Mapping Common Futures: Customary Communities,

NGOs and the State in Indonesia’s Reform Era

Carol Warren

ABSTRACT

The post-Suharto ‘Reform Era’ has witnessed explosive revitalization move-

ments among Indonesia’s indigenous minorities or ‘customary’ (adat) com-

munities attempting to redress the disempowerment they suffered under the

former regime. This study considers the current resurgence of customary

claims to land and resources in Bali, where the state-sponsored investment

boom of the 1990s had severe social and environmental impacts. It focuses on

recent experiments with participatory community mapping, aimed at refram-

ing the relationship between state and local institutions in planning and

decision-making processes. Closely tied to the mapping and planning strategy

have been efforts to strengthen local institutions and to confront the problems

of land alienation and community control of resources. The diversity of

responses to this new intervention reflects both the vitality and limitations

of local adat communities, as well as the contributions and constraints of

non-governmental organizations that increasingly mediate their relationships

to state and global arenas. This ethnographic study explores participants’

experiences of the community mapping programme and suggests its potential

for developing ‘critical localism’ through long-term, process-oriented engage-

ments between communities, governments, NGOs, and academic researchers.

INTRODUCTION: SIMPLIFICATIONS AND DISPLACEMENTS

In the wake of the Asian economic crisis and the collapse of the Suharto regimein 1997–8, Indonesia witnessed the resurgence of local claims to authority andresources in another version of the ‘people power’ politics that are becomingan increasingly prominent part of global political change movements.

This research is part of an Australian Research Council project titled: ‘Locating the

Commonweal: Communities, Environments and Local Governance in Reform Era

Indonesia’. The study concerns decentralization and democratization across Indonesia in the

context of the current economic crisis and reform efforts. I wish to thank participants from the

five communities (Tenganan, Sibetan, Ceningan, Pelaga and Belok Sidan) and the two non-

governmental organizations (Yayasan Kehati and Yayasan Wisnu) engaged in the community

mapping programme described in this article — in particular, Ambarwati K., Made Denik

Puriawati, Yoga Atmaja and Made Suarnatha. I am also grateful to Greg Acciaioli, Hildred

Geertz, Anton Lucas, John McCarthy, Jim Schiller, Leontine Visser and the reviewers of the

journal for their comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Development and Change 36(1): 49–73 (2005). # Institute of Social Studies 2005. Publishedby Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St.,Malden, MA 02148, USA

Although popular democratic forces have yet to transform the old economicstructures or the political corruption and patronage that pervade Indonesianinstitutions, there is no question that they have unsettled the balance of powerbetween central, regional and local political and economic arenas. Where localcommunities are organizing to assert themselves, significant new orientationstoward planning and development are emerging. Most visible in the newpolitical constellation has been the resurgence of local customary (adat) com-munities, seeking to redefine their place in Indonesia’s ‘Reform Era’. Often inalliance with the burgeoning NGOmovement, these communities are attempt-ing to redress their experience of disempowerment under Suharto’s ‘NewOrder’ regime, when local cultures and authority structures were systematic-ally marginalized, as land and resources were appropriated by the state.

During the long period of Suharto rule from 1966 to 1998, Indonesiaembarked upon its particular neo-colonial version of what James Scott hasdescribed as ‘state simplification’ programmes aimed at ‘standardizing thesubjects of development’ in the interest of ‘legibility and control’ (Scott,1998: 339–48). With backing from international agencies such as the WorldBank, the Suharto regime pursued political order and economic developmentthrough a number of policy and legislative changes1 that shifted the control oflocal institutions and resources to the centre. Among these, the Village Gov-ernment Law of 1979 attempted to create a hierarchic system of local govern-ment subject to central direction. This unified top-down structure seriouslyeroded the varied local governance regimes across Indonesia that had theirroots in local customary institutions and sensibilities. Adat institutions weremarginalized, replaced or co-opted through centrally-driven developmentpolicies which were made to serve the political and economic interests of thenational elite and those regional and local agents they patronized.

Balinese customary communities — desa adat and banjar adat2 — remainedmore or less intact alongside official (dinas) structures throughout this period.3

1. The Forestry Law (1967), the Mining Law (1967) and the Law on Fisheries (1985)

increased central control over natural resources; the 1974 Law on Regional

Administration and 1979 Village Government Law extended control over local

administration. Finally, reinterpretation of the ‘national interest’ provisions of the Basic

Agrarian Law (1960) allowed the expropriation of land throughout the country to serve

private interests (see Lucas and Warren, 2000).

2. These refer respectively to the customary village (desa adat) and hamlet (banjar adat), the

latter usually a subdivision of the village. In some of the oldest Balinese villages, however,

the desa and banjar adat coincide and perform different functions. Both have official

counterparts in the desa dinas and banjar dinas; see Warren (1993) for a full account of the

pattern of dualism that resulted in the Balinese context over the New Order period.

3. See the article by M. Suartina, ‘Membangun Bali dari Desa’ [Develop Bali from the

Village] (Bali Post 15 February 2001): ‘The administrative Desa Dinas established by

the government was not more than a rubber stamp for power. While the local institution

that captured the really significant dynamics of everyday life, was the organization they

built themselves, the Desa Adat. . . . ’.

50 Carol Warren

However, in important spheres of interest affecting land and resources,adat institutions were sidelined as authorities that in the official domain signedland transfers and rubber-stamped project location permits in line withstate development policies and the private interests those policies served.Although massive displacements had been occurring in other parts of theIndonesian archipelago since the New Order took power,4 and Bali itselfhad suffered from the traumatic events accompanying the Suharto take-over in 1965–6,5 the implications of growing central government powerand new authority structures for local development became starkly evidentin Bali only in the last decade of the Suharto regime. At the height of the‘Asian Economic Miracle’ a steady stream of unpopular resort projectswere imposed on Tanah Lot, Serangan, Pecatu and other sites outside theNusa Dua enclave to which mass tourism was intended to be restricted bythe 1972 Master Plan. Involving substantial external investments and theexpropriation of large tracts of land, these developments were popularlyperceived as threatening Bali’s environmental and cultural integrity(Suasta and Connor, 1999; Warren, 1998). Throughout the 1990s landwas taken for numerous mega-projects under varying degrees of duress.6

Since the collapse of the Suharto regime in the wake of the Asianeconomic crisis of 1997–8, a sea change has taken place in the relationshipof local to central authority and customary to official institutions acrossIndonesia. In 1999 regional autonomy legislation was rushed through theIndonesian parliament in an effort to assuage discontent in the regions andforestall the country’s disintegration. The legislation signalled majorchanges in the authority vested in representative bodies vis-a-vis the execu-tive at every level, and a less hierarchical relationship between Central,Provincial, District, Subdistrict and Village level government. The newlegislation also gave legitimacy to centrifugal processes already under waythroughout the archipelago.

In Bali, adat communities began renegotiating their relationships togovernment and private actors who previously accessed local resourcesthrough the state apparatus. Claiming prior authority within their cus-tomary domains, local communities across the island have been assuming

4. See Lucas and Warren (2000) and Warren and McCarthy (2002) for a discussion of

processes of dispossession as a result of state authorized development projects under the

New Order. For specific case studies, see Acciaioli (2002); Dove (1988); Li (1999);

McCarthy (2000); Tsing (1993).

5. The 1965–6 massacres, which wiped out the rapidly growing Indonesian Communist Party

(PKI) in one of the least covered atrocities in the twentieth century, were particularly

intense in Bali and Java. Of the estimated one million people killed throughout the

country, some 80,000 or 5 per cent of the population of Bali died in the blood bath

orchestrated by Suharto’s military faction (Robinson, 1995).

6. The military were heavily involved in the expropriation of land everywhere in Indonesia in

this period.

Customary Communities, NGOs and the State in Indonesia 51

management of tourist attractions, developing new industries, regulatingresource access, and negotiating terms with hotels and other outsideinterests to achieve higher levels of local employment and funding ofcommunity programmes. This momentum continues despite efforts bythe current government to slow and even reverse decentralization, whichhas been a centrepiece of Indonesia’s post-Suharto reform programme.7

Long-standing anxieties about loss of control over the island’s destinywere further exacerbated by the Kuta bombing in October 2002. Carried outby anti-Western Islamic extremists from Java, the attack on two nightclubsin the popular tourist district severely damaged Bali’s economy and stirredquestions about the island’s over-dependence on tourism and its relation-ship to the nation state in which Balinese constitute a religious and ethnicminority culture. Controversies concerning the interconnected issues of landalienation, the inflow of outside capital, the in-migration of large numbersof job seekers from other parts of Indonesia, and the integrity of theBalinese environment, culture and identity have pervaded local perceptionsof the perils of development and globalization for at least the last decade.Editorials, feature articles and letters to the editor in the local newspaper inthe months following the tragedy, reflecting these now intensified concerns,criticized the over-emphasis on tourism, the neglect of the traditional agri-cultural sector, and the inadequate regulation of land use, migration andenvironment.8

MAPPING FUTURES: REDRESSING THE BALANCE

Among the tools deployed in efforts to revise relations of governance in thisperiod of reform across Indonesia is an innovative approach to local

7. Criticism of the impacts of the 1999 regional autonomy laws revolve primarily around

questions of the incapacity of provincial and district level governments to manage regional

economies and environments effectively, the serious inequities between resource rich and

poor regions, the loss of tax revenues disabling central government, and the proliferation

of opportunities for corruption in a decentralized system. The central government has not

improved its own performance in these areas over the several governments which have

followed the Suharto regime since 1998, however. For examples of press treatment of the

issue, see: ‘Revisi UU Otda demi Pemulihan Ekonomi’ [Revision of Regional Autonomy

Laws in the Interest of Economic Recovery] (Suara Pembaruan 15 January 2004);

‘Kepentingan Pusat Dominan Warnai Revisi UU Otda’ [Central Government Interests

Dominate Revisions of Regional Autonomy Laws] (Media Indonesia 1 December 2003).

8. Examples include: ‘Bali Dijual untuk Pariwisata? Hentikan Pengkaplingan Tanah’ [Bali

Sold Off for Tourism? Stop Land Speculation], a feature article in the Bali Post (18

November 2002); ‘Moratorium dari Tuhan’ [Moratorium from God] in the ‘From the

Banjar Meeting House’ column in the Bali Post (20 April 2003); ‘Bertindak untuk Masa

Depan Bali’ [Take Action for Bali’s future], a letter to the editor of the Bali Post (28 May

2003).

52 Carol Warren

agenda-setting and resource management, which is occurring largely outsidethe official sphere, through collaboration between NGOs and localcommunities. Described as participatory community mapping or counter-mapping,9 the process of collectively identifying local resources, definingpatterns of land ownership and use, tracing historically and culturallysignificant sites, and negotiating individual and community control overlocal resources, is proving a challenging and empowering process for manycommunities.

Colonial and post-colonial states used maps to fix, homogenize and thento inscribe a national territorial regime over human inhabitants and com-plex ecologies. While the ordered incorporation of standardized subjectcitizens is part of the purpose of modern map-making (Anderson, 1991),these representations had the simultaneous function of erasing alternativeindigenous relationships to land and nature.10 Bounded spaces, upon whichtax and resource extraction regimes could be systematically and centrallyimposed, took the place of complex ecologically, historically and culturallyencoded local constructions to which more fluid and overlapping propertyregimes applied (Li, 2001; Thongchai, 1994; Zerner, 2003). The idea thatBalinese communities might reclaim greater control over the future direc-tion of social change and economic development through a participatorycommunity mapping programme involved a reversal of these prevailing‘simplifications’ and new approaches to making ‘legible’ the local know-ledge and local claims erased or suppressed by state practice (Peluso, 1995;Scott, 1998; Warren and McCarthy, 2002).

This study focuses on five communities in Bali involved in an NGO-sponsored mapping programme, which has attempted to develop creativealternatives to the top-down models of planning and resource managementthat characterized the government agenda in the three decades since Suhartoassumed power. The diversity of purposes, experiences and responses of thefive communities engaged in this still evolving programme present a verydifferent dynamic to established practice. Contrary to the fixing and reifica-tion which tends to be associated with official mapping and decision-making

9. For examples of important studies in this vein, see Fox (2002); Hodgson and Schroeder

(2002); Momberg et al. (1996); Peluso (1995); Poole (1995). Hodgson and Schroeder

suggest the importance of distinguishing between the politically motivated objectives of

‘counter-mapping’ and forms of ‘community mapping’ that have other aims, such as

internal resource use planning or building community identity and common purpose. In

the five communities studied here, these multiple objectives — exploratory and

instrumental, internally and externally oriented — were inextricably connected.

10. In a more extreme example of this erasure than the Indonesian case (where the national

constitution at least theoretically recognized the existence of adat communities), in

Australia, the state operated under the legal fiction that the island continent was terra

nullius, literally an empty land. This situation prevailed until the important Mabo High

Court decision of 1992 recognized the existence of prior property rights of aboriginal

peoples.

Customary Communities, NGOs and the State in Indonesia 53

processes — the ‘state simplifications’ (Scott, 1998) and ‘rationalizing’procedures (Weber, 1947) of modern governance — participatory mappinghas stimulated creative, diverse, provisional, and not infrequently conten-tious assertions in the local sphere.

The communities involved in the participatory mapping programme inBali, which was funded by a national NGO, Yayasan Kehati,11 and imple-mented by a local one, Yayasan Wisnu,12 are rural, remote and composed ofmore or less ethnically homogeneous populations. They share a commonBalinese identity and a set of highly structured local institutions, validatedby powerful, religiously legitimated Balinese customary traditions (adat).These institutions theoretically provide a strong basis for public participa-tion in planning, decision-making and implementation. They are organizedaround ancestrally sanctioned oral or written local codes; broadly based,democratically elected or rotational leadership; direct participation indecision-making at routine meetings by household heads (generally male);and a sanction system that primarily depends upon social pressure, butultimately may involve expulsion for extreme transgression of customarycodes.

Each of the communities had experienced some degree of conflict orcontention with regional or provincial authorities concerning land alien-ation, water allocation, and/or tourism development. All had an interest inthe possibility of initiating some form of community-based tourism in thehope of providing enhanced employment options and social stimulus thatwould stem the flow of young people from their home villages to the urbantourist meccas of South Bali. At the same time, these communities sought inone way or another to fend off or control direct external investment and theattendant dislocations they saw in the overdeveloped parts of the island.Protection of the environment and local culture were more or less explicitobjectives of both NGOs and local communities involved in the programme.

On the face of it, each of the participating villages approximate the ideal-typic ‘community’ as well as any in the ethnographic literature. But localstructures, political cultures, and adat practices vary from one community

11. The Kehati Foundation was founded under the patronage of a number of academics and

high profile national figures, including the former Minister for the Environment, Emil

Salim, to promote public awareness on biodiversity and community participation in

environmental management. The initial funding for its programmes was provided by an

endowment fund grant from the US government in 1995. USAID was one of the primary

sources of funding for its projects. Further information on the organization can be found

at the Yayasan Kehati website: http://www.kehati.or.id

12. The Wisnu Foundation is an environmental NGO founded in Bali in 1993. Initially it

focused on waste management in the tourism sector but, in the changing political climate,

shifted its attention to community empowerment and environmental management

programmes. Its activities have been primarily dependent upon funding from national

agencies, with some income from recycling and other local projects (Yoga Atmaja, 2002;

Yoga Atmaja and Suarnatha, 2002).

54 Carol Warren

to the other, and degrees of ‘success’ in achieving project outcomes were notalways predictable along structural lines. The diversity of responses to thecommunity mapping programme underscores the significance of recentrevisionist literature on the ‘community’ construct which challenges unquali-fied assumptions of homogeneous interests and collectivist ethos.13

Compounding the effects of social divisions and interpersonal conflictswithin the five communities were differences arising from the manner ofrecruitment to the NGO programme and the varied relationships of directparticipants to the wider communities they represented. Three of the villageswere included in the programme because of previous involvement withenvironmental projects run by Kehati or Wisnu. Two learned of the pro-gramme from academic or NGO contacts and requested inclusion withspecific objectives of their own. The volunteer work groups (KSM —Kelompok Sosial Masyarakat) organizing the mapping programme fromeach community had quite different compositions. There was wide repre-sentation of age groups among all KSM, but only three of the five includedwomen. There were a few official and customary leaders among the par-ticipants — a hamlet head, an irrigation society co-ordinator, an ex-head ofthe official village, and a village priest were involved in one or other group— but the majority of volunteers were ordinary members or informalleaders. Differing relationships between the work-groups and parent cus-tomary hamlet or village (banjar/desa adat) evolved over the early years ofthe project, partly due to the ad hoc manner in which the villages wererecruited, and the relatively non-prescriptive approach to organizationalissues adopted in the programme.

The initial phase of the project involved plotting out local land andresource uses on GIS-based maps with the assistance of the TechnicalFaculty of the local university. Unknown and taken-for-granted resourceswere revealed in the process, as well as assets that had been diverted toprivate use or appropriated by the state. The second phase was devoted totraining programmes in participatory rural appraisal, eco-tourism princi-ples, small business financial management, alongside internal deliberationswithin each community on how best to use the enhanced knowledge andappreciation of their customary domain for the future. The third phaseinvolved forward planning, grant applications for project development,and the staged implementation of collective planning decisions.

Participants credited the mapping process with giving them a broader andmore balanced perspective on the cultural and material resources availablein their communities, as well as a more acute sense of the vulnerabilities andpotential conflicts presented by different patterns of resource use and dif-ferent development options. A brief profile of the five villages involved in

13. See Agrawal and Gibson (2001), Brosius et al. (1998), and Natcher and Hickey (2002) for

discussions of these issues in relation to environmental protection.

Customary Communities, NGOs and the State in Indonesia 55

the mapping programme (see Figure 1) will serve to illustrate the diversity ofresponses that this focused collective introspection produced.14

Desa Tenganan, an old Balinese adat village with large communal landholdings and strict rules of endogamy, stands at the ‘closed corporate’ endof the spectrum in Wolf’s (1957) classic typology of peasant communitystructures. It was also a celebrated example of the model ‘Village Repub-lic’ in Dutch colonial scholarship on Bali (Korn, 1933/1984). Tengananhad been involved in a number of environmental projects and joined themapping programme with the intention of developing a community oper-ated trekking programme employing young people in the village as trainedguides. In the process of mapping and planning, questions of knowledgetransmission and the differential authority of core over non-core villagemembers in local decision-making prompted more attention to humanresource and institutional capacity-building issues. The loss of localcultural and environmental knowledge as a consequence of the formaleducation system and changing work patterns and lifestyles, as well as lax

KARANGASEM

BULELENG

JEMBRANA

TABANAN

BADUNG

Denpasar

SanurKuta

Nusa Dua

GIANYAR

KLUNGKUNG

BANGLI

Tenganan

Sibetan

Belok SidanPelaga

SCALE 1 : 450,000

0 4.5 9 13.5 18 KmN

Indian Ocean

Bali Strait

Lombok Strait

Java Sea

0 m

100 m

500 m

1000 m

+ 1000 m

Legend

Ceningan

Figure 1. Map of Bali Showing Administrative Regions andStudy Comunities

14. Ethnographic field research upon which these profiles are based took place during several

field trips between August 2000 and November 2003. My involvement with the village of

Tenganan and with Yayasan Wisnu preceded this project, dating back to earlier research

on land tenure and environment issues in the 1990s.

56 Carol Warren

enforcement of some of Tenganan’s previously strict adat rules, weresubjects of discussion in the village and at the annual inter-communityworkshops. The participants from Tenganan wanted to address whatsome regarded as apathy concerning local institutional issues. In additionto the original goal of developing eco-treks and a corps of knowledgeableguides in the village, they planned to update and enforce their villageconstitution and to inventory local plant varieties and uses before thisknowledge was lost.

Banjar Dukuh, an adat/dinas hamlet in the village of Sibetan, becameconvinced that putting its energies into down-stream processing of itsprimary fruit crop, salak, was going to offer far more immediate benefitsto the majority of villagers than a narrow focus on developing eco-tourism enterprises. Dukuh began a programme to investigate and conservethe full range of genetic varieties of salak, some of which had not been ofcommercial significance and were at risk of disappearing. They experi-mented with production of wine and sweets from surplus fruit to diversifyincome sources and reduce market price fluctuation. But they also cameto recognize that past expansion of salak cultivation itself had been at acost. Inventories and valuations of basic requirements for food, rituals,and so on, made people realize how much they now spend on items whichpreviously had been freely available as part of a more bio-diverse localenvironment.

Villagers residing in the two hamlets comprising the remote islet ofCeningan,15 an hour from the mainland by boat, reversed their initiallypositive reception to government plans for tourism development on theisland when the community mapping exercise enabled them to weigh uppotential costs alongside benefits and to imagine alternative options. Seagrass farming had been thriving on Ceningan in recent years and coastaldevelopment on nearby Nusa Lembongan was already posing ecologicalthreats. What would be the effects of water demand and waste produced bysignificant numbers of tourists coming directly to Ceningan? Who wouldcontrol the sand-fringed shallow bays that represented the basic resource forwhich the two economies would inevitably have to compete? And whatwould be left of their community if most of their land was taken and largenumbers of villagers were forced to relocate to make way for the planneddevelopment? For the time being at least, Ceningan villagers decided thatmass tourism would be incompatible with their way of life and current localuses of the environment, and publicly rejected the proposed US$ 200 millionresort development. The mapping project participants from Ceninganturned their attention to building greater community solidarity and expand-ing their cultural resources through the establishment of an inter-hamlet

15. Ceningan was divided into two banjar, components of a larger desa adat based on nearby

Lembongan island.

Customary Communities, NGOs and the State in Indonesia 57

‘Communications Forum’ and new performance groups. Ceningan alsobegan pressing the regional government for a share in income from thelucrative birds’ nests being exploited by a private company under officiallicence. Although it rejected the government-backed tourist resort develop-ment, Ceningan has yet to decide on rules regulating the sale of land on theisland. Unlike Tenganan, land ownership on Ceningan is not predominantlycommunal and a significant proportion of its land is in the hands ofresidents on the nearby island of Lembongan, which is already a developingtourist destination.

Belok Sidan, a large official (dinas) village comprising six customaryvillages and eight hamlets, was already the object of a badly plannedregional government agricultural and eco-tourism development.16 The tour-ist facilities were a gesture toward regional development in this neglectedmountain periphery, where they had been located without adequate con-sultation and without clear arrangements for management. The main focusof internal debates in Belok Sidan concerned: how to wrest control of thefacility from the regional government; which local group should take overits management (the official village, the customary hamlet, or a contractedmanaging group with some experience in the tourist industry); and how todistribute benefits from the project in a way that would satisfy publicexpectations in this large rural community. Questions of private versuspublic interest, village (desa) versus component hamlet (banjar), and localcustomary (adat) against official (dinas) institutional control of the government-funded tourist facility were among the sources of friction. Along with issuesof accountability for mapping project funds that arose later, these unre-solved tensions led Belok Sidan to withdraw from the community mappingprogramme during its second phase.

The people of Banjar Kiadin in the Desa Adat of Pelaga were ambivalentabout regional government plans to put this mountainous region on themap with the construction of a road and bridge across a steep ravinebetween Pelaga and the village of Belok Sidan. With impending completionof the bridge, both communities will face all the opportunities and impactsof strategic location along a new route linking the southern mass tourismenclaves to mountain sightseeing destinations. Villagers are both attractedby and hesitant about the development of the ‘agricultural tourism’ forwhich this area has been designated in regional government zoning plans.Many are opposed to the location of large-scale tourist facilities in their

16. Among other problems, the 400 million rupiah (US$ 47,000) facility was out of keeping

with the landscape and rural character of the village, both in scale and in the use of

construction materials. The cement paths built by the regional government for trekking,

for example, were not consistent with nature-based tourism principles. Both Belok Sidan

and Pelaga lie in the remote mountain area north of the wealthiest of Bali’s regions,

Badung, where the mass tourist destinations of Kuta, Sanur and Nusa Dua line the

southern coast. Inequities in economic development between these zones are stark.

58 Carol Warren

community. It is already proverbial that locals become merely ‘observers asoutsiders take over the house’ in such situations. Recognizing the value ofthe water piped down from these mountains to the high class resorts in thesouth of Bali, this coffee producing community had reservations about therisks of unregulated tourism development set against the real value of theirnatural assets. As a result of the mapping and planning programme, Kiadinhas invested in community-owned processing equipment and upmarketpackaging and labelling of the high quality coffee it produces, and isinvestigating the possibility of developing bamboo-based industries aswell. The mapping process also stimulated the revival of dance traditionsthat had been dormant for many years, contributing to village cultural life,and adding to the potential for the alternative community-based tourismenvisaged through the project.

Aimed at community empowerment and a transformation of planningand zoning processes, the participatory mapping programme has gonesome way toward reversing asymmetrical institutional relationshipsbetween official and customary, central and local authorities. Accordingto most of the participants, the new activist intervention dynamized theircommunities, focusing and revitalizing their sense of place. The mappingexperiment convinced them of the need to proactively assert responsibilityfor the environment and the social and cultural relationships bound to it.The collaborative experience enabled them to negotiate with powerfulexternal interests on more equal terms, and in some instances to resistor revise the designs of state and private interests. Regional governmentagents were clearly taken aback at an NGO-sponsored workshop in 2000,aimed at building better state–local relations, when they were facedwith powerpoint presentations showing GIS maps and planning targetsdetermined by each of the five communities involved in the mappingprogramme. These presentations were facilitated by the NGOs andpersuasively put forward by community spokespersons in the course ofthe day-long session.

On that occasion, one of Ceningan’s informal leaders, Pan Mira,delivered an impressive impromptu critique aimed at the two regionalgovernment delegates from the district in which Ceningan is located. Hechided the narrowness of vision that hitherto characterized state policy inlanguage that indicates the influence of the NGO sponsored programme:

We are often asked why Ceningan rejected tourism . . .What was rejected by the people

was . . . first of all the decision-making process . . . Clearly this was going to be disastrous for

the environment, in particular the carrying capacity . . . It isn’t possible that Ceningan with

16 star class hotels could satisfy its water requirements . . . Socially too the people would

become extremely marginalized . . .

We are always making a god of capital in the form of money, even though our ‘capital’ here

is of many kinds . . . There is the natural landscape . . . which would have nomeaning if we were

to completely desert our roots . . . The potential of Ceningan is very great in other sectors,

such as fishing, sea grass cultivation . . . There is agriculture, animal husbandry . . . that need to

be developed also. Don’t let’s only talk about tourism to the point where we are colonized by

Customary Communities, NGOs and the State in Indonesia 59

tourism itself . . . That would bring great misfortune. (Recorded workshop discussion, 20

October 2000)17

A participant from Tenganan, Nyoman Sadra, advocating on behalf oftwo of the other villages, asked why there weren’t cross-subsidies to balanceout inequities between the overdeveloped south and other parts of Bali. Hepointed to Pelaga and Belok Sidan, which had been identified by theBadung Regional Government as catchment zones providing fresh waterto the hotels in the southern tourist enclaves:

This is an issue of principle . . .We are told by regional government that Belok and Pelaga in

the north are so important because this is an essential area for water catchment, even though

the people of these villages are themselves left short of water. The resorts down south are

getting the water collected up there. That kind of inequity lets them get rich, while the people

in the north supplying them don’t [get anything]. This is where development policy is

supposed to operate. (Recorded workshop discussion, 20 October 2000)

That meeting turned out to be a humbling experience for the governmentrepresentatives, who were ill-prepared in comparison to the carefullyconsidered and impressively presented arguments put forward by villageparticipants. The latter repeatedly challenged the process of planning thathad marked development strategies to date, and questioned whose interestswere allegedly and actually being served. They set out explicit proposals forwhich they expected to have regional government support, and demandedcancellation or review of developments and resource allocations which theyhad previously had no involvement in planning. Promises of greater con-sultation were elicited, and at the very least contact across the bureaucraticdivide had been brokered. With enhanced confidence stimulated by themapping programme, Ceningan determined to reject the proposed tourismdevelopment and subsequently to negotiate for a share of the US$ 35,000 inroyalties paid to regional government by the company exploiting thevaluable birds’ nests located within the village boundaries (reported inBali Post, 14 January 2003). Prior to the community mapping exerciseCeningan received no income from this recently discovered resource, ofwhose high commercial value they had not previously been aware.

NEGOTIATING SPACES: THE POLITICS OF INCLUSION AND

EXCLUSION

Confronting state designs was not, however, the only obstacle faced bylocal communities in the immediate post-Suharto period when the stateapparatus had been so seriously discredited. Internal conflicts and differ-ences of perspective absorbed considerable attention in the pursuit of themapping programme, as did the rights and responsibilities of inclusion that

17. Translations of all interviews and recorded workshop discussions are the author’s.

60 Carol Warren

community constructs imply. These represented among the most challen-ging, provocative, but for some also the most satisfying aspects of thenegotiative spaces that the community mapping programme provided.

Leadership and the relationship of the volunteer working groups totheir communities were among the problematic issues that emerged.Despite representing the corporate structural extreme on the spectrum ofvillage types, at least with respect to its history and social structure,the Tenganan work-group was not always enthusiastically supported byits adat village council (krama desa). This was partly because of personalantipathies between the current village head and one of the work-groupmembers who had himself previously filled that position. In Ceningan, theflamboyant style of the energetic and widely quoted spokesperson of thecommunity work-group eventually attracted criticism from other villagers,and he later withdrew from active participation in the programme. BelokSidan ended its participation entirely when the distribution of projectbenefits and questions of transparency and responsibility for use ofproject funds came to a head.

Both the Dukuh and Kiadin work-groups managed to maintain a verygood working relationship with their respective hamlets through regularreporting at monthly meetings and close banjar overseeing of work-groupactivities. In both instances the smaller scale and direct participation thatcharacterize banjar organization facilitated a positive feedback relationship.In the other villages, ambiguity concerning the appropriate institutionallevel at which the programme could effectively operate posed practicalproblems. In all cases, the principles that might be established for distribut-ing income generated from planned co-operative projects provoked consider-able debate.18

Boundary questions were much deeper and more complex than simplydetermining where lines were to be drawn on a map. Anxieties about outsideforces and interests were clearly an underlying concern for these as for othercommunities in Bali. Issues of inclusion and exclusion arose most acutelywith respect to rights to buy and sell land. Complex connections betweenplace and ancestral obligation are implicated in conceptions of local citizen-ship that animate Balinese adat communities, where collective responsibilityfor aspects of spiritual and material well-being weigh heavily. For Balinese,rights to certain categories of land entail ritual and social labour service(ayahan) obligations. Only in Tenganan, however, are there strict customary

18. A participant from Belok Sidan voiced concern over villagers’ unrealistic expectations for

the outcome of projects that aim to make whole communities beneficiaries and responsible

stakeholders: ‘It was originally intended that the project be for the whole desa [the desa

dinas of Belok Sidan comprises six desa adat and eight banjar dinas/adat]. But it was built

in this banjar and naturally others were anxious . . . It is also clear that we can’t raise the

standard of living of all the members of the community with the proceeds from this

facility’ (interview, 27 September 2000).

Customary Communities, NGOs and the State in Indonesia 61

prohibitions on the sale or transfer of all of its extensive village lands.Elsewhere, varying types of communal ownership or control are exercisedover different categories and proportions of village land.

Villages throughout Bali have been involved in intense debates on theneed to introduce or reinforce customary rules which would permit the saleof village land only on condition that the purchaser reside in the village, jointhe banjar/desa adat, and take on full community and ritual service obliga-tions. Since these customary conditions of land tenure imply both civic andritual responsibilities, they represent an obstacle to urban investors andnon-Balinese in-migrants. Even ethnic Balinese in-migrants may not sub-scribe to all the particular beliefs and practices stipulated by local adat, andthe effort to exercise collective social control is not infrequently a source ofconflict in Balinese communities — however apparently ‘homogeneous’.One of the few in-migrant Balinese residents in Tenganan (a tenant farmerwho had received tenure rights on village adat land as a result of Indonesianland reform measures in the 1960s) faced the possibility of expulsionbecause he had transgressed customary prohibitions against felling trees inthe Tenganan forest. The exercise of severe adat sanctions has become amore open feature of local politics in Reform Era Bali, where willingness toabide by common adat rules and obligations remains an important criterionof local citizenship. Sanctions have always been the flip side of the norma-tively consensual and negotiated solidarity-constructing principles aroundwhich customary village institutions are ideally built.

Deliberations in the course of the mapping programme brought to a headfundamental tensions between land as a symbol and cultural resource on theone hand, and as a productive commodity in market-oriented economicdevelopment agendas on the other. The diversion of communal land toprivate control and the question of collective authority over the dispositionof privately owned land within these villages were among the most conten-tious issues confronted in the course of mapping and subsequent planningphases. Tackling land alienation was regarded by most of the NGO activistsand many of the community participants as prerequisite to asserting localcontrol over development and to planning sustainable futures.

The banjar institution, involving direct routine participation in localaffairs,19 was well suited to the systematic treatment of contentious issuesraised by the programme, at least where an articulate and respected groupof members were prepared to initiate and pursue the process through acombination of formal and informal channels. Apart from Desa Tengananwhere all land is under village control, Banjar Dukuh to date has gone

19. Representatives of all households are required to participate in regular banjar meetings

(sangkepan) held once in a 35-day month on the Balinese calendar. Although adat

citizenship obligations theoretically apply to a married couple, it is customarily the male

partner that represents the family in the political sphere.

62 Carol Warren

furthest in consolidating rules controlling land sales within its domain,although it remains to persuade the wider desa adat to follow suit. Partici-pants in the community mapping programme from Banjar Dukuh describedthe slow and dialogic process of drawing consensus toward a commonposition on the key question of community control over land use:

Suparta (banjar official): Sometimes one point such as the prohibition against building [in

green belts] . . . could involve three or four [banjar] meetings. First the local leaders meet to

come to a common understanding . . . As soon as we have an overview of the advantages and

disadvantages, then we would take it to the banjar assembly. [On the land issue] the debate

was extremely sharp. Sometimes we would run out of time. So we would bring it to the next

meeting. Again the debate was long. In the end we asked, ‘So, how does the community

stand on this? Are we agreed?’ ‘Agreed!’

Danha (farmer): We needed space to think, to focus . . . The debate went on, we took our

thoughts home and asked questions. What are the good and bad effects that need careful

weighing up? Sometimes there was someone who would say: ‘I can’t give agreement yet. My

son thinks like this . . . ’ So we would call his son and explain our rationale.

Sueca (farmer): The debate was really intense; from one side: ‘This is my land, why can’t I

develop it? Why is the banjar prohibiting sale?’ ‘The reason is like this — for the environ-

ment, for the next generation. . . . ’ ‘Well, if that’s the reason!’ ‘Do you agree?’ ‘Agreed!’.

(Group interview, 23 November 2001)

At the same time as efforts were being made to bolster internal solid-arities, strong relationships also developed across the working groupsinvolved in the mapping project. Participants occasionally visited eachother’s communities to compare notes and seek advice or to act as informalfacilitators or mediators. Even Belok Sidan, the village that eventually leftthe programme, found the experience of working with other communitiesfacing similar challenges of great value in its negotiations with regionalauthorities. By the time external funding for the mapping programmeended in 2001,20 participating communities had agreed to contribute towardestablishing two common enterprises: a co-operative inter-village producetrading scheme and community-based eco-tourism venture, for which thefour participating communities and local NGO would pool funds andlabour.

As communities struggle to redefine their place in post-New OrderIndonesia and a globalizing world, interest in the community mapping strategyis spreading. The Bali based branch of the Indonesian Indigenous Peoples’Alliance, AMAN (Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara), has recently takensteps toward introducing community mapping in a number of its membervillages in conjunction with other NGO partners. Representatives from twoadditional villages attended the Kehati/Wisnu project workshop in 2001 withthe intent of adopting this approach to deal with their own local problems: onewas seeking to find a means of maintaining a turtle conservation programmethrough sustainable eco-tourism development; the other, a mixed ethnic

20. See the discussion below on funding problems experienced by the project.

Customary Communities, NGOs and the State in Indonesia 63

migrant community located for several decades in a national park, hoped touse the mapping programme to resolve conflicts with the regional governmentover rights to land and involvement in park management. These pose acomplicated mix of social and environmental issues more serious than anyfaced by the more or less ethnically homogeneous communities engaged in theinitial mapping experiment. In these two villages the formal mapping processwas easily accomplished, but the more important second phase of developingconsensus on future land and resource use has stalled over conflicting percep-tions and interests. It remains to be seen whether these and other communitieswith urgent environmental and social concerns to address will be able to takeup the complexities of a mapping programme without substantial externalmediation and financial support. Unquestionably a range of dispute resolutionmechanisms will be an indispensable adjunct to the use of communitymappingfor local planning processes.

ENGAGING UNCERTAINTIES: COMMUNITIES, NGOS AND ACADEMIC

RESEARCH AGENDAS

The place of NGOs in the new governance regime warrants systematicinclusion in the academic research agenda as part of a multi-sited ethno-graphic approach appropriate to this globalizing, post-modern era (Marcus,1998). NGOs play a critical role in the development of local ‘civil society’,and they are now receiving more attention in the capacity-buildingprogrammes of funding agencies. The communities involved in the Baliprogramme clearly valued the third party role21 and the financial resourcesand networks that NGOs brought to the mapping programme. But localparticipants in this and similar projects were critical of what they perceivedas the ad hoc and instrumental approach sometimes exhibited by NGOpartners. NGO personnel, like their academic and bureaucratic counter-parts, are often urban middle-class ‘outsiders’ with their own objectives topursue and infrastructures to resource.

21. The need for mediation was one of the main reasons Belok Sidan joined the community

mapping programme. The location of the regional government-funded cafe, pavilion,

information kiosk and two small cottages in one banjar without consultation left it

unclear which local unit (hamlet or village, customary or official) was to take

responsibility for the project. Villagers’ irritation with the ambiguous status of this ‘gift’

from regional government was exacerbated by the appointment of an outside manager,

despite government claims that its intention was to contribute to community development:

‘The desa hasn’t gotten anything from the project so far, and it isn’t even clear to which

‘‘community’’ the project belongs. The whole thing is back to front — the mapping only

came at the end. The ambiguity of the arrangement really needs to be settled soon. We

need involvement of a third party to help straighten this out’ (interview, 27 September

2000).

64 Carol Warren

Tensions over the distribution of project funds have pervaded mostof the community-based NGO projects in Bali and Lombok that I havestudied over the last several years. Villagers often expressed dissatis-faction at the proportion of donor funds retained by partner NGOs, andNGO personnel were equally critical of local accountability failings.There is a fundamental contradiction between the desire to avoid unsus-tainable dependency and the need for basic funding and stability toensure accountable practices and project continuity. This conundrumapplies at every level of NGO and community programme operations.22

Concerns about supporting its own infrastructure over the long term,as well as providing continuing support to the communities involved inthe mapping project, were among the reasons that Yayasan Wisnu decidedto become a joint shareholder with the remaining four communities in theco-operative trading and eco-tourism venture which evolved from the project.

Among the many vagaries affecting NGO–community alliances is thefickle nature of funding regimes and donor agency priorities — one of thereasons local NGOs are increasingly seeking practical enterprises to pro-vide independent income sources to fund their activities. In the Baliprogramme, there had been expectations that a third year of fundingfrom Kehati would be available to help set up small enterprises deter-mined through the mapping and planning programme. In the event, thenational organization had its funding from US sources cut substantially asa result of changing American concerns following the events of September11, 2001. As a result of a narrowed set of funding criteria from thenational organization, the Bali project found it necessary to launch itsco-operative trading and eco-tourism experiments without external sup-port in 2002.

Points of friction between the criteria of funding agencies and theexpectations of local community participants are both philosophical andpractical. Pan Mira from Ceningan was characteristically acerbic on thesubject: ‘A lot of NGOs are too much talk and no action. NGOs suffer frominstitutional egoism — they are competing for projects and don’t worktogether.23 Adat is being turned into a project’ (interview, 13 October

22. In another community conservation project involving a large international conservation

agency, branch personnel were seriously troubled by the dependency syndrome and were

resisting the expectations of community participants that the organization would provide

continued assistance in the development of alternative income sources. The ongoing

friction eventually led to a break between the NGO and the community group, despite

their shared conservation goals. At the same time, the NGO personnel were in contention

with the national body over their salaries and the survival of the local branch,

foregrounding analogous questions of donor dependency and sustainability within the

conservation organization itself.

23. Several local NGOs were initially active in the Bali community mapping project, but in the

end only one managed to sustain organized commitment to the programme.

Customary Communities, NGOs and the State in Indonesia 65

2000). Former members of the legal aid foundation in Bali expressedconcern that what appeared to be professionalization of NGOs — ‘suddenlythey are running around with ties’ — was largely about impressing donors,and sometimes involved deserting long-standing advocacy commitments(interviews, 21 September 2000 and 20 August 2002).

Another problem faced by NGOs — and a concern repeatedly expressedby Yayasan Wisnu staff — is the difficulty of transforming politicizedactivists into problem-solving practitioners with mediation, facilitationand management skills. The initial pilot effort at community mapping inCeningan had failed in 1999 when poorly trained and resourced activistsfrom Jakarta turned up on the island, with little to contribute. Despite acritical local reception, Ceningan villagers including Mira realized thepotential of the mapping approach for their marginalized community. Itwas their expressions of interest in developing a better programme that ledWisnu to apply to the national organization24 to fund the programme inBali. For all his reservations about the limitations of the urban middle-classand project-oriented character of many NGOs, Mira felt their role in facili-tating the community mapping programme had been important, and he wasa persuasive advocate of the process.

The strong commitment of the partner NGOs to participatory andprocess-oriented strategies (particularly their focus on institution-buildingand conflict transformation, provision of technical training, and emphasison creating networks to support direct engagement across communities)married well with the similarly exploratory approach of the adat com-munities taking up the Bali programme. The NGO co-ordinator stressedthe creative trial and error search for meeting points of communicationand institutional strengthening in his summing up comments during their2001 workshop:

So Tenganan has a problem with enforcement of its customary rules.25 . . .We have to deal

with rules. They have to be understood, studied and adapted, improved . . . In the field there

may be conflict, a change or transformation of values. What media can we use, not just to

restore a situation to its historical condition, but to work it through to the point of a new

understanding and agreement? We need some medium as a bridge . . .Why in Ceningan did

they focus on performance training, as one step toward resolving internal conflicts? At that

time in Ceningan, disagreement [over different perceptions of government development

plans] was intense. So focusing on building and training a performance troupe was one

medium that was readily accepted. (Made Suarnatha, workshop discussion, 19 November

2001)

24. Yayasan Kehati had developed a reputation for its environmental work with a community

development focus and had for some time been experimenting with the mapping strategy

in other parts of the country.

25. He was referring specifically to customary rules against commercial marketing within the

village walls, one of several areas in which there was overt transgression of the old

customary code by villagers themselves.

66 Carol Warren

The rather standardized community development methods, and even thelanguage of the community mapping programme,26 reflect a particularconstellation of alternative orthodoxies surrounding participatory develop-ment approaches. NGOs, like adat community and state actors, have theirown discursive practices and fixations, which were recognized and occasion-ally disputed by villagers. A Belok Sidan participant, for example, com-plained that what he regarded as an ideologically driven ‘anti-government’stance on the part of the NGOs inhibited resolution of their situation(interview, 31 July 2002). There was also ambivalence in some of the villagesabout the hard line on communal land tenure that was pressed by NGO andsome village participants. Some issues that might have proved controversialwere downplayed in emphasizing others. Gender, ethnic minority and indi-genous rights along with the environment are pillars of international humanrights and sustainability discourses that typically frame projects fundedunder NGO auspices. Indigenous rights and environmental protectionwere clear priorities in the Balinese project; but this weighting had the effectof muting questions of gender equity27 and resource access for in-migrantminorities, although these issues were never completely ignored thanks tothe NGO stakeholders.

Scott (1998: 353ff) argues that in human institutions, as in bio-systems,diversity and complexity offer the advantage of stability, resilience andcreativity: ‘Common law, as an institution, owes its longevity to the factthat it is not a final codification of legal rules, but rather, a set of proceduresfor continually adapting some broad principles to novel circumstances’

26. ‘PRA’ (Participatory Rural Appraisal), ‘ToT’ (Training of Trainers), ‘CO’ (Community

Organizer) were imported into the local lexicon without translation and adeptly deployed

by village participants.

27. Gender issues were systematically pressed in some NGO mapping programmes. For

example, Momberg et al. (1996: 6) report that women involved in a community mapping

project in Kalimantan, were ‘more concerned with conservation than men’, specifying sites

requiring protection as sources of drinking water and firewood. Although a few young

women were involved in the Wisnu/Kehati project, this was not prescribed and women’s

participation varied considerably from one community to another. A report by WWF

relating to a mapping exercise recently carried out at a coastal community in Bali notes the

difficulty of increasing women’s participation: ‘The third problem was the low level of

representation of women in the main activities of the project. The total percentage of

women in the training and mapping activities was less than 10%. The names of the

mapping participants were left totally up to the community. Requests to involve more

women were conveyed repeatedly from the beginning of the project implementation

process. The fact that the names of participants were decided in a democratic way by

the community groups, together with the fact that the representation of women was very

low, is apparently tied to the structure of the local community. Although this was the case,

the women . . . were significantly represented (estimated to be as much as 50%, although

an exact count was not made) during support activities such as the post-mapping religious

dialogues, clean-up operations, and the information/promotion [sosialisasi] evenings on

the mapping programme’ (WWF and Bapedalda, 2003).

Customary Communities, NGOs and the State in Indonesia 67

(ibid.: 357). In this sense the adat orientation to process and local variationseems highly apropos to an age of uncertainty. To whatever extent theseprocesses may from any one position be aimed at constructing particularboundaries or pursuing a particular orthodoxy, when they take place withina global–national–local framework in which other institutions, boundariesand orthodoxies demand recognition, unilaterally imposed closure is at leastproblematized, and potentially transformed.

The experiences of those involved in the NGO sponsored experiment todate suggest its potential as a tool in the exploration of new local models forgovernance, resource management and conflict resolution. The focus onprocess and negotiation, searching out grounds of common interest, andrecognizing overlapping rights, uses and meanings at least gives the impres-sion that ‘provisionality’ rather than ‘certainty’, and ‘complexification’28

rather than ‘simplification’ ought not be dismissed as constructive aspectsof governance in the twenty-first century. However problematic such prin-ciples are for constructing and managing the local, regional, national andglobal ‘commonweal’29, they perhaps offer a more realistic starting pointthan the totalizing prescriptions with which twentieth century ideologiesimposed themselves on the landscape. Scott argues: ‘What has proved tobe truly dangerous to us and to our environment, I think, is the combinationof the universalist pretensions of epistemic knowledge and authoritariansocial engineering’ (Scott, 1998: 340). We need only be reminded of theunanticipated collapse of the Communist system in Eastern Europe, thereconstitution of ethnic hostilities in the former Yugoslavia, the Asianeconomic crisis, the numerous ‘failed states’ of the ‘developing’ world, andthe vulnerability of the most powerful nations to clandestine attack andeconomic and environmental systems failure, to appreciate Scott’s demurabout ‘how routinely planners ignore the radical contingency of the

28. Complementing Scott’s critique of state ‘simplifications’, Berkes et al. (2003: 352ff) focus on

the capacities of local systems for resilience as a critical factor in responding to environmental

challenges. Resilience arises out of a healthy mix of stabilizing institutions and experimental

openness in social-ecological systems which are by definition uncertain and changing.

Managing change through renewal and diversification depends upon an institutional

foundation which sustains social and ecological memory, and combines experience and

experiment to build adaptive and creative capacity. The capacity to build-in diversity and

accommodate complexity is central to this argument.

29. See Warren and McCarthy (2002) for use of this concept to encompass the material, social

and symbolic aspects of resource security issues as an extension of the growing sphere of

debate surrounding questions of ‘the commons’. The links between identities, institutions

and interests will be discussed in depth in future publications through comparative

investigations of a number of local resource conflicts and accommodations in the

Indonesian context. See Uphoff and Langholz (1998) for a general overview of the

‘tragedy of the commons’ question, and see the collection of essays in Zerner (2003) for

a pathbreaking exploration of the important relationship between cultural logics and

property rights in Southeast Asia.

68 Carol Warren

future’ (ibid.: 343). His tentative proposals for redirecting the characterof development planning in the twenty-first century — take small steps,plan on surprises as well as on human inventiveness, favour reversibility(ibid.: 345) — commend experimentation from the bottom-up of thesort these community mapping and planning programmes have beenattempting.

It is important at this juncture to link these explorations to an actionresearch agenda in which academic resources — theory, critical distance,and comparative analysis — are put to the service of experiments at locallevel. Long-term, collaborative, action research programmes are needed inwhich NGOs, government and local communities comparatively experimentwith and share in the documentation and critical analysis of communitymapping and other process-oriented strategies for planning equitable andsustainable local futures. At present, few NGOs have funding timeframes,skill bases, or integrated programmes beyond technical mapping to supportthese endeavours adequately.

CONCLUSION

Efforts aimed at delineating traditional boundaries and managementregimes through community mapping are partly intended to turn a rangeof concepts of customary community domain rights into a set of documentedclaims ‘legible’ to the modern state. But equally important is the exploratorypotential of this bottom-up and participatory approach to the process ofredefining the ‘local’. On the whole, the process-oriented, trial and errorNGO approach suited the similarly exploratory objectives and consensus-building styles of the adat communities involved in the Bali project. If werecognize these efforts to revitalize customary domain rights as part of awider global–local conversation about how best to construct and locatevarious sites and forms of ‘commonweal’, the mapping exercise becomesmuch more than a question of ‘re-inventing tradition’ or narrowly establish-ing rights and exclusions — although that unquestionably forms part of theagenda for these Balinese communities.

Community mapping presents an opportunity for developing what AriefDirlik (1994) labels ‘critical localism’, not only in its challenge to state-imposed boundaries and hierarchies, but in the dynamic and reflexivepotential of the resource-documenting and identity-exploring processesthemselves. It offers creative possibilities in the search for new forms ofrepresentation and new kinds of relationship to land and resources thatmight emerge from the struggle to secure existing, reclaim former, or estab-lish new bases of local social security. Beyond deconstructing the hierarchicstate–local grid, there is potential for exploring the nexus between formalmodes of governance and the informal processes that contribute toward theexpansion of those vital elements that are necessary to make democracy or

Customary Communities, NGOs and the State in Indonesia 69

sustainable development serious common projects — civil society and socialcapital — in ways that might turn contests over boundaries and authoritiesinto productive partnerships and synergies. A broadly critical, reflexive andpolyvalent conversation emerged from dialogue between the multiple actors(local, state, NGO) engaged in the Bali participatory mapping programme.This in turn fed back into the internal processes of negotiation and defin-ition in the home communities, in many, but not all,30 instances positively.

Consideration must also be given to the potential for precipitating openconflict or collusive arrangements that would undermine rather than con-tribute to sustainable community futures. It has to be recognized that in thecontext of the politically polarized situations which have emerged in manyparts of Indonesia, local mapping strategies could simply fix equally inflex-ible ‘counter-maps’, suppressing other perspectives, interests and claims toland, resources and identities in the same way that state maps have done.This is a particularly acute issue for counter-mapping in areas of Indonesiawhere state-sponsored transmigration schemes have resulted in conflictingclaims to land and resources based on customary and state law regimes.These situations present the most serious challenge to bottom-up participa-tory approaches, where process-oriented experiments in conflict mediationand mitigation must be key components in the equation if further environ-mental and social tragedies are not to be heaped on the tarnished legacy ofearlier eras.

Within a broader local planning framework, community mapping couldprove a valuable starting point for renegotiating rights and responsibilitiesin conflict prone areas. A reflexive and future-oriented critical localismrecognizes other constituents to the process of constructing a ‘common-weal’. Social justice and environmental sustainability will only be movedbeyond rhetoric through constructive engagements between different con-stituents and the different levels and forms of governance which offer tocontribute something to local resilience and sustainability. Adat sensibilitiestoward the relationship between rights and responsibilities, and the ances-trally sanctioned links between past, present and future should have

30. In Belok Sidan, none of the government-funded tourist facilities were operating when I

visited in October 2003 because of insufficient tourist numbers and the failure to resolve

accountability, management and marketing issues during the limited period of their

participation in the mapping project. Li (2001) and Parnwell (2003) point to the

importance of including market issues within the community development agenda.

Clearly, this is the arena in which governments and NGOs have proved less than

effective in bringing social and environmental objectives into successful accommodations

with sustainable and equitable economic improvements. See Hilhorst (2003: 136–7) for an

example in which marketing proved the weak link undermining a women’s income-

generating project in the Philippines. Marketing remains a serious problem for the

development of the newly formed Bali co-operatives’ plans for promoting their coffee,

wine and eco-tourism industries.

70 Carol Warren

resonance in the competing but also potentially complementary claims oflocal, national and global institutional frameworks groping toward new mod-els of social and environmental sustainability. All of these local, national andglobal institutional spheres claim to represent sites for constructing sharedwelfare and common interest. Those claims need to be negotiated into a checkand balance framework, turning the rhetorics of identity and interest, trans-parency and accountability31 into real, locally constructive and legible prac-tices. Participatory mapping and planning strategies deserve attention as partof longer-term and more broadly constituted experiments in redefining thelocal commonweal and its place in national and globalizing schemes.

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Press.

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Environmental Conservation 25(3): 251–61.

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Lumpur: Oxford University Press.

Warren, C. (1998) ‘Tanah Lot: The Cultural and Environmental Politics of Resort Develop-

ment in Bali’, in P. Hirsch and C. Warren (eds) The Politics of Environment in Southeast

Asia, pp. 229–61. London: Routledge.

Warren, C. and J. McCarthy (2002) ‘Customary Regimes and Collective Goods in Indonesia’s

Changing Political Constellation’, in S. Sargeson (ed.) Collective Goods, Collective Futures in

Asia, pp. 75–101. London: Routledge.

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York, NY: Free Press.

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Bali: Sosialisasi dan Rencana Aksi pasca Pemetaan Partisipatif, Pulau Serangan’. Denpasar:

WWF (unpublished report).

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Bali’. Paper presented to the Seminar on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development at the Centre

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72 Carol Warren

Zerner, C. (ed.) (2003) Culture and the Question of Rights: Forests, Coasts and Seas in Southeast

Asia. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press.

Carol Warren is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at Murdoch Univer-sity (Perth, Western Australia 6150, Australia), where she teaches anthro-pology and co-ordinates the Development Studies postgraduateprogramme. Her research interests include community development, socialecology, and customary law. Her major publications include Adat andDinas: Balinese Communities in the Indonesian State (Oxford UniversityPress, 1993) and The Politics of Environment in Southeast Asia (Routledge,1998), co-edited with Philip Hirsch.

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