The term "access" is frequently used by property and natural resource analysts without adequate definition. In this paper we develop a concept of access and examine a broad set of factors that differentiate access from property. We define access as "the ability to derive benefits from things," broadening from property's clas- sical definition as "the right to benefit from things." Access, following this definition, is more akin to "a bundle of powers" than to property's notion of a "bundle of rights." This formulation includes a wider range of social relationships that constrain or enable benefits from resource use than property relations alone. Using this fram- ing, we suggest a method of access analysis for identifying the constellations of means, relations, and processes that enable various actors to derive benefits from re- sources. Our intent is to enable scholars, planners, and policy makers to empirically "map" dynamic processes and relationships of access.

A Theory of Access.

It was the official line of Suharto’s regime that Indonesia is a nation which has no indigenous people, or that all Indonesians are equally indigenous.1 The internationally recognized category “indigenous and tribal peoples” (as defined in International Labour Organization convention 169) has no direct equivalent in Indonesia’s national legal system, nor are there reservations or officially recognized tribal territories. Under Suharto the national motto “unity in diversity” and the displays of Jakarta’s theme park, Taman Mini, presented the acceptable limits of Indonesia’s cultural difference, while development efforts were directed at improving the lot of “vulnerable population groups,” including those deemed remote or especially backwards. Expressions of the desire for development made through bottom up planning processes and supplications to visiting officials were the approved format through which rural citizens communicated with the state. National activists and international donors who argued for the rights of indigenous people were dismissed as romantics imposing their primitivist fantasies upon poor folk who want, or should want, to progress like “ordinary” Indonesians. Nevertheless, a discourse on indigenous people took hold in activist circles in the final years of Suharto’s rule, and it has increasing currency in the Indonesian countryside. With the new political possibilities opened up in the post-Suharto era, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on how Indonesia’s indigenous or tribal slot is being envisioned, who might occupy it, and with what effects.

/pdf/articulating-indigenous-identity-in-indonesia-resource-3k7j3lpe73.pdf

Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia: Resource Politics and the Tribal Slot

Placing labor at the center of the global ‘land-grab’ debate helps sharpen critical insights at two scales At the scale of agricultural enterprises, a labor perspective highlights the jobs generated, and the rewards received, by people who work in and around large farms This approach guides my critical reading of the report prepared by a World Bank team that argues for large-scale land acquisition as a way to reduce poverty Using data from within the report itself, I show why poverty reduction is a very unlikely result I develop the argument further by drawing on research in colonial and contemporary Indonesia, where large-scale plantations and associated smallholder contract schemes have a long history A labor perspective is also relevant at the national and transnational scale, where it highlights the predicament of people whose labor is not needed by the global capitalist system In much of the global South, the anticipated transition from the farm to factory has not taken place and education offe

/pdf/centering-labor-in-the-land-grab-debate-3p5vbzcqgz.pdf

Centering labor in the land grab debate

A biopolitics of the population, when it succeeds in securing life and wellbeing, is surely worth having. It has become urgent in rural Asia, where a new round of enclosures has dispossessed large numbers of people from access to land as a way to sustain their own lives, and neoliberal policies have curtailed programs that once helped to sustain rural populations. At the same time, new jobs in manufacturing have not emerged to absorb this population. They are thus “surplus” to the needs of capital, and not plausibly described as a labour reserve. Who, then, would act to keep these people alive, and why would they act? I examine this question by contrasting a conjuncture in India, where a make live program has been assembled under the rubric of the “right to food”, and Indonesia, where the massacre of the organized left in 1965 has left dispossessed populations radically exposed.

/pdf/to-make-live-or-let-die-rural-dispossession-and-the-3argbsn34k.pdf

To Make Live or Let Die? Rural Dispossession and the Protection of Surplus Populations

This meta-analysis of land-cover transformations of the past 10–15 years in tropical forest-agriculture frontiers world-wide shows that swidden agriculture decreases in landscapes with access to local, national and international markets that encourage cattle production and cash cropping, including biofuels. Conservation policies and practices also accelerate changes in swidden by restricting forest clearing and encouraging commercial agriculture. However, swidden remains important in many frontier areas where farmers have unequal or insecure access to investment and market opportunities, or where multi-functionality of land uses has been preserved as a strategy to adapt to current ecological, economic and political circumstances. In some areas swidden remains important simply because intensification is not a viable choice, for example when population densities and/or food market demands are low. The transformation of swidden landscapes into more intensive land uses has generally increased household incomes, but has also led to negative effects on the social and human capital of local communities to varying degrees. From an environmental perspective, the transition from swidden to other land uses often contributes to permanent deforestation, loss of biodiversity, increased weed pressure, declines in soil fertility, and accelerated soil erosion. Our prognosis is that, despite the global trend towards land use intensification, in many areas swidden will remain part of rural landscapes as the safety component of diversified systems, particularly in response to risks and uncertainties associated with more intensive land use systems.

/pdf/trends-drivers-and-impacts-of-changes-in-swidden-cultivation-43vqj84zhv.pdf

Trends, drivers and impacts of changes in swidden cultivation in tropical forest-agriculture frontiers: A global assessment

Marginality, power and production - analyzing upland transformations constituting the uplands - economies and traditions maize and tobacco in upland Indonesia culturalizing the Indonesian Uplands "It's Not Economical" - the market roots of a moral economy in highland Sulawesi representing the Uplands - traditional knowledge and environments reconsidered forest knowledge, forest transformation - political contingency, historical ecology and the renegotiation of knowledge in central Seram becoming a tribal elder, and other green development fantasies representations of the "Other" by others - the ethnographic challenge posed by planters' views of peasants in Indonesia changing agrarian relations - commodity production and state agendas nucleus and plasma - contract farming and the exercise of power in upland West Java (Part contents)

Transforming the Indonesian uplands: marginality, power and production.

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Transforming the Indonesian uplands: marginality, power and production.