppose Indonesian nation‐building agendas. The Constitution shows that when Papuans imagine an independent state, forms of vernacular legality play a central role. ‘The state’ has journeyed to Papua and encouraged faith in ‘the law,’ and Basic Guidelines is partly the effect of this growing vernacular legality. My analysis shows that it is essential to see how legal mobilisations and imaginations of the state articulate with other normative systems and practices – in particular Christianity and custom (adat) – and how they mutually allow for and invite strategies.     

West Papua,Indonesia and the Melanesian Spearhead Group: competing logics in regional and international politics

The idea of a shared Melanesian identity has been consolidated over the last three decades or so through the most important subregional organisation in the South-West Pacific—the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). The solidarity of this group has been strained over various issues from time to time, but none is as fraught as the Indonesian occupation of what is commonly known as West Papua, whose indigenous Papuan people are ethnically Melanesian. In addition to recounting the Indonesian takeover of West Papua in the context of the dynamics of decolonisation, the Cold War and early regional development, the article examines the emergence of Melanesian identity and the MSG, before considering more recent developments. These focus on a recent bid by West Papuans for MSG membership, key aspects of Indonesia's role in the Melanesian subregion, and the extent to which these developments highlight competing logics in regional and international politics.     

‘Naturally Fearful’: Emotion,Race and French–Papuan Encounters, 1818–30

This paper traces perceptions of Papuan ‘fearfulness’ in the records of the Freycinet, Duperrey and Dumont d’Urville expeditions. These French scientific expeditions explored Oceania during the period of the Bourbon Restoration in France and stopped at Waigeo Island and Teluk Doreri in West Papua. The paper aims to elucidate not only the nature and significance of perceptions of fearfulness in the Papuan encounters, but also the Indigenous agency, French cultural assumptions and evolving ethnographic practices that complicated and were papered over by emergent ‘racial’ classifications. Despite their acknowledgement of diversity and their increasing familiarity with their hosts, the voyagers presented fearfulness as the Papuans’ most characteristic trait. A hardening of this claim in the published accounts may be attributed partly to the development of a racial classification and distancing from the emotional intensity and complexity of contact, but that in itself leaves unclear what role fearfulness actually played in the encounters.     

Risk and the Sacred: Environment,Media and Public Opinion in Bali

This exploration of controversies over environmental regulation in the Indonesian province of Bali traces the relationship between the media, environmental attitudes and Balinese identity, focusing on the religious dimension of that identity and the ways in which this has become bound up with conceptions of environmental imbalance and a popular critique of capitalist development on the island. The fusion of cultural and environmental metaphors of ‘erosion’ and ‘preservation’ in public discourse is striking in the Balinese case, since sites of great spiritual significance are also attractive to investors for their aesthetic appeal and heritage value (Verschuuren et al. 2010). From the earliest emergence of environmental conflict on the island, the emotive power of cultural identity became intimately connected with environmental politics. This article traces several of the pervasive and interconnected dichotomies ‐ sacred and profane, cultural value and economic interest, environmental preservation and use (exploitation), certainty and uncertainty (risk) ‐ that characterise debates surrounding environmental regulation and development on the island.     

Enmity and Amity: Reconsidering Stone-headed Club (gabagaba) Procurement and Trade in Torres Strait

Historical records for Torres Strait, including those from Haddon's 1898 Cambridge Anthropological Expedition, identify the Papuan mainland as the main trade source for stone-headed clubs (gabagaba). This view has persisted despite the contradictory facts that the Papuan lowlands are essentially devoid of stone and Torres Strait abounds in stone suitable for club manufacture. Not surprisingly, preliminary raw material findings for ethnographic and archaeological gabagaba in museums indicate that local Torres Strait manufacture was more significant than previously thought. Some of the early confusion over gabagaba sources probably reflects diffusionist assumptions that ‘superior’ cultural items, such as stone-headed clubs, must have moved from so-called ‘advanced’ Papuans to ‘less-developed’ Torres Strait Islanders. However, more significant is the lack of understanding of the multiple and complex roles of gabagaba in inter-group social relations which saw clubs moving between Islanders and Papuans through looting, trade and ceremonial exchange. Apart from their well-documented use as lethal weapons during head-hunting raids, I argue that gabagaba also had an important ceremonial role in exchanges between hostile groups aimed at cementing social alliances. Following post-contact disruptions to trading networks and inter-group hostilities, the social/ceremonial roles of gabagaba were emphasised while gabagaba production became less specialised.     

Raising the Morning Star: Six months in the developing independence movement in West Papua

This paper outlines events in the developing independence movement in West Papua (Indonesian Irian Jaya) during a brief and remarkable period of Jakarta-led reform. The raising of the people's Morning Star flag - previously an act of treason - was conditionally permitted by the Indonesian security forces on 1 December 1999. For Papuans, it marked the 38th anniversary of the initial steps towards self-determination while under Dutch rule, and expressed their right to social justice and the ideal of freedom from Indonesian control. Punitive action followed the flag-raisings in Timika and Nabire. While a nascent 'people's task force' ( Satgas Papua ) began to play a security role, the independence movement took shape with a large formal gathering (MUBES) in February 2000, which for the first time brought together Papuan leaders from all over the province, and in exile, to formulate a political strategy. The momentum of the MUBES continued in May-June 2000 with the Papuan People's Congress, which resolved to pursue the right to self-determination 'peacefully and democratically', while acknowledging the absence of viable international support.     

Decentralization and Democracy in Indonesia: A Critique of Neo‐Institutionalist Perspectives

This article assesses some of the major premises of neo‐institutionalist explanations of decentralization policy and practices, but focuses especially on the relationship between decentralization and democracy, in the context of the recent and ongoing Indonesian experience with decentralization. In the last two decades ‘decentralization’ has become, along with ‘civil society’, ‘social capital’ and ‘good governance’, an integral part of the contemporary neo‐institutionalist lexicon, especially that part which is intended to draw greater attention to ‘social’ development. The concern of this article is to demystify how, as a policy objective, decentralization has come to embody a barely acknowledged political, not just theoretical, agenda. It also suggests alternative ways of understanding why decentralization has often failed to achieve its stated aims in terms of promoting democracy, ‘good governance’, and the like. What is offered is an understanding of decentralization processes that more fully incorporates the factors of power, struggle and interests, which tend to be overlooked by neo‐institutionalist perspectives. The current Indonesian experience clearly illustrates the way in which institutions can be hijacked by a wide range of interests that may sideline those that champion the worldview of ‘technocratic rationality’.     

The Commonwealth and the Cold War,Neutralism, and Non-Alignment

In the Cold War era, the Commonwealth represented a global sub-system which both permitted and enabled multiple identities. Between 1949 and 1990, as a direct product of British decolonisation, the Commonwealth came to include forty-nine members of varying size with very different agenda and developmental needs to those larger members from the global ‘North’. Its heterogeneous membership included: NATO countries; ANZUS; the Non-Aligned Movement; the OAU; CARICOM; and the Organisation of East Caribbean States. As a ‘unique sovereign regime’, the Commonwealth defied ideological typecasting. It possessed organisational structure and bureaucratic support; it combined economic, financial, technical, and scientific association, and privileged the role of diplomacy through the latitude permitted to its Secretary-General. The Commonwealth's two sustained ‘grand strategies’ were the pursuit of racial justice (in Rhodesia, South West Africa/South Africa) and social justice through the promotion of development, focusing on the principal preoccupations of newly independent states and their nation/state-building projects. These intersected with, but were by no means defined by, the Cold War, and represented a collaboration of West/South, rather than the confrontation of East/West.     

Australian Indonesia-specialists and debates on West Papua: Implications for Australia-Indonesia relations1

This article explores the modes by which Australian scholars construct knowledge of Indonesia with particular reference to the debates on West Papua in the post-Suharto period. It examines their perceptions, beliefs and attitudes towards human rights issues with a view to analysing the underlying forces, motivations and implications of activism. This article casts doubt on a common, yet often unacknowledged, perception in Indonesia about Australian Indonesia-specialists who are categorised as: intellectuals who always see Indonesian government policies as ‘negative’.2 2. ‘Indonesia specialists’ refer to both scholars who have and who do not have formal Indonesian studies or training who get involved in the study of Indonesia and Indonesian society. Whenever I use ‘Indonesianists’, I refer to scholars who have formal Indonesia studies or training. By Australian scholars, I mean scholars who are Australian by ‘residence’. View all notes I demonstrate that the theorisation of Indonesian society has been diverse in Australia as exemplified by the West Papua debates. Australian scholars’ social positions and mobility, not government policy, shape their beliefs, attitudes and knowledge construction of Indonesia. Thus, considering Australian scholars from a monolithic perspective misses the reality that contemporary intellectual culture in Australia is no longer based on a traditional class.3 3. For an excellent discussion on contemporary intellectual culture, see Eyerman (1994 Eyerman, Ron. 1994. Between Culture and Politics: Intellectuals in Modern Society, Cambridge: Polity.  [Google Scholar]). View all notes I argue there are two major opposing groups in West Papua studies which I label as the ‘affirmative revisionist’ scholars who tend to be more optimistic towards resolution of conflicts in West Papua and the ‘sceptical reformist’ scholars who are dubious about any major changes in West Papua. This latter group believes the people of West Papua should be given the opportunity to remain integrated with Indonesia or to opt for selfdetermination. They tend to use the perceived failure of Indonesia in the protection of human rights in West Papua to attack the Indonesian government and Australian governmental agencies dealing with Indonesia. This article argues that this criticism may adversely impact on future Australia-Indonesia relations.     

Urban heritage ‘space’ under neoliberal development: a tale of a Jordanian plaza

What happens when urban heritage spaces within developing countries, such as Jordan, are subject to touristic development funded by international bodies, such as the World Bank? This question is explored theoretically and practically by considering a popular local plaza in the secondary Jordanian city of Jerash that has been subject to three tourism development projects funded by the World Bank. The study, which incorporates and critiques the discourse of neoliberalism within urban heritage development studies, seeks to analyse the World Bank projects and, more specifically, how they have defined, approached and produced outcomes in the Jerash plaza and its context. In so doing, the study triangulates the analysis with accounts by local respondents that identify major drawbacks in the World Bank approach, particularly its emphasis on conventional ‘readings’ of urban space that highlight universal values and histories, while neglecting and marginalising local values and understandings. The triangulation offers attentive ‘readings’ of the plaza as a place understood and experienced by a people. The challenge is to break with the neoliberal paradigm that dominates urban heritage development programmes (and their associated West–East dualisms and top-down approaches) by presenting local sociocultural and economic contexts as assets to enrich development projects, rather than obstacles to be ‘fixed’ and ‘fitted’ for tourism.     

Dynamic and Flexible Aspects of Land and Marine Tenure at West Nggela: Implications for Marine Resource Management

At West Nggela, access to high value marine invertebrate stocks is controlled by consanguineal corporate groups holding primary rights (which include rights of exclusion) over reefs bearing these stocks. Disputes over primary rights appear to result in a breakdown in management practices, resulting in overfishing and severe depletion of stocks. An understanding of the common causes of disputes is therefore of considerable importance to marine resource management, and development, in this region. This paper outlines first the essential, or ‘ideal’, processes of descent reckoning and property transfer that underpin the Customary Marine Tenure (CMT) system at West Nggela as they are presented to ‘outsiders’ such as government officials and anthropologists. It then deals with some of the many exceptions to this norm, and the ways these variations can contribute to disputes over primary rights to property. The pressures of economic development, and the resultant commodification of resources and property, in our view catalyse the conflict between the ideal, simplified model and the complexity of actual praxis in respect to property rights. Recent dramatic increases in the perceived value of many properties as a result of proposed lucrative developments may underlie present day conflicts which in the past would not have arisen. Examples are drawn from interview data as well as case studies of two formal property disputes which were heard in local courts at West Nggela in 1995.     

Out of the dark but not out of the cage: women's empowerment and gender relations in the Dangme West district of Ghana

In Ghana, strategies to address poverty among rural women have often been linked to women's empowerment programmes with credit as a core component of these. Yet, many programmes focus on the economic benefit to women without necessarily looking at the impact on gender relations at the household level and its implications on women. Using quantitative and qualitative data from the Dangme West district of Ghana, this article shows how poverty reduction programmes with credit components can reduce women's vulnerability to poverty and empower them. But much more needs to be done to complement these efforts. The study shows that women beneficiaries as against women non-beneficiaries have significantly improved their socio-economic status through access to financial and non-financial resources. This has in certain instances improved gender relations at the household level, with women being recognized as earners of income and contributors to household budget. However, some women still regard their spouses as ‘heads’ and require their consent in decisions even in issues that have to do with their own personal lives. Moreover, the improved economic status of women has resulted in a ‘power conflict’, creating confrontation between spouses. The article recommends that, as part of their programmes, assisting organizations and institutions must address ‘power relations’, the basis of gender subordination at the household level, otherwise socio-cultural norms and practices, underpinned by patriarchal structures, will remain ‘cages’ for rural women.     

Contested Self-determination: Indonesia and East Timor's Battle over Borders,International Law and Ethnic Identity

ABSTRACT

East Timor's twin experiences of colonialism established its collective identity and internally recognised rights of self-determination. Political boundaries were created through negotiated treaties between Portugal and the Netherlands, and Portuguese colonialism provided East Timor with its status as a non-self-governing territory under international law in 1960. Indonesian colonialism resulted in a discursive battle over identity as both the Indonesian government and East Timor's independence movement employed ethnocultural narratives and myths to persuade the international community of the legitimacy of their respective political claims. During debates over East Timor's political status that occurred between 1975 and 1999, Indonesia emphasised the ethnic ‘kinship’ between Indonesians and East Timorese. In contrast, East Timor's representatives emphasised cultural links with Portugal and Melanesia to prove its distinctiveness from Indonesia.     

No friend of democratization: Europe's role in the genesis of the ‘Arab Spring’

The argument advanced in this article is that EU policies helped to trigger the so‐called Arab Spring, not by intention but by default. This contention is advanced through an examination of four strands of EU policy towards those countries designated as Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPCs) under the Euro‐Mediterranean Partnership Programme (EMP) and the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), namely: trade and economic development, political reform, the ‘peace process’, and regional security (including migration control). What emerges is that the EU has not just departed from its own normative principles and aspirations for Arab reform in some instances, but that the EU has consistently prioritized European security interests over ‘shared prosperity’ and democracy promotion in the Mediterranean. The net result is a set of structured, institutionalized and securitized relationships which will be difficult to reconfigure and will not help Arab reformers attain their goals.     

Imagining an Imperial Modernity: Universities and the West African Roots of Colonial Development

This article takes the formation and work of the ‘Elliot’ Commission on Higher Education in West Africa (1943–45) to reconsider the roots of British colonial development. Late colonial universities were major development projects, although they have rarely been considered as such. Focusing particularly on the Nigerian experience and the controversy over Yaba Higher College (founded 1934), the article contends that late colonial plans for universities were not produced in Britain and then exported to West African colonies. Rather, they were formed through interactions between agendas and ideas with roots in West Africa, Britain and elsewhere. These debates exhibited asymmetries of power but produced some consensus about university development. African and British actors conceptualised modern education by combining their local concerns with a variety of supra-local geographical frames for development, which included the British Empire and the individual colony. The British Empire did not in this case forestall development, but shaped the ways in which development was conceived.     

The industrial district: A stage of a diffuse industrialization process—the case of Roanne

The industrial district is an important element of the theoretical debates concerning the appearance of original features of regional development in Europe. Issuing from Marshallion theory, this concept was ‘reinvented’ in the late 1970s in order to interpret a series of ‘regional success stories’ of industrial development that occurred in middle Italy. Thus, for some economists and geographers, the industrial district has become a new ‘standard’ of regional development, appearing as an autonomous integrated system, whose functions are based on the principle of ‘automation’. This system represents an optimal structure in terms of economic efficiency and resource allocation, and owns its proper mechanisms of reproduction related to specific territorial regulations. A crisis for such a system can only be related to exogenous factors. Rejecting this static vision of economic structures, which reintroduces the ‘growth/crisis’ divide in the analysis of economic development, it seems necessary to promote a more dynamic approach in terms of ‘change through continuity’. This approach was initially developed by some Italian authors who tried to analyze the original features of regional development in the Third Italy in terms of ‘industrialization without fracture’. This approach does not deny the existence of industrial districts, but refuses to accept that they are static: districts can evolve, change, develop . . . Thus, they appear as a particular stage of development in a diffuse industrialization process. Their evolution is no longer simply related to exogenous variables but also to endogenous ones; and this evolution does not necessarily lead to an implosion or a complete transformation of space but can also lead, through the continuity of the industrial district's mechanisms, to a post‐district organizational configuration.     

Capitalist Expansion and the Decline of Common Property Ecosystems in China,Vietnam and India

This article identifies some of the multiple processes of capitalist development through which access to common property resources and their utility for communities are undermined. Three sites in upland Asia demonstrate how patterns of exclusion are mediated by the unique and selective trajectories through which capital expands, resulting in a decline of common property ecosystems. The process is mediated by economic stress, ecological degradation and political processes such as state‐sanctioned enclosure. The first case study from Shaoguan, South China, indicates how rapid capitalist industrialization has depleted the aquatic resource base, undermining the livelihoods of fishing households yet to be absorbed into the urban working class. At the second site, in Phu Yen, Vietnam, capitalist development is limited. However, indirect articulations between capitalism on the lowlands and the peasant economy of the uplands is driving the commercialization of agriculture and fishing and undermining the utility of communal river and lake ecosystems. In the third site, Buxa in West Bengal, India, there is only selective capitalist development, but patterns of resource extraction established during the colonial period and contemporary neoliberal ‘conservation’ agendas have directly excluded communities from forest resources. Restrictions on access oblige them to contribute subsidized labour to local enterprises. The article thus shows how communities which are differentially integrated into the global economy are excluded from natural resources through complex means.     

Wrathful Ancestors,Corporate Sorcerers: Rituals gone Rogue in Merauke,West Papua

Anthropological studies of ritual ‘failure’ challenge the assumed efficacy of ritual in affirming the social order. Drawing from fieldwork in West Papua, I examine the ‘failure’ and ‘success’ of two rain‐making ceremonies – one hosted by an indigenous Marind expert, the other by an Indonesian oil palm corporation. Participants conceived the failure of the first ritual as a punishment meted by ancestral spirits against Marind who support agribusiness expansion. Meanwhile, the success of the corporate ceremony confirmed rumours that corporations wield foreign and powerful forms of sorcery. Drawing on Gregory Bateson's notion of the double bind, I suggest that the ritual outcomes dramatize the irreconcilable demands placed on Marind by custom and capitalism. Attempts to endorse agribusiness incur ancestral punishment, while efforts to oppose it are thwarted by the superior power of corporate sorcerers. In this context, I argue, the moral implications of the corporate ritual's unexpected ‘success’ prove just as problematic as those of the customary ritual's dramatic ‘failure’. Co‐opted yet efficacious, corporate rituals point to a new social order in which both Marind and their ancestral spirits find themselves subjected to foreign sources of supernatural control.     

Capitalism and the emergent world order

The two‐centuries‐old hegemony of the West is coming to an end. The ‘revolutions of modernity’ that fuelled the rise of the West are now accessible to all states. As a consequence, the power gap that developed during the nineteenth century and which served as the foundation for a core–periphery international order is closing. The result is a shift from a world of ‘centred globalism’ to one of ‘decentred globalism’. At the same time, as power is becoming more diffuse, the degree of ideological difference among the leading powers is shrinking. Indeed, because all Great Powers in the contemporary world are in some form capitalist, the ideological bandwidth of the emerging international order is narrower than it has been for a century. The question is whether this relative ideological homogeneity will generate geo‐economic or geopolitical competition among the four main modes of capitalist governance: liberal democratic, social democratic, competitive authoritarian and state bureaucratic. This article assesses the strengths and weaknesses of these four modes of capitalist governance, and probes the main contours of inter‐capitalist competition. Will the political differences between democratic and authoritarian capitalists override their shared interests or be mediated by them? Will there be conflicting capitalisms as there were in the early part of the twentieth century? Or will the contemporary world see the development of some kind of concert of capitalist powers? A world of politically differentiated capitalisms is likely to be with us for some time. As such, a central task facing policy‐makers is to ensure that geo‐economic competition takes place without generating geopolitical conflict.