Disputed normativities and the logging boom in Kutai Barat

Local dynamics during the initial phase of regional autonomy in East Kalimantan, Indonesia

Abstract

When Indonesia implemented one of the most rigorous decentralisation reforms throughout Asia in 1999, hopes were high that this would improve the well-being of the local population and promote sustainable resource use. In the district of Kutai Barat, unclear tasksharing and the overlapping authorities of central and district government triggered a logging boom that, on the contrary, increased inequality and furthered deforestation. During this phase of legal uncertainty, ad hoc arrangements between local actors became the central determinants for access to forests and the distribution of benefits. Taking the ethnographic example of two Dayak Benuaq villages, I show that these ad hoc arrangements have to be understood as the outcomes of processes of dispute and negotiation over normative orders at the village level. My case studies show that the specific situation during the initial phase of decentralisation provided local actors with manifold chances to challenge and change existing normative orders that regulate access to forests in Kutai Barat, as well as to create new ones by conflating state law and customary law in creative ways. The case studies further demonstrate that the respective power relations between different actors crucially influenced the form and quality of these ad hoc arrangements and thus largely determined the actual outcomes of decentralisation.