Noer Fauzi Rachman: Land Reform by Leverage, Understanding the Resurgence of Agrarian Movements in Contemporary Java

Noer Fauzi Rachman, SID 18420953, May 16, 2006

My research prospectus "Land Reform by Leverage: Understanding the Resurgence of Agrarian Movements in Contemporary Java-Indonesia" was submitted as my final assignment for a course on Social Movement, Sociology 280S, Spring 2006, thought by Prof. Kim Voss. Her comment is available at https://www.noerfauzirachman.id/2006/10/re-land-reform-by-leverage.html

A Research Prospectus

“Whoever studies peasant movements is familiar with the phenomenon of the mass invasion or occupation of land”

(Hobsbawm, 1974)

“What you did [land occupation] can be judged easily as criminal behavior by the authorities. So, our task is to change their mind, policies and practices”

(A, The SPP’s top leader, 2002)

Introduction

Since 1999, more than ten thousand landless families, many of whom are the poorest of the poor, have occupied lands previously controlled by private and/or state owned plantation and forest companies in upland West Java (Garut, Tasikmalaya and Ciamis districts) - Indonesia. They have changed the land use of more than 12,000 hectares from agricultural and forest plantations to small-scale agriculture and agro-forestry fields and formed a local organization of occupants called the Serikat Petani Pasundan (SPP) or Sundanesse Peasant Union (see: Annex 1.). Beyond that they promoted their leaders to compete in village elections for formal positions in local government, mobilized their own newly acquired resources, and developed alliances with urban educated-activists, often on terms they (the rural occupants) have set. Last but not least in this phenomenal story, they have also participated in open protest activities in Indonesia’s capital city, as well as in provincial and district cities, pushing the government to change its land policies.

How have these poor families been able to initiate and maintain these land occupations? Land occupations, combined with other tactical repertoires, are new phenomena in contemporary Indonesia, with origins and dynamics under the repressive New Order government and continuing in recent years under democratization and decentralization. These occupations can be seen as really transformative if we also locate them within the broader context of Java’s agrarian history and the geographies of resource control since colonialism. In Java, as in Indonesia as a whole, plantations and forests as forms of agrarian production have deep roots in colonial history. They were introduced by colonial regimes more than one and a half centuries ago as the primary instrument for producing export-oriented tropical commodities. They have been territorially separated from people’s agriculture and developed by both colonial and post-independence governments through various state measures, including the creation of state-owned companies. Their continuous existence without any significant disruption in post-colonial regimes can be explained only if we seriously consider their power to control the land and the local people, and their power to make strategic alliances within the governments of each political regime (Kartodirjo and Suryo 1991, Peluso 1992, Gordon 2001).

My research on the SPP will examine how a local agrarian movement used national political opportunities that arose following the decline and fall of the New Order regime in 1998. The unprecedented phenomenon of multi-year land occupations is a puzzle that cannot be explained by political opportunity alone, although it is hard to imagine the SPP and its massive land occupations emerging when Indonesia was under the New Order authoritarian regime. During the New Order period, land dispossession by the government was frequent. Dispossessions were usually conducted by various parts of the bureaucracy were backed up by the military and the police, and justified by rhetoric asserting the benefits of “development” and the public utility of the new land uses. The government also frequently relied on the trauma of “communism” as a rationale for its policies against any parties that resisted eviction. That trauma was rooted in the brutal transfer of power from Soekarno to the New Order regime in 1965, when hundreds of thousands of suspected Communists and activists were killed or jailed without trial, including large numbers of rural people in Java and Bali (Cribb 1990, 2001, 2002). The killings of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians who were accused as members and sympathizers of the Communist Party of Indonesia (Partai Komunis Indonesia or PKI) and other leftist organizations, and the other events that followed to cement Soeharto’s position and undercut Soekarno, meant that the pre-1965 efforts to promote land reform and encourage rural social movements had to be forgotten. The New Order regime ended Soekarno’s land reform program and halted further implementation of the 1960 Basic Agrarian Law. The New Order period’s reliance on the threat and use of violence allowed Indonesia’s officials and bureaucrats to implement capitalist economic policies that reversed the anti-imperialist and democratic ideals of an entire generation of nationalists (Fauzi 1999, Farid 2005). Pro-capitalist agrarian programs were welcomed enthusiastically by the government. These programs included the “green revolution,” accelerated mining and forest exploitation, and the development of large plantation estates for the production of raw materials. All of these programs were tied in to global capital and supported by militaristic-bureaucratic-authoritarian control over rural (and urban) populations (Fauzi, 1999).

The New Order’s authoritarian practices resulted in the disappearance of rural social movements in Java, despite the strong history of such movements dating from the time of Indonesia’s fight for independence in the 1940s. Between the 1940s and early 1960s, rural people had been directly involved in mass mobilization and in politics through their participation in various political parties and affiliations to social organizations (Lyon, 1970; Mortimer 1972; Huizer 1972; Hefner 1990; and Sulistyo 1997). By de-politicizing the rural areas, such tendencies were eradicated once and for all. For those who resisted such co-optation, as frequently happened in land disputes, the state would punish them, not infrequently using violence. In the West Java context, strict control over the rural population was decisively implemented, not least because the regime was contending with remnants of the Darul-Islam movement which had used guerilla warfare to fight for the establishment of an Islamic State from the late 1940s until the early 1960s (Jackson, 1980; van Dijk, 1981).

Until the 1980s, the New Order state successfully maintained an overwhelming power and control that prevented the development of rural protests. But the state stranglehold began to loosen in the 1990s under the influence of a coalition of rural-urban activism involving NGOs, students, and local leaders (Lucas and Waren, 2000, 2003; Aspinall, 2004). With the collapse of the New Order in 1998, this coalition found fertile ground and seized the opportunities available to them to create mass-based agrarian movements. The SPP is one of the largest movements.

The SPP’s land occupation is emblematic of agrarian movements in Java. For state officials, the occupations by local people are controversial. Those who do not agree with such tactics tend to call the occupations penjarahan or “land seizures” implying that local people are taking land illegally. As a new form of collective action, land occupations have expanded substantially since March 2000, when the Fourth President of Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid made a statement dear to the hearts of many land-hungry farmers, in which he said that it was not appropriate that the people were being accused of seizing land, because, “in fact, the plantations have stolen the people’s land.” He then said that “some 40 percent of plantation land should be distributed to cultivators who need it. Moreover, people could even hold shares in the plantation itself.” (Kompas, May 24, 2003). The statement was made as part of his opening speech for the National Conference on Natural Resources initiated by some national NGOs in Jakarta on May 23, 2000. These public statements, which were then covered by the national press, had a tremendous impact on the legitimization of the farmers’ occupation of plantation lands and of other lands that had been similarly claimed. The General Director of Plantation in the Ministry of Forestry and Plantations estimated that until September 2000, almost 120,000 hectares of national estate land had “been seized” (by the people) along with 40 percent of its private estate lands (quoted in Kuswahyono, 2003).

II. Theoretical Approach, Questions and Hipotheses

There are two general approaches to studying social movements that inform my research. First, social movement studies rooted in a political process approach focus on four key related concepts in explaining social movement emergence in Western countries, i.e. political opportunities, mobilizing structure, collective action frame, and repertoire of contention (McAdam 1982, Tilly 1986, Tarrow 1998). Second, I am informed by studies on peasant resistance and agrarian transition focusing on state and market penetration and its effect to rural countryside in colonial and post-colonial countries as anchored by Wolf (1969), Migdal (1974), Paige (1975), Scott (1976), Popkin (1979). Beyond both of these, I have reviewed the work of scholars who reinterpret and contextualize Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation to understand a new type of enclosure and various resistances against it. They have shown that understanding the social relations of advanced capitalism requires a more sophisticated understanding of primitive accumulation, i.e. as an ongoing phenomenon rather than a past one (De Angelis 2000, Perelman 2000, Harvey 2005). This is critical to the understanding of these resurgent agrarian movements in Java, as they are demanding an entirely different form of distribution of access to and benefits from land and other resources. This interpretation is critical to the understanding of these resurgent agrarian movements, including the SPP movement in Java, as they are demanding an entirely different form of distribution of access to and benefits from land and other resources under the current neoliberal context.

We encounter here what Polanyi refers to as "dual movement" of modern liberal society. On one side there is the historical movement of the market, a movement that has not inherent limit and that therefore threatens society’s very existence. On the other there is society’s natural propensity to defend itself, and therefore to create institutions for its protection, as limitless accumulation is not sustainable. In Polanyi’s terms, this continuous element of "primitive accumulation" could be identified in those social processes or sets of strategies aimed at dismantling those institutions that protect society’s from the market. The crucial element of continuity in the reformulation of Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation arises therefore once we acknowledge the other movement of society emphasized in Polanyi’s analysis (Polanyi 1944).

My main research objective is not simply to use “mainstream” theorist of social movements to understand how an agrarian social movement in Indonesia emerged, developed and contested with other social forces under the democratic context of Indonesia. Some scholars applied political process approach to explain peasant mobilization in Central America context (Brockett 1991; Kowachuk 2003a, 2003b, 2005). But, unfortunately we can not find continued dialogues between political process approach and peasant studies as Edelman (1999) did.

My research will continue the initiative and open dialogues between those both camps, and frame it as a new contribution for agrarian political ecology field. I will consider the long tradition of South-East Asia agrarian change and political ecology studies, and use it as my intellectual framework for understanding the resurgence of the movement in Java-Indonesia. In studies on agrarian movements in South-East Asia countries, some scholars analyze them as a part of a response to capitalist and state penetration of the countryside, and locate peasant resistances under the agrarian transition into a capitalist mode of production (Kartodirjo 1973; Adas 1979; Paige 1975, Scott 1976; Popkin 1979). But my contribution will go beyond dialoging between area studies and mainstream theory of social movement as some Latin America scholars have done (Escobar and Alvarez, 1992; Alvarez et all 1998). Taking advantage of those agrarian studies, some scholars have developed the political ecology field by incorporating the “particularity of nature” into their account on the political dynamics surrounding material and discursive struggles over the resource in the third world countries, where the role of unequal power relations in constituting a politicized environment is a central theme (Blaikie 1985, Bryant 1992, Bryant and Bailey 1997; Watts 2001, Watts and Peet, 2003). They give particular attention to the ways in which conflict over access to environmental resources is linked to systems of political and economic control first elaborated during the colonial era (Peluso 1992, Bryant 1997).

1). Land Occupation as a Primary Tactic

My first research question is how the SPP is able to initiate land occupation and maintain their access to the land.

As clearly stated by main interlocutor of political process approach, Tarrow (1998:201), “(o)nce opportunities open and constrains contract, the main kinds of resource that organizers use are three: the forms of contention that arise out of – and innovate upon – culturally familial repertoires; the informal networks and connective structures that people live within and build; and the cultural frames they find in their societies and create in struggle.” In the SPP movement as well as other peasant movements in Java, land occupation has been perceived as a new tactical repertoire against the power of plantation and forest companies as well as a new form of access to productive land. In the resistance against the long process of exclusion, expropriation, and exploitation, the villagers start to occupy the land and cultivate it as productive farmland. The villagers are occupying land as part of continuous struggles for social justice and subsistence in the face of particular types of state and capitalist based resource controls. The villagers’ form of resistance is not similar to millennialism movements that spread in colonial Southeast Asia (Kartodirjo 1978, Adas 1979). Their land occupation tactic easily can be associated to unilateral action (aksi sepihak) implemented by Indonesia Communist Party in the 1960s (Lyon 1970, Mortimer 1972, 1974, Huizer 1980, 2001). They have no solid ideology in a conventional sense and have no intention to overthrow the existing regime through a peasant rebellion. The SPP movement’s tactics are rooted in the villagers’ acts of everyday resistance practiced when they were under the authoritarian regime (Peluso 1992). Different than the “everyday resister” as conceptualized by Scott (Scott 1985), they are more like a full-fledged social movement: The movement involves a collective and public challenge, based on common purpose and group solidarity (Tarrow, 1998). As a new form of agrarian movement in the current moment of globalization, the SPP leaders have been informed by various similar movements from other counties. So, the land occupation can not be isolated only as a local phenomena per se; it must be seen in the context of global resistance to exploitive and unjust land policies practiced by governments in cooperation with international financial institutions and corporations.

Land occupation as a main method for organizing landless masses is global phenomenon. In Latin America, the Rural Landless Workers' Movement (MST) is the icon. Between 1985 and 2000, MST organized 230,000 land occupations, helped to establish over 1,200 land reform settlements by mobilizing over 1,000,000 members to occupy “unproductive” land, and pressured the Brazilian governments to negotiate for property titles (Wolford 2003). In Zimbabwe, land occupations have become more controversial. After the 15 years British supported land redistribution program reform failed, Mugabe’s government has started to campaign direct land occupations over white commercial agricultural lands, and then got massive support from rural African landless and war-veterans (Moyo, 2001). Around 1,700 commercial agricultural lands were forcefully occupied by black farmers led by war veterans (BBC Online News on Dec, 28 2001). In South Africa, Landless People Movement (LPM) and their supporting NGOs have campaigned to launce land occupation after the failure of post apartheid land reform program to radically change the unequal land distribution (Greenberg 2004a, 2004b). In Philippine, a new national coalition of autonomous peasant organization, UNORKA push Philippine government to redistribute more than 200,000 ha hacienda lands through “sandwich strategy”, land occupation and other forms of grass-root mobilizations, and legal advocacy working with progressive exponents of national government agencies (Franco and Borras, 2005). The tremendous success of MST inspired a transnational peasant/farmer organization called Via Campesina that formally launched in 1993. Today, Vía Campesina unites more than a hundred national and sub-national organizations from Latin America, North America, Asia, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe that are opposed to neo-liberalism and advocate a pro-poor, sustainable, rights-based rural development and greater democratization (Desmarais 2001, Borras 2003). Via Campesina is a new type of agrarian movement that can not be understood if we rely on an old view of peasant movement as limited to one country or community (Patel, 2006).

Peasant organizations and their praxis are complex and need to be understood not only as a form of political participation outside of traditional institutional channels. Yet, they must be located on a larger landscape of new agrarian movements that are less concerned with defending ways of life or blocking the intrusions of the state than with delineating new political and cultural spaces. The objectives of new agrarian movements are to change government policies, their implementation and their outcomes, rather than to demand the retreat of state. Yet, they use state language to demand constitutional and legal rights and justify their claims (O’Brien 1995, 2006). The idyll of a past way of life without incursions by external authorities is no longer at the romanticized core of the associated discourse. Rural social movements have become increasingly disaggregated, more specific and more nuanced in their objectives, in the means they utilize and in the alliances of interests they attract (Webster 2004). More than that, peasant movements in the contemporary period must be seen in relation to the current restructuring of capitalist production, state formation, and local forms of class interest and accumulation (McKeon, Watts and Wolford, 2004).

I hypothesize that land occupation as a new way to mobilize and organize the landless, is deeply rooted in its efficacy as both a form of access to land previously controlled by landed elites and a demand for the government to implement land reform.

2). Political Opportunity and Social Movement Agency

My second research question is under what condition social movement leaders had been able to seize shift in political opportunity structures in gaining access to political system and creating possibility to make demand to land reform as legitimate claim.

Political opportunity approach has analyzed the impact of shifted political opportunity, and how movements seized their opening/shifting, but in doing so they have paid little attention to the differences and connections between the opportunities created by the movement activities and the broader POS. A first confusion is that “opportunities” appear in two places in the causal argument. They are both variables which account for mobilization and the product of mobilization itself. A second confusion is that the political opportunity structure is treated as a factor external to the world of movements, while opportunities created as the outcome of the movement action are found primarily inside the world of movements (Jenson 1998). So, in studying the political context of a movement, both types of opportunity should be clearly defined in order to locate the interactive political context where the movement can have influence (Kiersi, 1995, 2004). To solve the problem, there is a need to combine a process-oriented approach to political opportunities that explicitly examines how they work with the responses that social movements provoke or inspire to alter the grounds on which they can mobilize (Meyer 2004, Meyer and Minkoff 2004). In doing so, this new approach serves as a dynamic framework rather than a static typology that will be sensitive to significant changes over time in the political opportunity structure.

Within that dynamic framework, we have to integrate position of social movement as a particular agency. Focusing on structures of opportunity may have risks slighting human agency. Political opportunities may be missed, simply because movement leaders do not recognize and adequately act to seize them. In this context, there is more to be gained from efforts to refine political opportunity approach, especially in conjunction with the mediating role of framing processes (Benford and Snow 2000, Snow 2004).

Existing social movement literature provides a theoretical lacuna on leadership in social movement. This lacuna, according Morris and Staggenborg (2004), results from failure to fully integrate agency and structure in theories of social movements. They shows how since beginning social movement theories from collective behavior, resource mobilization, and political process theorist, relatively neglect the centrality of leadership. They argue that “social movement theory would benefit greatly from an examination of the numerous ways in which leaders generate social change and create the conditions for the agency of other participants. Although we think that human agency has been neglected by the recent emphasis on structure of opportunity, we do not propose that researchers err in the opposite direction by highlighting agency at the expense of structure. Rather, we need to examine both the structural limitation and opportunities for social movements and the way in which leaders make a difference within structural contexts… Leaders operate within structures, and they both influence and influenced by movement organization and environment. They are found at different levels, performing numerous and varied functions. Leaders sometime pursue their own interests and maintain organizations at the expense of movement goals, but different organizational structure produce different type of leaders, including some who work to advance movement goals over their own interest. Different type of leaders may dominate at different stages of movement development ad sometimes come into conflict with one another” (Morris and Staggenborg 2004:174).

The rise and development of the SPP movement has been influenced by the central role of two kinds of SPP leaders -- district level SPP leaders coming from urban activist living in urban areas, and local SPP leaders that were born in villages, commuted to urban areas, and returned to their rural origins. In every area with a local chapter of SPP, a local leadership group was formed, called a Local Farmers Organization (OTL). Each group had a head, a secretary, a treasurer, public relations, and a security guard. Many of these local SPP leaders, almost all of whom are men, have had experience working and living in the city, some as salesmen in wholesale markets in provincial city such as Bandung, or capital city of Jakarta. Their urban connections are not far in the past, but are very recent and seem to have reduced their feelings of respect and shame in the presence of land controllers who increase their power through social relations. More than that, in the city, especially in the markets, competition and bargaining are parts of everyday life. They are very aware of their influence and have experience facing down official power-holders (such as bureaucrats in the market and the police) and unofficial power-holders (such as thugs or preman). They have developed their abilities to deal with these various powerful figures. With SPP, they use these abilities to develop their new leadership abilities, taking care of their membership, mobilizing and leading them in demonstrations, and developing arguments to dispute control over land. In addition, some of the local leaders of SPP have expanded their leadership roles by getting elected to village councils, chosen directly by the villagers. There are even some who have become village heads. Local leaders of SPP who hold such positions face a great challenge in trying to change the village government’s role from being a tool of the state, as under the New Order regime, to control and mobilize people (for the state) to being a tool of the community, one which can promote the interests of the peasants in the village.

The example of the SPP movement also shows that the movement was not created solely through shifts in political opportunities, but when they able to seize the opportunity and access the existing political system, their leaders also able to creates a particular way outside and inside the system -- in village, district and also national levels -- to make demand to land reform became legitimate claim.

To theoretically understand how land reform can be accepted as legitimate demand, I move into notion of discursive field posed by Steinberg (1999). This concept is akin to “the collective processes of interpretation, attribution, and social construction that mediate between opportunity and action” mentioned by McAdam (1996). Steinberg (1999) has suggested the relevance of the concept of discursive fields to understanding movement-related discourse and framing activities. Such fields emerge or evolve in the course of discussion of and debate about contested issues and events, and encompass not only cultural materials (e.g., beliefs, values, ideologies, myths and narratives, primary frameworks) of potential relevance, but also various sets of actors whose interests are aligned, albeit differentially, with the contested issues or events, and who thus have a stake in what is one or not done about those issues and events. These various set of actor include, in addition to the social movement in question, one or more counter-movements, the targets of action or change, the media, and the larger public, which includes clusters of individuals who may side with protagonist or antagonist as well as those who are indifferent and thus constitute bystanders. However, the ways in which any particular set of actors’ interest are aligned with the issues or events in question is not always self-evident or clear. The can be masked or obfuscated as well as illuminated and crystallized. Additionally, the stream of events that flows or cuts through any particular discursive field can quickly affect its shape and the relationship among the relevant set of actor. It is because of such considerations that framing processes and contests figure prominently within discursive fields related to social movements and collective actions with which they are associated (Snow 2004).

I hypothesize that shifting political opportunity structures is undeniably important in determining social movement leaders’ chances of gaining access to the political system and new advantages in its interaction with the power holders, as well as the likelihood of repression and facilitation attached to land occupation and other tactical repertoires; and that demand to land reform implementation is more likely to gain visibility in the public in so far as the demand resonates with the existing legitimate claims in the public discourse.

3).Political Ecology of Agrarian Movement

My third research question is how agrarian history and existing mode of resource control provide particular constraints and possibilities for land occupation and other tactical repertoires.

The SPP’s land occupations, combined with other tactical repertoires, are new phenomena in contemporary Indonesia. These occupations can be seen as really transformative if we also locate them within the broader context of Java’s agrarian history since colonialism and the existing mode of resource control. If we try to explain this new phenomenon of agrarian movement only rely on political opportunity theories without take the “agrarian” seriously into our account, we will reduce the complexity and fail to understand the particularity of their context. In doing so, I will examine POS as intersects with regional agrarian history and existing mode of resource control as factors explaining different movement emergence and dynamic. My research will continue this conceptualization and frame it as a new contribution for agrarian political ecology field. There is the long tradition of South-East Asia agrarian change and political ecology studies, and I will use it as my intellectual framework for understanding the resurgence of the movement in Java-Indonesia. Taking advantage of those studies, some scholars have developed the political ecology field by incorporating the “particularity of nature” into their account on the political dynamics surrounding material and discursive struggles over the resource in the third world countries, where the role of unequal power relations in constituting a politicized environment is a central theme (Blaikie 1985, Bryant 1992, Bryant and Bailey 1997; Watts 2001, Watts and Peet, 2004). They give particular attention to the ways in which conflict over access to environmental resources is linked to systems of political and economic control first elaborated during the colonial era (Peluso 1992, Bryant 1997). Previous studies of the agrarian transition in Southeast Asia focussed primarily on green revolution” impacted areas (Hart et al, 1989). There are few scholars provide their analysis to upland settings, arguing that classic agrarian questions about differential access to land, labour, and capital are equally relevant to upland, with particular concern on state formation and environmental changes (Hefner, 1990; Peluso, 1992; Li 1999; Vandergeest and Peluso, 1995) A particular spatial lens of a rural-urban interface also become a new perspective to understand agrarian transition in South-East Asia rural area (Rigg, 1998, 2003).

In Java, as in Indonesia as a whole, plantations and forests as forms of agrarian production have deep roots in colonial history. They were introduced by colonial regimes more than one and a half centuries ago as the primary instrument for producing export-oriented tropical commodities. They have been territorially separated from people’s agriculture and developed by both colonial and post-independence governments through various state measures, including the creation of state-owned companies. Their continuous existence without any significant disruption in post-colonial regimes can be explained only if we seriously consider their power to control the land and the local people, and their power to make particular strategic alliances within the governments of each political regime (Kartodirjo and Suryo 1991, Peluso 1992, Gordon 2001). In West Java agrarian history, we can find some forms of rural resistance as responses of capital penetration and state formation, in colonial and post-independent periods: anti-colonial millenarian protest, revolutionary communist movement and Darul Islam rebellion (Kartodirjo 1978, Lubis, Aidit 1964, Jackson, 1980, van Dijk, 1981, Svensson 1983). My research will recognize that while each form of resistance have their own particular relation with the mode of resource control at the time they existed, they also gave impact to rural communities where SPP have tried to mobilize them.

I hypothesize that emergences, dynamics and outcomes of agrarian movement are structured by the combination of the nature of the political opportunities intersects with regional agrarian history and existing mode of the resource control.

With particular attention to the existing mode of resource control, I will address a basic political ecology question: “what difference does nature make?” With particular reference to Agrawal and Sivaramakrishnan (2000), I will examine three different “agrarian environments”, i.e. forest, plantation, and individual-private agricultural lands, looking for factors influencing the movement’s emergences, dynamics and outcomes. Forest in Java have been classified under two main categories based on its function, and institutions who control the land and resources, i.e. conservation areas who controlled by Ministry of Forestry, and forest-plantation controlled by Perum Perhutani (State Forest Company). Perum Perhutani is an Indonesia state owned forest company responsible for management of the 2.5 million ha state owned forests in the islands of Java and Madura. They have been targeted by land occupations not only because their resources, but also because enclosure and exclusion practices had contributed to the tensions between villagers and forest companies. Popular land occupations in West Java have been very successful, and hundreds of landless peasants have both been organized by the SPP and resisted state violence toward them and their new crops for nearly 6 years now.

Plantations — state or private, ongoing or expired, new or extended since independence — are where much of the apparently most successful land occupation is taking place. Since 1998, agrarian protests, demonstrations and rallies to demand land rights have been orchestrated or spontaneously broken out in Java’s cities, while thousands of peasants in some of the island’s remotest mountain top villages have cleared plantations’ tree and field crops and occupied the land. The Indonesian government has no formal mechanisms to deal with the thousands of land claims over the plantation lands, many of which involve long and complex histories of dispossession, claim, and counter-claim. Farmers’ groups and activists are also making explicit alliances with key actors in the National Land Board and other national and local government agencies, in ways unthinkable during the New Order.

Non-state, or what we call “private,” lands are subject to an even different set of trends involving different actors, again emerging out of particular historical circumstances and types of engagement with global and national trends. For complicated reasons connected to the history of agrarian law and practice in Indonesia, which generated both the land reform debates and the mass agrarian violence of the 1960s, these lands today are among the most accessible to private capital – small and large scale. They are promoted as “development targets” that will directly benefit smallholders. Although on the surface, these titling actions do not appear to be enclosure in the same ways as the reservation of forests and plantations, the potential exists for the effects of enclosure to be felt by unorganized and vulnerable villagers. Perhaps because of the particularities of agrarian history, patron-client relationship between landed elite and agricultural workers, and the nature of “organizing” in this ‘sector”, however, independent popular mobilization is not occurring. Most populist NGOs and activists are avoiding these agrarian environments.

Looking more specifically at forests, plantations, and individual private agricultural lands as particular modes of resource control, I have the following sub-hypotheses:

“forest lands” are the most removed legally from the realm of villagers’ negotiations and therefore will generate the most contention and contentious forms of claims, but with the least possibility for successful occupation in the long run;
“individual-private agricultural lands” in the rural areas are the least contentious and have become a space of manufactured-consent through patron-client and contractual labor relationships;
“plantation lands” represent something of a middle ground. Rights to plantations’ lands — government or private — are not held in perpetuity like forest lands; they are limited by time and requirements to have permission to continue—including the permission of local people. The middle political space and remote locations of many plantations make them prime targets for occupation and with a high potential for success.

IV. Research Design and Methods

I will test my hypothesis by conducting twelve months of fieldwork in three districts, (Garut, Tasikmalaya, and Ciamis) using intensive and extensive qualitative research methods (Sayre, 1992). I chose those three districts because they are the SPP’s main working areas. Plantation and forest companies in those districts were heavily impacted by the land occupation organized by the SPP since 1999 (see Annex 1.), and have tried to repress the movement through working with counter-movement groups, and pushing the government and police to criminalize them.

I have been deeply involved with the SPP movement since the beginning and have been a member of the teachers’ council of the SPP since 2000. Rather than claiming a studied neutrality in this area, I will explicitly state here that my many years of work as an NGO activist and direct involvement in the movement in various ways situate my position as researcher. But, for academic and reflective reasons, I am revisiting and theoretically interrogating parts of this experience and its context, and now will research them in an attempt to explain why these movements arose when they did and uncover the ways in which the movements have found their platforms under the influence of political context, particular mode of land control and agrarian history. I will assess how they had conducted land occupations and other tactics to accomplish their goals, how they framed their collective actions, and how they seized various political opportunities. As an NGO activist supporting the SPP movement I have a particular position that provides me with possibilities but also constraints to have access to my research subjects. I will review the internal documents of the movement, conduct participant-observation work with the movement including interviews with the the leaders and members, conduct a village level study, and observe the movement’s activities. I will take advantage of the network that the movement and I have with district level government officials, parliament members, and political party leaders to access information about political opportunities and constraints, and political outcomes of the movement at the district policy level. Prior to enrolling at UC Berkeley, I worked as the chairperson of the national Konsorsium Pembaruan Agraria (Consortium for Agrarian Reform) 1995 – 2002. I established a strong network of contacts with individuals in the national Ministry of Forestry, National Land Agencies, National Human Right Commission and national parliament. I will take advantage of my connections to examine official responses to the land reform agendas demanded by agrarian movement groups.

For comparative purposes, I will examine various tactical repertoires, dynamic and outcome the movement under influence nature of political opportunity (before and after 1998) intersected with different mode of resource control (plantation, forest, and individual-private agricultural land. In post 1998 period, I will especially analyze comparatively the movement dynamics in three districts (Garut, Tasikmalaya and Ciamis) under different political opportunity structures as a result of national democratization and political decentralization policies.

			Mode of Resource Control
			Forest Land	Plantation Land	Individual-Private Land
Nature of Political Opportunity Structure	Garut, Tasikmalaya and Ciamis districts	Before 1998 (Closed)
	Garut District	After 1998 (Open)
	Tasikmalaya District	Before 1998 (Open)
	Ciamis District	After 1998 (Open)

IV.A. Research Methods

I will employ the following research methods to test those hypotheses

(i) Archival research. Where available, I will review the written records of the SPP and various supporting NGOs and student group meetings, public district government and parliament official documents, district regulations, forest and plantation management plan, official reports on land disputes, and various documents from national government agencies (Ministry of Forestry, National Land Agencies, National Human Right Commission, and National Parliament). I will cross-check interviews and other data using local and national newspaper reports.

(ii) Secondary analysis. I will make a secondary analysis especially to reconstruct regional agrarian history in West Java, especially related with land control and peasanr resistance.

(iii) Literature review. I will draw on previously published material on the SPP, West Java Upland, decentralization implementation in Garus, Tasikmalaya and Ciamis district, and incorporate comparative analysis from other region in west Java, where appropriate.

(iv) Interview, Focus Group Discussion and observation to acquired detailed SPP local geography and history (see Annex 3.). In each district I will purposively select one land occupation case for a detailed history and geography of the land occupation, biographical aspects of their local leaders, class position of the SPP members, village political configuration, the nature of land control and their local agrarian history, various forms of resistance, and also rural-urban network, included with urban activist. The cases will be chosen also for to examine influence of different mode of resource control (plantation, forest, and individual-private agricultural land). Especially for Garut district, I will choose Sarimukti village, because in that area there is a big private-agricultural-land that under the same landscape with forest land. The SPP’s members have occupied and cultivated around 250 ha of forest land, but they did touch any land under the private-individual agriculture land (see: Annex 2).

I especially will spend time to examine Sagara case to understand the emergence, dynamic and decline the movement Before 1998, some SPP leaders (at that time they did not establish SPP yet) organized Sagara case in Garut district, and they occupied the 1,200 ha land previously controlled by forest company and then partly succeeded to got official certificates for the land. Interestingly, even they are still registered as SPP’s working area, there are no village level movement activities anymore.

(v) Content analysis from local newspaper. I will rely on local newspaper Pikiran Rakyat to conduct protest-event analysis, a particular type of content analysis for social movement studies (McAdam, 1982), before and after 1998. This analysis will help me to have a ground data on dynamic of movement-initiated events since their emergence.

(vi) Other interview. Where possible, I will interview district level government officials and parliament members, human right commissioners, National Land Agency and Ministry of Forestry officials, and national parliament members involved in land dispute resolution.

(vii) Participant observation. I will participate in various SPP activities, such as training, workshop in district as well as in village levels. For my close-look on occupied lands, I will conduct transect and observation on physical boundaries between territories controlled by villagers, state owned plantation and individual-private agricultural lands; landscape techniques to claim and control territories and people. I will also observe land use, production techniques and method that they use, labor allocation included gender division of labor (see Annex 3).

IV.B. Research Methods and Types of Evidence in Relation with Hypotheses

Research Questions and Hypothesis

Type of evidence needed

Methods

Research Question no.1:

How the SPP is able to initiate land occupation and maintain their access to the land.

Hypothesis no.1:

Land occupation as a new way to mobilize and organize the landless, is deeply rooted in its efficacy as both a form of access to land previously controlled by landed elites and a demand for the government to implement land reform.

· Chronological story before, during and after occupation

· Grouping processes (inclusion and exclusion) within community during and after occupation

· Confrontational processes between occupants versus landed elites

· Form of access to and benefit from the land before and after occupation in family level

· Position and role of village level institutions (village government, religious leader/pesantren, etc) in supporting or in confronting land occupation

· Position and role of urban activists (from student activist or NGO) in transforming from land occupation into demand to land reform

· Observation of occupied land, type and process of cultivation.

· Sketch mapping and transect boundaries

· Deep interview with SPP’s local leaders

· Interview some other local leader, including local religious leaders

· Interview with some occupants during transect processes

· Focus group discussion with occupants

· Household survey to compare access to land and benefit from land before and after occupation

Research Questions and Hypothesis

Type of evidence needed

Methods

Research Question No. 2:

Under what condition social movement leaders had been able to seize shift in political opportunity structure in gaining access to political system and creating possibility to make demand to land reform as legitimate claim.

Hypothesis No. 2:

Shifting in political opportunity is undeniably importance in determining social movement leaders’ chance of gaining access to the political system and new advantages in its interaction with the power holders, as well as the likelihood of repression and facilitation attached to land occupation and other tactical repertoires; and based on that, demand to land reform implementation are more likely to gain visibility in the public so far as the demand resonates with the existing legitimate claims in the public discourse.

· Protest events analysis indicating frequency of demands to land reform

· Various responses, especially official policies of national government bodies to land reform demand before and after democratization take place (1998)

· Positions of district government vis a visnational and provincial government before and after decentralization take place (2000).

· Positions of district parliament vis a visdistrict government before and after decentralization take place (2000).

· Position and role of political parties in making particular alliance with the movement

· Position and role of student and NGO activist in supporting the movement

· Various methods to repress land occupation used by landed elites, state apparatus and counter-movement groups

· Policy processes on land reform and land dispute resolution in various district government bodies and national government and parliament, human right commission, etc.

· Content analysis from local newspaper to show protest events to demand land reform

· Archival research on various official documents from regional election committee, district parliament, district government bodies, national land agency, ministry of environment, human right commission, national parliament, etc.

· Archival research on various internal document from student organization and NGOs supporting the movement

· Interviews with some district parliament members, district government officials, national land agency officials, ministry of environment officials, human right commission, national parliament, etc.

· Interview with some district level political party leader that have connection with the movement.

· Deep interview with SPP’s top leaders, and NGO and student activists supporting the movement.

Research Questions and Hypothesis

Type of evidence needed

Methods

Research Question No.3:

How agrarian history and existing mode of resource control provide particular constraints and possibilities for land occupation and other tactical repertoires?

Hypothesis No. 3:

Emergences, dynamics and outcomes of agrarian movement are structured by the combination of the nature of the political opportunities intersects with regional agrarian history and existing mode of the resource control.

Sub Hypotheses:

· “forest lands” are the most removed legally from the realm of villagers’ negotiations and therefore will generate the most contention and contentious forms of claims, but with the least possibility for successful occupation in the long run;

· “individual-private agricultural lands” in the rural areas are the least contentious and have become a space of manufactured-consent through patron-client and contractual labor relationships;

· “plantation lands” represent something of a middle ground. Rights to plantations’ lands — government or private — are not held in perpetuity like forest lands; they are limited by time and requirements to have permission to continue—including the permission of local people. The middle political space and remote locations of many plantations make them prime targets for occupation and with a high potential for success.

· Regional agrarian history on types of land controls and peasant resistance in relation with state and capital formation in West Java.

· Comparing forest, individual-private-agricultural and forest lands:

o Social histories of existing mode of land controls

o Legal arrangements on each mode of land control, especially on possibility for villagers to access the land

o Micro social structure, especially labor relations, and differential access to land

o Differential political-economic alliance between landed elite and local government

o Form of resistance in each mode of land control

o Differential access of urban activist and local leaders to generate or support land occupation and other form of resistance

· Secondary analysis on history of land control and peasant resistance in West Java.

· Interview with local leaders on local history of land control and peasant resistance.

· Archival study on legal arrangements and official documents produced and used by plantation and forest companies, also national land agency.

· Interview with managers of plantation, private-agricultural, and forest land (as far as possible).

· Interview and focus group discussions with student and NGO activists.

Annex 1.

Land Occupation Cases organized by SPP in GARUT District

No.	Name of Village/	Disputed Lands	Households	Starting year	“Opponent”
	Sub-district	(ha)		of organizing
1	Sagara/ Cibalong	1,100	776	1989	Perhutani
2	Karyamuikti/ Cibalong	580	452	1999	Perhutani
3	Sancang/ Cibalong	100	131	1999	BKSDA
4	Mekarjaya/ Sukaresmi	32	12	1999	BKSDA
5	Mekarjaya/ Sukaresmi	150	230	1999	Perhutani
6	Sarimukti/ Pasirwangi	200	220	1999	Perhutani
7	Pangauban/ Cisurupan	150	210	1997	Perhutani
8	Cipaganti/ Cisurupan	100	115	1997	Perhutani
9	Karamat Wangi/ Cisurupan	200	540	1997	Perhutani
10	Sukamulya/ Pakenjeng	300	500	1997	Perhutani
11	Sukamukti/Cilawu	23.5	209	1999	PTPN VII Dayeuh Manggung
12	Mekarmukti/Cilawu	13	101	1999	PTPN VII Dayeuh Manggung
13	Dangiang/ Cilawu	28.410	118	1999	PTPN VII Dayeuh Manggung
14	Neglasari/ Cisompet	78	211	1999	PTPN VII Bunisari Lendra
15	Neglasari/ Cisompet	27	50	1999	PTPN VII Bunisari Lendra
16	Jatisari/ Cisompet	12	30	2002	PTPN VII Bunisari Lendra
17	Karyasari/ Cibalong	75	138	1999	PTPN VII Bunisari Lendra
18	Sagara/ Cibalong	125	131	1999	PTPN VII Miramare
19	Tegallega/ Bungbulang	100	100	1999	PBS Condong
20	Karangwangi/ Mekarmukti	100	200	1999	PBS Condong
21	Sinarjaya/ Bungbulang	150	150	1999	PBS Condong
22	Jangkurang/ Leles	200	300	1994	Village head,
	Rancasalak/ Kadungora				Bureaucrats of
	Mandalasari/ Kadungora				Garut District Gov.
	Hegarsari/ Kadungora
		3,792	4,924

Land Occupation Cases Organized by SPP in TASIKMALAYA District

No.	Name of Village/Sub District	Disputed Lands (ha)	Households	Starting year	“Opponent”
1	Tanjung Karang/Cigalontang	400	900	1999	Perhutani
2	Nagrog/Cipatujah	100	129	1999	Perhutani
3	Cieceng/Cikatomas	700	700	1999	PTPN VII Bagja Negara
		1200	1729

Land dispute cases organized by SPP in CIAMIS District

No	Name of Village/Sub District	Disputed Lands (ha)	Households	Starting year	“Opponent”
1	Margaharja/Sukadana	280	750	1998	Perhutani
2	Pamotan/Kalipucang	300	847	1999	Perhutani
3	Bangun Karya/Langkap Lancar	760	90	2000	Perhutani
4	Kalijaya/Banjar Sari	800	200	2000	Perhutani
5	Jadikarya/Langkap Lancar	150	50	2000	Perhutani
6	Bojong/Parigi	100	60	2000	Perhutani
7	Bagolo/Kalipucang	200	250	2000	Perhutani
8	Selasari/Parigi	300	200	1999	Perhutani
9	Pasawahan/Banjar Sari	708,725	1535		Perhutani
	Cigayam/Banjar Sari
	Cikaso/Banjar Sari
	Banjaranyar/Banjar Sari
	Kalijaya/Banjar Sari
10	Pasawahan/Banjar Sari	300	324		PTPN VII
11	Sindangsari/Cijulang	1318,12	1700	1999	PT. Cikencreng
	Ciparanti/Cijulang
	Kertaraharja/Cijulang
12	Cimerak/Cijulang	368,17	551	1999	PT. Cikencreng
13	Jalatrang/Cipaku	74,97	120	1999	PT. RSI
14	Jelat/Cipaku	41,76	75	1999	PT. RSI
15	Maloya/Ciamis	300	215	1999	PT. Maloya
16	Kalangsari/Kawali	300	200	1999	PT. Cintanagara
		3790	7167

Annex 2.

Portrait on Agrarian Condition in Garut

One of my research area will take place in Garut District, West Java. In this areas state forest’s and plantations’ land control, now are frequently questioned and challenged by local governments and parliaments as well as rural villagers. In the year 2000, almost 50 percent of its total area 306,519 hectares were classified as state forest and plantations. Most of the forestland (31 percent) is under the jurisdiction of Garut Forest District, Unit III (West Java) of the State Forestry Corporation (SFC) of Java. The Natural Resources Conservation Bureau, Sub-Unit Garut, managed some 4 percent of the district’s land, including a nature reserve of 17,000 hectares and a recreation park of about 750 hectares. Large plantations account for nearly 12 percent of this district, about half of which are private (corporate) and the other half state-managed. Most of the agricultural land here (about 32 percent) consists of dry fields (ladang), except for some 16 percent of the total that is irrigated or rain fed paddy (sawah). While other sectors besides agriculture account for the greatest part of the labor force, employment in agriculture is still significant, accounting for some 40 percent of the productive labor force.

I will use the example of one village, Sarimukti, in the sub-district of Pasirwangi. The villages located closest to the jurisdictions of the SFC and the large plantations are full of landless peasants. The landscape of mountainous regions such as this one is quite beautiful, but the mythic fertile, prosperous, and just village is nowhere to be found. According interview with Village Head in 1993, some 75 percent of the village population employed in agriculture is landless, and it is with this class that the SPP has constructed a base. In Sarimukti, one wealthy family controls some 50 hectares of land (for Java this is big enough), on which 160 agricultural laborers are employed. Even though the land they control looks no different from that of others, they have two other activities that differentiate them. First, the family has 100 head of cattle that produce enough manure to fertilize all of their cultivation activities. Second, they engage in marketing and transporting vegetables to urban wholesale markets.

Not far away, in the same region, are production and protection forests managed by the SFC, on lands disputed by local people. Some 314 ha have been cleared by villagers from Sarimukti and Mekarjaya since the year 2000. Peasants in SPP-Sarimukti believe that this land was formerly a cinchona (quinine bark) plantation, and illegally claimed by the SFC. They believe that the former plantation lands should have reverted to their control, not become the jurisdiction of the SFC to turn into production or protection forest.

According to a local leader (interview 2003), SFC’s management of the protection forest is the same as that in the production forest. They have planted pine varieties from which they extract resin, and when the trees no longer produce resin, they cut them for their timber.As in other places, when the pine seedlings were first planted, the SFC allowed the local people to intercrop agricultural crops between the trees (tumpang sari).

Still connected to this landscape, we find the Papandayan Mountain Nature Reserve, under the jurisdiction of BKSDA (Natural Resource Conservation Bureau), which is directly under the Ministry of Forestry and Plantations. Like all mountaintops in Java, this area has been designated a conservation area and protection forest because of the importance of its hydrological and climatological functions, and because it is so steep that it has become the final refuge of several endangered species, such as the Javanese hawk-eagle (spizaetus bartelsi), leopard (panthera pardus), and surili leaf monkey (presbytis comata), which are very sensitive to ecological change. The responsible officers at the reserve believe that the SFC has failed to preserve the region’s functions as protected and production forest, which should have served as a kind of buffer zone to prevent the expansion of smallholder cultivation into the reserve. In the reserve area alone, they have documented 74 farmers who have cleared and cultivated 53.1 ha in 2003.

Finally, in this same landscape we find an extremely modern enterprise, whose operational logic is difficult for the local people to understand. This is a geothermal project in operation since 1984, which harvests the geothermal energy to make electricity. The project is located within the jurisdiction of the nature reserve and the SFC’s protection forest. The project’s two areas, “Darajat I” and “Darajat II”, cover more than 70 ha of land, over which it has acquired temporary use rights. Currently, the project transfers geothermal energy to two electrical power stations, Darajat I, which is owned and operated by the state electricity company and which generates 55 megawatts of electrical power and Darajat II, built and operated by Amoseas, operational since May 2000, which produces an additional 90 megawatts. Operated directly by Amoseas, Darajat II sells electrical power to the national electricity grid.

Since the Reformasi (Reform era) in 1998, there were cases where popular land occupations over forest territory and plantation land in the Garut district, West Java, have been very successful and thousands of landless peasants organized against the state forest company and big plantation. One biggest organization, the Serikat Petani Pasundan, has resisted state violence against them and their farmlands for more than 6 years.

It is interesting to compare with what happened in the non-state individual-land areas that we can name as “individual-private-land”; and also in the area where Geothermal Project exist. There has been no similar popular mobilization in those area. Such lack of popular mobilization is even evident in areas where up to 70% of the population are landless and the vast majority of land is controlled by a few owners or the rare exception are some people who have gained access through renting or sharecropping.

Source: Compiled from “Garut Statistics, 2000.” Central Bureau of Statistics, Garut, 2000.

Note: The total number of land under agriculture and forestry is not including urban area.

Annex 3.

An example of

Guide for Focus Group Discussion (FGD), Interview and Observation

I will select some occupation cases based on the some lists of land dispute cases in the Garut, Tasikmalaya and Ciamis districts from the SPP data. From the list, I will categorize the cases based on three typologies, i.e. plantation, forest and individual-private agricultural lands. I will select one case represent each district, based on discussion with SPP leaders. For each case I will conduct Focus Group Discussion (FGD), Interview and Observation.

Example of Questions for FGD (and can be used also as Interview guide)

In each selected cases, I will meet with the SPP’s local leaders and discuss with them about possibility to conduct some FGDs, and will decide how many FGDs that we will conduct based on location. Participant of the FGD is a group of villagers who have occupied the plantation/forestry land. FGD participant will be invited by the SPP’s local leades. I will check the bias of the list through examining how they made the list. Is it based on individual membership or households? Is it based on membership card, or actual membership? Are there any members that cultivate no any land in the occupied land? If it is possible, I also will request their help to make a simple map on location of each member household in the village settlement and may be in the occupied land. I will also spacialize the list based on the map. I will also examine the gender bias of the list. How many women in the list? Did they register the women also as members, or they only register men as household head? I will propose also to make different FGDs for women. The FGD participant may be 10 – 20 persons and will be conducted in any room available, maybe in a school, local SPP office, or in the SPP’s members house.

Before and after FGD, I can conduct interview with some selected person to situate me with the case or to recheck and acquire more information that I get from FGD. The guide should be treated in flexible way. As semi-structured FGD or interview, they may be modified depend on the dynamic of discussion or interview. This guide can be used both as guide for FGD, and also for individual interview.

I will inquiry 7 (seven) cluster of information on land occupation as movement-initiated action, i.e.:

1. Situation before the occupation action

How many of you who were landless the occupation? How about percentage of landless family compared with total population in this village?
How many of you who had a piece of land before the occupation? How big the land that you have?
What kind of works that the plantation/forestry company usually offers to the villagers?
Who have any experiences working for the plantation/forestry company? Can you share to us about type of work that you did, your working condition and compensation that you get?
What kind of contributions that the plantation/forestry company gave to village government?
Did the plantation/forest company allow villager to get benefit from their territory?
Are any cases where the villagers were threatened, intimidated, tortured or criminalized by the plantation/forest company?
What the relation between local government with the plantation/forest company?
Can you share with us about history of the plantation/forest company? When they come for the first time? How they got the land? Are there any people who till the land before they came? How they enclose the people from the land if they did? What kind of commodity that they produce? For what purpose? How they produce it? What kind of laborer that they need? Where they come from? How they recruit them? How their working condition?

2. Moment of occupation as a particular event

When you start to occupy the plantation/forestry land?
How many people who participated in the occupation?
How many women compare with men participated in the occupation?
Are there any division of labor between man and women in the occupation?
Can you tell me about the chronological events during first day of occupation?
Are there any reactions from the plantation/forest company? If yes, what did reaction that they made? How the villagers deal with those reactions? What happen then?

3. Strategic effort to occupy plantation/forest land

How many women compare with men participated in the planning meeting?
Are there any planning to divide of labor between man and women in the occupation?
Are there any NGO or student activists who involved in the planning meeting? If yes, what did they do? How they came into the group?
Do you have any particular arrangement plan to redistribute the occupied land among of members of the group? If yes, what the plan that you have?
Do you have any particular plan to deal with reaction from plantation/forest company? If yes, what the plan that you have?

4. Simple map of the occupied land

Can you draw a rough map in the big paper location of your occupied land, the plantation/forest land, private-individual land and the village settlements.

Can you put note how big the land that had occupied by villagers as well as land that had controlled by plantation/forest companies and agricultural individual-private land owned by villagers.
Can you put legends (road, river, borders, etc.) in your map?
Can you specify the location of the occupied land in the map?

5. Justification for the occupation

Do you think the plantation/forest company has no any legitimate reason to continue their right to access the land? If yes, how they will loose their right?
Do you think the villagers have legitimate reason to occupy, cultivate and the get benefit from the land? If yes, how you deal with resistance from the plantation/forest company?

6. Seizing political opportunities from various levels of government agencies and making coalition with other strategic groups.

Do you consult with village government or village council to do the occupation, cultivation and get benefit from the occupied land? If yes, who that talk to them? Can you share with us how their perception, attitude or reaction to the occupation?
Do you consult with district government or district parliament? If yes, can you make a list of government agencies and factions in district parliament that concern with the occupation, cultivation and get benefit from the occupied land? Can you share with us how their perception, attitude or reaction to the occupation?
How you register your claim? Can you share with us detail activities that you did for register your claim?
Do you have any connection with any group outside the village that helped you to strengthen your claim? Can you make a list of them and what did they do? Did they have any particular interest to support you in this issue?

7. Situation after the occupation action

Can you make a time-line of chronological events after the occupation?
Can you describe the conditions that have changed after you occupy, cultivate and get benefit from the occupied land?

Guide to Observe Land Occupation Sites

Observation Spot	Unit of Observation	Object of Observation
Transect with some local leaders	Boundary contestation	Physical boundaries between territories controlled by villagers, state owned plantation and individual-private agricultural lands; landscape techniques to claim and control territories and people.
Transect with some local leaders	Mode of land cultivation	Land use; production techniques and method, social relation of production; labor allocation; method of accumulation; gender division of labor
Transect and visiting some houses	Village settlement in occupied areas	Physical arrangement of the settlement; map of settlement, social life of the settlements, differences between new settlement and old settlement.
Village office	Village government	Physical arrangement of the office; Life cycle in the village office, Village official meeting; Interaction between villagers and village officials in the village office;
Urban based organizers	Social mobilization	Interaction between outside-organizer from NGO or student activist with local leaders, planning and coordination activities, method of resource mobilization, informational resource mobilization, protest cycle

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Land Reform by Leverage, Understanding the Resurgence of Agrarian Movements in Contemporary Java - Indonesia

Noer Fauzi Rachman, SID 18420953, May 16, 2006

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