Indirect Recognition. Frontiers and Territorialization around Mount Halimun-Salak National Park, Indonesia

Christian Lund and Noer Fauzi Rachman (2018) “Indirect Recognition. Frontiers and Territorialization around Mount Halimun-Salak National Park, Indonesia”, co-authored with . World Development 101:417-428.  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X17301201

         Government institutions and local people in Indonesia have entrenched, resurrected, and reinvented space through their different territorial and property claims. From colonial times, onward, government institutions have dissolved local political orders and territorialized and reordered spatial frontiers. Local resource users, on the other hand, have aligned with, or undermined, the spatial ordering. We analyze government-citizen encounters in West Java and the dynamics of recognition in the fields of government territorialization, taxation, local organization, and identity politics. Spatial categories are struggled over, and groups of actors seek to legitimate their presence, their activities, and their resource use by occupation, mapping, and construction of “public” infrastructure. 

In the case of conservation in the Mount Halimun-Salak National Park, we find that rather than one overarching recognition of a single direct spatial claim to property, a web of direct and indirect claims for recognition emerges between and among claimants and institutions. If direct claims to resources are impossible to pursue, people lodge indirect claims. In everyday situations, indirect recognition can perform important legal and political work. After the authoritarian New Order regime, in particular, claims to citizenship worked as indirect property claims, and indirect recognition of such claims are important because they serve as pragmatic proxies for formal property rights. Two case studies examine how people struggle over the past, negotiating the constraints of social propriety for legitimation and indirect recognition of their claims.

Key words:

Indonesia, recognition, frontiers, territorialization, citizenship, property

For full and free access: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xJcwDz8BdkviIVsd6YXzkoM3VVVOtigm/view?usp=sharing 

'Occupied!’ Property, Citizenship, and Land in Rural Java

Christian Lund and Noer Fauzi Rachman (2016)"'Occupied!’ Property, Citizenship, and Land in Rural Java”. Development and Change 47(6):1316-1337. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dech.12263/abstract 

        Recent land occupations by peasant movements in Indonesia have done more than challenge the existing ownership of plantations and forests. They have restructured local property and authority relations by stimulating a strategic critique of public authority and governance practice within the peasant movement. ‘Plantation’ and ‘forest’ are structured under different legal regimes and institutional arrangements, which offer varied opportunities for occupation and subsequent legalization of smallholder land control. Different strategies of occupation and interaction with plantation and forest companies have therefore been pursued. However, legalization of land occupations has remained rudimentary, and possession has not been recognized as property by government institutions. Two cases of occupation history demonstrate in detail how claims to citizenship and property have been opposed, ignored and denied by statutory institutions. Furthermore, they demonstrate how land occupying farmers have attempted to become ‘visible’ to and recognized by government institutions, and how — while waiting for this to happen — the peasant movement experiences a sovereign moment.

For full and free access: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12YnxKGVn5QmrbknuBO5wnh9z-0KKNVTv/view?usp=sharing 

Forestry Law, Masyarakat Adat and Struggles for Inclusive Citizenship in Indonesia

Noer Fauzi Rachman and Mia Siscawati, “Forestry Law, Masyarakat Adat, and Struggles for Inclusive Citizenship in Indonesia”. in Christoph Antons (ed) Routledge Handbook of Asian Law. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Page 222 - 249

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315660547-21/forestry-law-masyarakat-adat-struggles-inclusive-citizenship-indonesia-noer-fauzi-rachman-mia-siscawati

For full and free access: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19WQ1fZM7NZJmd3ch-R84KRQahtj_0CXF/view?usp=sharing   

Introduction

            On 16 May 2013, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia ruled that customary forests (hutan adat) were no longer to be regarded as part of state forests (hutan negara). The Court ruled to delete the word “state” from article 1.6 of Forestry Law No. 41 of 1999. The article now reads “Adat forests are state forests located in the territory of customary law communities (masyarakat hukum adat).” The ruling determines  the category of forest  to which a “customary forest” (Hutan Adat) belongs. “Customary forest” has been removed from the category of “state forest” (Hutan Negara), and moved into “forest subject to rights” (Hutan Hak). The Constitutional Court Ruling of Case Number 35/PUU-X/2012 is a landmark achievement for the forest reform process in Indonesia.