Modern Crises and Traditional Strategies: Local Ecological Knowledge in Island Southeast Asia 9780857452832

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
List of Contributors
1. Introduction
2. Responses to Medium-term Stability in Climate: El Niño, Droughts and Coping Mechanisms of Foragers and Farmers in Borneo
3. Kasepuhan Rice Landrace Diversity, Risk Management and Agricultural Modernization
4. Responses to Environmental Stress in the Baduy Swidden System, South Banten, Java
5. Innovation, ‘Hybrid’ Knowledge and the Conservation of Relict Rainforest in Upland Banten
6. A Comparison of Traditional and Innovative Subsistence Strategies on Buano during Periods of Socio-environmental Stress, 1980–2003
7. A Tradition of Change in Minahasan Agricultural Strategies, North Sulawesi
8. Cycles of Politics and Cycles of Nature: Permanent Crisis in the Uplands of Palawan
9. The Tobe and Tara Bandu: a Post-independence Renaissance of Historic Forest Regulation Authorities and Practices in Oecusse, East Timor
10. Perceptions of Local Knowledge and Adaptation on Mount Merapi, Central Java
Index

Citation preview

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Modern Crises and Traditional Strategies

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Studies in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology General Editor: Roy Ellen, FBA Professor of Anthropology, University of Kent at Canterbury Interest in environmental anthropology has grown steadily in recent years, reflecting national and international concern about the environment and developing research priorities. This major new international series, which continues a series first published by Harwood and Routledge, is a vehicle for publishing up-to-date monographs and edited works on particular issues, themes, places or peoples which focus on the interrelationship between society, culture and the environment. Relevant areas include human ecology, the perception and representation of the environment, ethno-ecological knowledge, the human dimension of biodiversity conservation and the ethnography of environmental problems. While the underlying ethos of the series will be anthropological, the approach is interdisciplinary. Volume 1 The Logic of Environmentalism Anthropology, Ecology and Postcoloniality Vassos Argyrou Volume 2 Conversations on the Beach

Fishermen’s Knowledge, Metaphor and Environmental Change in South India Götz Hoeppe Volume 3 Green Encounters Shaping and Contesting Environmentalism in Rural Costa Rica Luis A. Vivanco Volume 4 Local Science vs Global Science Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge in International Development Edited by Paul Sillitoe Volume 5 Sustainability and Communities of Place Edited by Carl A. Maida Volume 6 Modern Crises and Traditional Strategies Local Ecological Knowledge in Island Southeast Asia Edited by Roy Ellen Volume 7 Travelling Cultures and Plants The Ethnobiology and Ethnopharmacy of Human Migrations Edited by Andrea Pieroni and Ina Vandebroek

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Modern Crises and Traditional Strategies Local Ecological Knowledge in Island Southeast Asia

Edited by

Roy Ellen

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First published in 2007 by

Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2007, 2011 Roy Ellen First published in paperback in 2011 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without the written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Modern crises and traditional strategies : local ecological knowledge in island Southeast Asia / edited by Roy Ellen. p. cm. -- (Studies in environmental anthropology and ethnobiology ; v. 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-1-84545-312-1 (hbk) -- ISBN: 978-0-85745-145-3 (pbk) 1. Human ecology--Southeast Asia--Congresses. 2. Indigenous peoples-Ecology--Southeast Asia--Congresses. 3. Traditional ecological knowledge-Southeast Asia--Congresses. 4. Rain forest ecology--Southeast Asia--Congresses. 5. Traditional farming--Southeast Asia--Congresses. 6. Subsistence economy-Southeast Asia--Congresses. 7. Hybridity (Social sciences)--Southeast Asia-Congresses. 8. Southeast Asia--Social conditions--Congresses. 9. Southeast Asia-Environmental conditions--Congresses. I. Ellen, R. F., 1947- II. International Congress of Ethnobiology (9th : 2004 : Canterbury, England) GF668.M63 2007 304.20959--dc22 2007012587

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN 978-1-84545-312-1 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-85745-145-3 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-85745-283-2 (ebook)

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Contents

List of Figures

vii

List of Tables

ix

Preface

xi

List of Contributors 1. Introduction Roy Ellen 2. Responses to Medium-term Stability in Climate: El Niño, Droughts and Coping Mechanisms of Foragers and Farmers in Borneo Rajindra K. Puri 3. Kasepuhan Rice Landrace Diversity, Risk Management and Agricultural Modernization Rini Soemarwoto

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46

84

4. Responses to Environmental Stress in the Baduy Swidden System, South Banten, Java Johan Iskandar

112

5. Innovation, ‘Hybrid’ Knowledge and the Conservation of Relict Rainforest in Upland Banten Johan Iskandar and Roy Ellen

133

6. A Comparison of Traditional and Innovative Subsistence Strategies on Buano during Periods of Socio-environmental Stress, 1980–2003 Hermien L. Soselisa 7. A Tradition of Change in Minahasan Agricultural Strategies, North Sulawesi Simon Platten

143

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8. Cycles of Politics and Cycles of Nature: Permanent Crisis in the Uplands of Palawan Dario Novellino 9. The Tobe and Tara Bandu: a Post-independence Renaissance of Historic Forest Regulation Authorities and Practices in Oecusse, East Timor Laura S. Metzner Yoder

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10. Perceptions of Local Knowledge and Adaptation on Mount Merapi, Central Java Michael R. Dove

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Index

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List of Figures

1.1

Island southeast Asia, showing location of case studies discussed in text

2

2.1

Penan Benalui ecological representation

2.2

Hierarchies of vegetation, landform structures and atmospheric processes for the tropical forest 50

2.3

Schematic Penan Benalui (P) and Kenyah Badeng (K) seasonal calendar

66

2.4

Southern oscillation index (SOI) 1876–2004

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2.5

Research periods of early anthropologists and the southern oscillation index (SOI) 1880–1900

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Metaphorical human body representing the Kasepuhan concept of pancer-papadon

86

3.2

Comparison of huma and sawah Kasepuhan planting patterns

95

3.3

Kasepuhan terms for parts of the rice plant

103

3.4

Kasepuhan Matuh-batur relationship between Mang Kokon, Mang Harna and Mang Aa

106

Map of Baduy area: Kanekes, subdistrct of Leuwidamar, Lebak district, Banten province, Java

113

4.2

Baduy agricultural calendar and associated ritual activities

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4.3

Flow chart showing use of swidden rice for various rituals, while non-rice crops are used for trading to acquire household income 120

3.1

4.1

49

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4.4

The traditional house of Outer Baduy surrounded by hamlet shelter forests (dukuh lembur), swidden fields (huma), fallowed land (reuma) and protected mature forests on the top of the hills

124

4.5

Woman cutting dried rice stalks and weeding after harvesting rice. To improve soil fertility and to obtain wood, swiddens and fallowed land are planted with the leguminous tree albizzia (Paraserianthes falcataria) 125

5.1

Map of forest distribution in Banten, Bogor and Sukabumi (west Java), showing location of the Baduy reserve and surrounding forest

134

6.1

Maluku and adjacent parts of Indonesia

145

6.2

Buano, part of western Seram and Ambon Island

146

6.3

Still used in the processing of Melaleuca oil, Buano Utara

159

7.1

Map of the Minahasa peninsula, north Sulawesi

168

7.2

Aerial photograph of Rurukan, north Sulawesi

169

7.3

Dominant crop types across the cultivated areas of Rurukan fields

170

View of Linopadi, looking towards the peak of Mahawu, Minahasa, and showing the terrace-like appearance of the raised vegetable beds on inclines

171

7.4

9.1

The political divisions of East Timor showing Oecusse enclave to the west 221

9.2

Village tobes listen to the ritual speech describing tara bandu restrictions, while standing next to an altar ornamented with representative samples of restricted items

226

10.1 The location of Merapi volcano in the Special Region of Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia

239

10.2 The location of the study site, Turgo village, on the southern slopes of Merapi volcano

241

10.3 Turgo villagers gathering fodder grasses at the edge of Merapi’s lava fields, for stall-feeding to cattle

250

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List of Tables

1.1

A tentative typology of natural disasters and other production crises for island southeast Asia

16

Selected examples of Nuaulu (central Seram, Maluku) plant species used for water and food in emergencies

26

3.1

Kasepuhan landraces recorded up to 1997

97

3.2

Landraces collected in the Kasepuhan area in 1999

100

4.1

Comparative productivity of swidden (huma), fallowed land (reuma) and coffee garden (kebon kopi) belonging to one key Outer Baduy informant, 1985/86

126

Various non-rice crop products commonly traded by Baduy, 2003/4

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Various off-farm activities undertaken by Baduy, particularly Outer Baduy, to obtain cash income

128

1.2

4.2 4.3

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Preface

This is the first of several companion volumes to be published in this series that reinforce the message that ethnobiology is not about the preservation of archaic and quaint knowledge and practices of ‘indigenous people’ but is relevant to contemporary development issues in their widest sense. The volume arises from a Wenner Gren-sponsored symposium that took place at the Ninth International Congress of Ethnobiology (ICE), held at the University of Kent at Canterbury in June 2004, and hosted by the Department of Anthropology and the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE). The meeting was a joint event organized by the International Society of Ethnobiology, the International Society of Ethnopharmacology and the Society for Economic Botany. The studies presented here all address the theme of how traditional or local ecological knowledge that has evolved over the long term to cope with production and population survival crises still has a vital role to play in coping with modern crises, whether environmental or socio-economic in origin, or some combination of the two. These studies are not statistically representative in any geographical sense, and are drawn from mainly upland and peripheral parts of island southeast Asia, rather than from core areas of high population density, or from where development and globalization are at their most evident. They are, nevertheless, what Malinowski would have called ‘apt illustrations’ of scenarios and processes that are very widespread throughout the region. The chapters by Iskandar, Meitzner Yoder, Platten, Puri, Soemarwoto and Soselisa were all presented at the symposium. Novellino and Dove were unable to attend, but have since written chapters specifically for this volume. The co-written chapter by Iskandar and Ellen was first presented at a White Oak Symposium (Florida), and subsequently at the Seventh ICE held at the University of Georgia in Athens, both in 2002. We would like to thank Gary Martin and the Global Diversity Foundation for supporting

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participation in these events and for permission to include the original paper as a chapter in this volume. I would also like to thank Rini Soemarwoto for an enormous amount of editorial work on the manuscript, work supported by ESRC grant RES-000-22-1106 awarded to Roy Ellen, and H333-25-0053 awarded to Michael Fischer, Roy Ellen, David Zeitlyn, Gary Martin, Glenn Bowman, Raj Puri and Janet Bagg, on ‘Interactive Data Collection and Reproduction: the Transmission of Environmental Knowledge’, and with the resources of the Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing at the University of Kent, under the direction of Professor Michael Fischer. Other acknowledgements will be found appended to individual chapters. Finally, although the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami will inevitably be firmly in the minds of many readers as the pre-eminent example of a contemporary natural disaster in the region, and it has certainly helped draw attention to the issues which we raise, it must be remembered that this tragic episode occurred well into the revising stage of the present book, and its implications for understanding the role that local ecological knowledge played in the coping strategies of victims, and in the overall coordination of relief, has yet to be properly addressed, let alone analysed. Roy Ellen Ethnobiology Laboratory University of Kent at Canterbury

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List of Contributors

Michael R. Dove is Professor of Social Ecology at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, Connecticut, USA Roy Ellen is Professor of Anthropology and Human Ecology at the University of Kent and Canterbury, UK Johan Iskandar is Professor in the Institute of Ecology of Padjadjaran University, Bandung, Indonesia Laura S. Meitzner Yoder is a lecturer and researcher at Universitas Syiah Kuala in Banda Aceh, Indonesia Dario Novellino is a Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK Simon Platten is a Temporary Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK Rajindra K. Puri is Lecturer in Environmental Anthropology at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK Rini Soemarwoto is a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kent at Canterbury UK, and Lecturer in Anthropology at the Padjadjaran University, Bandung, Indonesia Hermien L. Soselisa is Lecturer in Anthropology in the Faculty of Social Science and Political Science, Pattimura University, Ambon, Indonesia

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CHAPTER

1

Introduction Roy Ellen

Background The 1990s witnessed a growing acknowledgement world wide of the importance of local ecological knowledge in the context of food security and sustainable development (Warren, Slikkerveer and Brokensha 1995; Sillitoe, Bicker and Pottier 2002; Pottier, Bicker and Sillitoe 2003; Bicker, Sillitoe and Pottier 2004). Much has been written of how this knowledge can help us avoid the problems associated with top-down development strategies, how it can provide cheap and appropriate solutions in the absence of modern health-care delivery systems and the drugs on which they depend, and how it can help conserve local habitats and maintain genetic diversity. It is argued that local knowledge is by definition culturally relevant, improving rural livelihoods, nutrition and general wellbeing, while encouraging a more rational use of natural resources. Moreover, it is said to strengthen local institutional capacity, leaving a general capital surplus for financing other initiatives (Alcorn 1995: 1). Less attention has been paid, however, to the particular role local knowledge might have in providing a set of responses to which populations may resort in times of political, economic and environmental instability, or to how traditional knowledge strategies are used as responses to specific natural, economic and social disasters (but see Walker 1995). The period 1996–2004 in island southeast Asia presents an instructive test case for understanding how coping mechanisms based on essentially local strategies might work, as the period has witnessed multiple socioeconomic and ecological crises following on from – for the most part – a period of sustained economic growth and modernization (approximately between 1965 and 1996), which itself provided the assumed conditions for the erosion and neglect of traditional knowledge. In an attempt to plug

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Figure 1.1. Island Southeast Asia, showing location of case studies discussed in text. Numbers refer to chapter. 1, Nuaulu, south Seram; 2, Penan and Kenyah, east Kalimantan; 3, Kasepuhan, west Java; 4-5, Baduy, west Java; 6, Buano, central Maluku; Minahasa, north Sulawesi; 8, Batak, Palawan; 9, Oeucusse, East Timor; 10, Merapi, central Java.

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this gap, this book explores how the decline of traditional environmental knowledge that has accompanied modernization in island southeast Asia has been challenged by recent natural disasters, economic problems and political conflict, and how the use of traditional knowledge, together with its innovative combination with new kinds of knowledge, continues to enable communities to manage the crises they face. The book, therefore, is concerned with the creation, maintenance, modification and transmission of ecological knowledge, and increasingly with the hybridization between traditional and scientifically based knowledge, but in the context of those local forces of instability that shape it. Although it focuses on a recent period in the history of island southeast Asia, there has been a continuous record of environmental and socially induced perturbation throughout its documented history and of local responses to this. While these latter have been constantly adjusting to new circumstances, they have evolved in their general principles over the long term. For this reason their understanding inevitably merges with general anthropological analyses of cultural and population adaptation. The region selected for examination comprises the modern nation states of Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam and East Timor (Figure 1.1). Indonesia, inevitably, dominates the discussion, occupying as it does 75 per cent of the territorial space of the countries listed and, at 208 million, providing 68 per cent of the total population. Although no specific chapter is devoted to Brunei, Ellen (Ellen and Bernstein 1994, Bernstein, Ellen and Bantong Antaran 1997) has research experience in this country and some reference will be made to the situation there later in this introduction. Of the vast expanse of Indonesia, only Papua (Western New Guinea) is excluded, on biogeographic grounds, having more in common ecologically and culturally with the rest of Melanesia. The area covered, therefore, is what geographers, anthropologists and historians generally describe as ‘island (or archipelagic) southeast Asia’, an area that displays a high degree of homogeneity in terms of overall topography, climate, ecology, subsistence systems, languages and cultural histories, when compared with the areas surrounding it, and certainly when compared with the more encompassing and typologically more problematic notion of ‘southeast Asia’ (Fisher 1964: 3–10). The older term ‘Malaysia’ (or, in botany, ‘Malesia’: van Steenis 1948) and ‘IndoMalaysia’ (Bellwood 1985) are sometimes used to describe the same area, though are not used here to avoid confusion with the nation state of Malaysia. Whilst the last fifty years of the colonial period and the first years of independence in the states now comprising island southeast Asia can be arguably typified as a period of stability and steady improvement in the theoretical ability of central government and various agencies to manage the environment, sustained economic growth and modernization during

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this time were not uniform across the region. The precolonial and colonial periods were typified by intermittent environmental hazards and disasters, whether of seismic, volcanic, climatic or biological origin. But in virtually every case these were magnified through human patterns of settlement, land use, social organization and economy. Throughout the nineteenth century the Dutch in Indonesia were unable to control the cycle of crop failure, famine and flood in Java, and before 1930 bad harvests were routinely followed by famine, cholera and other epidemics, which resulted in low population growth (Donner 1987: 32, 54). The ‘new environmental history’ of Indonesia has provided ample evidence for a continuous long-term experience of environmental perturbation, even away from the great agrarian centres (e.g. Knapen 2001).1 In many cases the vulnerability to environmental hazard was induced by the advantages of living in certain locations. Volcanism, which was so often a catastrophe, was compensated for by the clear benefits that volcanic soils provided for local people, whether cattle keepers around Gunung Merapi or nutmeg producers on the Banda islands. And, while seismic disturbances were causally independent of human inputs, the food and water shortages that resulted were magnified by patterns of human landscape change, cultivation and domestication. But unlike the arid lands of Africa and mainland south Asia and the densely populated lands of south and east Asia, the humid tropics of island southeast Asia have often been perceived as sharing a fundamentally benign human ecology, one historically dominated by rainforest, characterized by slight seasonal fluctuations in temperature and rainfall, and where levels of precipation encourage the rapid growth of crops and other edible vegetation. In such a region, the non-human preconditions for famine generally appeared not to be obviously ecologically endemic, and the instability that gave rise to intermittent hazards arose in large part from the inconvenient presence of the interfaces between the IndoAustralian, Philippine and Pacific tectonic plates (Whitten, Soeriaatmadja and Afiff 1997: 90–91), from factors emanating from a dynamic and emerging social system, or from socially mediated environmental factors. There were exceptions to this ecology, of course, such as challenging soils and topographies, but in many places long-term co-evolutionary processes had resulted in anthropogenic landscape transformation that had allowed local populations to manage these disadvantages. The main environmental handicaps lay in the dry areas of east Nusa Tenggara and Timor, and in Madura and Lombok; and it is hardly surprising that it is for these areas where the colonial records indicate repeated crop failures and drought (Ormeling 1956, Donner 1987: 9–10, 25, 181). In addition, it was, paradoxically, the very capacity of the humid equatorial rainforest environment to be ecologically, and therefore economically, productive that encouraged, over time, patterns and densities of human settlement

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and agricultural intensification that destabilized these environments and made them more vulnerable to resource shortages. Under colonial conditions, these vulnerable areas tended to be the same as those in which European rulers sought to maximize surpluses and where the local response, given the proximity to carrying capacity, was what Geertz (1963) has famously called ‘agricultural involution’. Involution involved, in general terms, a kind of specialization within the context of long-term ecological simplification: biodiversity and other forms of ecological diversity declined except for the diversity of focal crops. Thus, under conditions of involution we would expect rice landrace diversity to increase as a way of coping with the uncertainties of intensive production and the risks that these entail in terms of water shortage under irrigation and pest infestation (see Lansing 1991). The modernizing lowland systems under high colonialism and postcolonialism have the characteristics of incremental emergent openness: increasing demands were being made on the local system by the wider system, the market simultaneously simplifying and destabilizing the local system by demanding higher productivity through a more specialized division of labour, and providing a means of reproductive maintenance through the greater emphasis placed on wider system organization, logistical infrastructures and institutions of social control (Ellen 1982: 273). It is these latter features that permitted rapid food transfer when, paradoxically, local systems periodically collapsed due to the very forces that gave rise to the higher productivity in the first place. In contrast, upland societies, with low population densities, less market integration and under less pressure to intensify, were more buffered internally against shortages than lowland societies, maintaining higher levels of diversity of all kinds (Li 1999).

The Modernization Project and the Decline of Local Knowledge The context of the studies collected together here is the growth, development and modernization of postcolonial states in island southeast Asia, and the way in which these processes have undermined traditional forms of environmental knowledge. The powers, which relinquished control of their colonies and dependencies in island southeast Asia with the independence of, first, Indonesia (1946) and the Philippines (1947), then Malaysia (1957) and finally East Timor (1999), had each moulded them to suit the interests of the metropolitan economies. In some respects, therefore, the problem of development that the newly independent states faced was to create an infrastructure and economic base that served the interests of the new states themselves rather than their erstwhile rulers. And yet, in order to survive in the postcolonial world, they also needed to continue

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to work within an international market structure that itself was the creature of the late colonial period. The colonial period had given rise to what Boeke (1966; see also Higgins 1955) controversially described as ‘dual societies’: ones in which there was a capital-intensive growth sector, involving extractive industries, manufacturing and estate agriculture, and an ‘underdeveloped’ subsistence sector. This duality had consequences in terms of the retention of ‘local knowledge’. In the capital-intensive sector the conditions favoured a narrow focus on single resources of strategic commercial importance and the discouragement of traditional knowledge, while the subsistence sector still heavily depended upon it. Indeed, in the context of the involutionary process described by Geertz (1963), the attempt by the metropolitan economy to ensure more surplus from the subsistence sector in Java resulted in increasingly ingenious permutations of local knowledge to maintain living standards and pay taxes, in ever more restricted geographical niches. The discouragement of much local knowledge was also linked to another contentious element of Boeke’s theory, that an ‘antigrowth’ subsistence sector was maintained by a ‘peasant mentality’, by which was understood fatalism, effort minimalization and short-termism (e.g. Alatas 1977). These ideological components had, once functionally inverted, an afterlife in the work of Chayanov, through Sahlins (1972; see also Smith 1979), and Scott (1976), where they become instead virtues, rationally consistent with the expectations of a backward-sloping supply curve in the first case and with the cunning ‘moral economy’ of the peasant in the second. In these theoretical versions we can see both a framework to socially contextualize otherwise semi-detached accounts of traditional technical knowledge and coping strategies, as well as a powerful legitimation that has given that knowledge political credence. Ironically, much modernization theory has sought to transform the subsistence sector by undermining its knowledge base through replacement with ‘modern’ knowledge. As we shall see below, this happened classically in the case of the green revolution, where short-term benefits were gained at the expense of long-term security, mainly because the terms of development aid were tied in a dependency loop rather than providing sufficient reform and capital with which to radically transform the subsistence sector. In the post-1945 period, the most successful socio-economic transitions were in Malaysia-Singapore and in the Philippines. Both Britain and America conceded the political opposition to colonialism and effected a relatively smooth pathway to independence: one that maintained the key relations of production intact, preserving in a modified form the colonial social and economic structure: the production of raw materials, free trade with the metropoles and the preservation of the prerogatives of foreign capital (Catley 1976: 266). This was especially so in Malaysia, the relative

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prosperity of which by the late 1960s was due largely to the plentiful supply of accessible land, state subsidies and the political retardation of emancipation movements (Wertheim 1968: 21; Lim Teck Ghee and Said 1989). In the Philippines land reform was suppressed without any obvious economic compensating factors for local farmers, and economic policy led to a more unequal distribution of income, more dependency and stagnation (Stauffer 1985, Fegan 1989). In Indonesia, where there had been a war of independence and the consequential expropriation of Dutch economic interests, the achievement of a new capitalist mercantilism only really arrived in 1965–66 with the overthrow of Sukarno and his socialist experiment. Under the New Order foreign capital was restored and more encouraged, but under military supervision. In other words, in the most populous countries of island southeast Asia we find quite different regimes of state patronage (Hart 1989). By 1980 a sea change had taken place in the island southeast Asian economies. Singapore was independent and pursuing its own industrial course to development. Malaysia had achieved a degree of political stability, which enabled it to benefit from combined manufacturing and agricultural strategies. Indonesia was always going to be the hardest case, given its size, geography and poor infrastructure, and inherent potential for political destabilization; and yet here too, with the authoritarian stability the New Order regime had brought, Indonesia developed through a combination of exporting its natural resources and through green revolution technology. The green revolution (GR) had a major impact on local knowledge: in the lowland rice-producing heartlands of Malaysia, in the Philippines (especially central Luzon) and in Indonesia (especially Java). Indeed, the policy and science that drove this initiative emanated from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), itself in island southeast Asia, at Los Baños, less than one hour south of Manila. GR technology reached villages as part of a government or non-governmental organization (NGO) assisted package, always persuasively wrapped. The package consisted of new high-yielding (HYVs) varieties of rice, plus equipment that would allow the maximum benefits to be obtained (chemical fertilizers, pesticides, intermediate petrol-driven equipment), plus agricultural extension knowledge that extolled the values of modern agriculture. The cost of GR capital and technology came from outside, but the strategy also involved new non-financial outside linkages: information networks, credit institutions and marketing boards (White 1983). In addition, GR technology was part of a larger ideologically motivated development package in which all traditional practices, deliberately or by implication, were seen as inferior. Under these conditions traditional knowledge could only survive if people were incredibly resistant (as with the Baduy: see Iskandar, this volume) or where the GR package clearly did not work

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from the beginning. Inevitably, the main casualties were self-reliance and poor people (Pottier 1999: 50–51). Traditional landraces disappeared locally, or remained only important for specific ritual purposes (such as glutinous varieties), while non-rice production systems were dis-incentivized (e.g. Persoon 1992). The outcomes tended to reinforce the very images of peasant mentality that the package was supposed to liberate people from: images of dependency and alienation. While GR technology raised rice output dramatically overall, it did not solve the problem of poverty or land reform, and it led to greater polarization amongst the rural classes (Collier 1973; Utrecht 1973; Griffin 1974: xiii). The introduction of HYVs without land reform led to more land concentration and a decline in the economic status of women (Gerdin 1982: 127–30). And, as Gerdin describes for Lombok, peasants faced special problems growing HYVs compared with traditional landraces. Although neither Gerdin nor Geertz developed this point, the introduction of HYVs and the downgrading of women in the production process, between them, led to a loss in knowledge, since it was largely women who were closely involved in the process of seed selection, the identification of new landraces and the decision-making involved in planting different varieties. We can see this in the Kasepuhan case reported in detail by Rini Soemarwoto in this volume. In Bali, the attempts to introduce GR technology and to bureaucratize and interfere with the fine ritualtuning of the traditional irrigation system not only led to a decrease of traditional rice varieties, which Balinese farmers were forbidden to plant, but completely upset efficacious local ways of controlling weeds and crop pests through ‘folk’ hydrological and biological management (Lansing 1991: 111–27). In Indonesia the green revolution and its consequences happened in the context of the New Order five-year development plans, between 1969 and 1994. Implementation resulted in a transition from a situation in which the country was a net importer of rice in the early 1970s to one in which it had achieved national self-sufficiency in rice production by 1984, and was generally lauded as a ‘success story’ (Booth 1988: 1). Institutionally, the plan was effected through BIMAS (Bimbingan Massal: ‘Mass Guidance’), which mainly coordinated the logistics, but which also subsidized fertilizer, banking, transport and storage (Fox 1991). The problem with this colossal and, by any measure, impressive economic engineering feat, was that in turn it was accompanied by an increase in population from 119 million in the late 1960s to 210–216 million in 2000. The management of sawah (wet rice field) environments was transformed as a result of the intensification programme, but in ways that were not exclusively beneficial. Thus, in 1982 Bernstein, Siwi and Beachell calculated that there existed 8,000 traditional rice cultivars in Indonesia, but that the introduction of modern IRRI-derived varieties had led to a dramatic loss of genetic diversity (Fox 1991: 67). By the 1990s it had become clear that

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Indonesia needed to urgently restore the breadth of the genetic base of the rice crop to avoid problems in the future (Fox 1991: 74). But the disadvantages of the Indonesian GR were not simply technical, in the sense of exterminating local rice landraces and the ‘extinction of experience’ (Nabhan and St. Antoine 1993) that went with it, but also sociological. The BIMAS regime favoured richer peasants, who were able to buy out their poorer neighbours, who then either migrated to the cities, added to the total of rural landless labourers or became available for transmigration. Other small peasants who clung on were only able to do so using an alternative strategy of maintaining their independence by differentiating their economic activity, resorting to ‘shared poverty’ and other moral economy strategies (Geertz 1963, Scott 1976; Hart, Turton and White 1989). As Breman and Wiradi (2002: 105, 115, 140) have been able to show, GR technology decreased employment opportunities in the countryside outside the peak periods in the agricultural calendar, had a negative impact on females in particular and gave benefits to larger rather than smaller farmers. Overall, the scheme favoured the Suharto government by demonstrating what was achievable through central planning, by apparently ensuring food security for most of the population and by leading to a decisive shift in the rural and national power structure (Hart, Turton and White 1989: 2). A similar process occurred with respect to materia medica, though it is less written about. Processes of government intervention in health-care delivery, both in theory and in practice, led from the end of the colonial period to a preference for biomedical remedies where these were available and affordable. With the crises experienced from 1996 onwards, such remedies were less available and less affordable. This resulted in a reversion to traditional remedies where these were accessible – as amongst the Nuaulu people on the island of Seram – and created problems where traditional knowledge had been eroded. Only in Brunei was the green revolution not the key cause of the undermining of traditional knowledge and agrobiodiversity. Although Brunei, like other parts of postcolonial southeast Asia, had been subject to conventional government-led strategies of agricultural development, by the 1970s, the country was already so dependent on oil production that the green revolution, from a national point of view, was an irrelevance. Most Bruneians could obtain state employment, and there was much migration from the countryside, particularly the uplands, and a dependency for most food and much labour on imports from Malaysia and Indonesia. In this context there was not only a decline in traditional agricultural methods, but also a rapid decline over a few generations in subsistence knowledge (Ellen and Bernstein 1994; Bernstein 1996: 436). Swidden cultivation was maintained in some areas only for cultural reasons, in order to ensure the survival of traditional varieties that people valued and that were part

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of their identity, an identity often contrasted with that of the dominant Muslim majority. In this situation the hydrocarbon economy buffered the local people against most short-term subsistence risk, but arguably, as the national economy became increasingly dependent on a narrow base, the underlying resource of which was declining, opened up problems for the future. The green revolution in island southeast Asia exemplifies a classic example of top-down modernization policy, which appeared to work but, like other forms of agricultural and subsistence modernization, it increased productivity on the assumption of particular conditions of ecological and social stability. Where the stability actually achieved was sustained over the long term, and where greater yields arose from technological innovation, regular income levels and an experience of rising living standards, the traditional knowledge base tended to erode. Know-how and practices that previously provided a ‘buffer against uncertainty’ were seen more and more as unnecessary and ‘old-fashioned’. Where ecological and social disruption came after such a long period of stability and improvement in living standards, erosion of traditional knowledge frequently led to problems; but, where it was still extant or recoverable, it sometimes became a significant component in the strategies people employed to respond to shortfalls in production and to natural calamities. In some cases, we have evidence of people actively seeking new ways of coping that rely on elements of traditional knowledge systems and that blend those elements with introduced knowledge in ways that are both original and effective. Detailed studies of environmental knowledge erosion of the kind that are now available for some parts of the world (e.g. Zent 2001) are not presently found in anything but an incipient form for island southeast Asia (e.g. Bernstein 1996; Florey and Wulff 1998; Florey 200; Christensen 2002: 247; Hoare 2002: chapter 5, 229–30; though for mainland southeast Asia see Sowerwine 2004). However, there are plenty of general statements to the effect that knowledge erosion is occurring and indirect proxies and circumstantial evidence for it having happened: language loss, rural-urban migration, schooling, religious conversion, biodiversity reduction, agrobiodiversity simplification, technological globalization, and so on. We now know that there is a convincing correlation globally between loss of local languages, loss of biodiversity and loss of local knowledge (Maffi 2001, 2004), and there is no reason to think that this works any differently in island southeast Asia. This is partly because local language encodes knowledge and when it goes it is difficult – literally – to speak about; but most often language decline and knowledge decline are the twin outcomes of modernization processes, in which cultural changes (such as learning Indonesian or Malay or Tagalog) and changing technical practices are part of the same package.

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Ecological, Economic and Social Crises in Island Southeast Asia: 1996–2004 The developmentalist model of change based on assumptions of incremental progress was severely challenged by environmental, economic and political events that occurred during the late 1990s. As Oliver-Smith (1986, 1999) has pointed out, natural hazards are rarely factored into development plans, and such plans sometimes undermine those preexisting features providing for ecological and social resilience that reduce vulnerability. We suggest here that the erosion of traditional forms of knowledge in many places compounded the problems, that, in other places where such knowledge persisted, it provided a buffer against disaster, and that responses to subsistence stress generally display a remarkable resilience and creativity in combining new techniques with old. The first crises that began to reveal themselves were local environmental problems that were a consequence of economic growth itself: forest fires, reef and mangrove degradation, pollution of waterways with fertilizers and mine tailings and coastal despoliation. For example, around 90 per cent of the wildfires reported for Indonesia during the 1980s and 1990s occurred in areas with rubber and palm-oil plantations, production forest plantations or transmigration projects (e.g. Gellert 1998). These developments were accompanied by a gradual scientific understanding of how essentially local events were related to global processes (Leighton and Wirawan 1986), such as global warming in relation to sea-level rise (a real hazard for low-lying coral atolls throughout the archipelago) and the El Niño southern oscillation (ENSO). Otto Soemarwoto (1991: 227, 232), for example, had early noted the El Ninõ of 1982 as a potential hazard, though the impacts of this phenomenon were not widely or publically appreciated in a southeast Asian context until the 1997/98 El Niño-La Niña events (Fox 2001). It was rapidly established that these had direct consequences for forest ecology and biodiversity, such as the reduction in the volume of mast fruiting in dipterocarp forests (Curran et al. 1999), coupled with knock-on effects in the context of logging operations and forest fire. In Indonesia, devolution following unrestrained Reformasi, where administrative infrastructures and (for example) national park protection were weak, led to continuous extractive attrition of timber in Kalimantan in the late 1990s (Donovan 1999; Murphy 2001; Barr and Resosudarmo 2002; Sunderlin 2002; Smith et al. 2003; Curran et al. 2004). The long-term consequences of climate change – sea-level rise, more frequent El Niño events, increases in the frequency of crop failure and drought, flooding and soil erosion (Curran et al. 1999), as well as the incidence and severity of forest wildfires – have now become a major issue for both people and wildlife throughout the region (FAO 2001), while higher temperatures are reducing primary productivity due to increased respiration (Sodhi et al. 2004).

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But these extreme environmental events cannot be disconnected from the social contexts in which they took place (Oliver-Smith 1986, 1999) and the extreme social behaviour that so often magnified them. To many local peoples it must have seemed as if they were witnessing a cataclysmic cosmological transformation (Budiman, Hatley and Kingsbury 1999; Schwarz 1999; van Dijk 2001; Wessel and Wimhöfer 2001; Colombijn and Lindblad 2002), and in retrospect we may indeed be able to use models drawn from catastrophe theory to make sense of it all. As Henk Schulte Nordholt (2002: 33) puts it, ‘Indonesia became entrapped in a threefold crisis’: the monetary crisis (Krismon, or krisis moneter), which combined with an ecological crisis, and which resulted in total political crisis (Kristal, or krisis total). In Indonesia in particular, there was a veritable ‘paroxysm of violence’ (Schwarz 1999: x) throughout the late 1990s, almost a counterpoint to the ‘ecological violence’. In 1998 (the year in which the Suharto regime fell), there was anti-Chinese rioting in Jakarta and other parts of Java, which continued earlier disturbances that had occurred during 1996. Elsewhere, conflict fell along the fault line between Christianity and Islam: in central Sulawesi (Aragon 2001) and in Maluku (Aditjondro 2001; van Klinken 2001; Goss 2004), in each case leaving many thousands of casualties. In west and central Kalimantan (though the proximate causes were in each case rather different) there were repeated clashes between Madurese transmigrants and local Malays and Dayaks from 1996, and witch-hunts in east Java from 1998 onwards. In 1999, after calls for a UN referendum on independence, violent conflict broke out in East Timor fomented by local militias, leading to widespread population displacement and destruction, as well as lesser conflicts in parts of Nusa Tenggara, such as Sumba (Vel 2001). And then there were the continuing problems in Aceh and Papua. Events in different parts of the country fed on each other, through the effectiveness of modern electronic communication and by appropriating the same kinds of ideological discourse (jihadist, separatist, racial, or whatever). All of this generated between half a million and two million deaths (depending on which estimates you trust) and well over a million displaced persons. With Reformasi, the strong centralized military force employed so effectively by the state under the New Order was fragmented, the chain of command collapsing, and the level of army violence escalated (Colombijn and Lindblad 2002: 22). Locally, many of these problems were about scarce resources, though this is certainly not to reduce them to such, any more than we should reduce them to reified ethnic and religious confrontations. The Asian financial crisis of 1997–98 (which, incidentally, coincided with the 1997 El Niño, together with its attendant spate of forest fires) caused major problems for the whole region, but the scale and intensity varied greatly between countries (Ananta 2003; Strauss et al. 2004). Some

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countries were already recovering by 1998. In Malaysia, for example, inflation was brought under control and financial institutions reformed without triggering a political crisis. But Indonesia was the worst case: depreciation of the currency leading to political crisis, IMF intervention and, in May 1998, the end of the New Order regime (Sharma 2001). This in turn was followed by turmoil and ethnic and religious violence. But the impoverishment, unemployment and general economic chaos predicted did not happen. The inability to import instead led to the growth of local small-scale enterprises, old traditions of artisanship and trade were rediscovered, customary local markets were boosted, and there were diversification in the kinds of capital accumulation and a general boom in the small-scale sector (Jellinek and Rustanto 1999; Breman and Wiradi 2002: 2, n.1). There was more hardship in urban than in rural areas. In Java, agricultural work increased, and cultivation was resumed in dry fields and home gardens, which had been neglected during the good times when rural peoples sought work in urban areas (Manning 2000). People also moved into hawking. However, the view of the rural economy as a safety valve and of its coping methods as ‘compensating’ (Manning 2000: 4) is probably both exaggerated and simplistic, and there is no doubt that Krismon widened the gap between rich and poor (Breman and Wiradi 2002: 6). From the evidence accrued by Breman and Wiradi (2002: 271–74, 307) in their studies of two villages on the coastal plain of west Java, the informal sector appears to have suffered no less than the formal sector, and the kind of institutionalized arrangements that Geertz (1963: 99–100) associates with ‘shared poverty’ could not be found (see also White 1983). The Krismon brought back memories of earlier threats to survival for the villagers, e.g. famine during the Japanese occupation, and food shortages of the early 1960s (White 1983: 299). Even if we do not accept the worst reading of the consequences of the financial crisis, it was still a serious blow to what had been perceived as a success story of Rostowian modernization theory. The consequences of the crises in the context of the erosion of traditional knowledge and resources were predictable. Drought and environmental problems put pressure on HYVs, which required plentiful water and which were over optimised to particular conditions. The inability of farmers to purchase the fuel or equipment to cultivate HYVs viably, and the inability of a government to provide them, led to a downturn in production. With traditional varieties gone, farmers could not fall back on traditional strategies to combat drought and cash shortages. Chedd (1970), and a few others, had predicted this problem with the green revolution package, what Otto Soemarwoto (1991) alerts us to as an ecologically dangerous ‘monophagous’ trend. He sugggested reintroducing crop rotation, including nitrogen-fixing plants, and advocated less irrigation and more non-rice food diversification. But the green revolution, though

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perhaps the one most identifiable complex of factors undermining traditional ecological knowledge, here serves equally as a leitmotiv for all those other simplifying and destructive changes: the shift to plantation agriculture, industrial fishing, coastal erosion and – perhaps most obviously as far as upland and interior peoples are concerned – deforestation. In the longer term, whatever its proximate (see, for example, Barber and Talbott 2003) and ultimate causes, deforestation in southeast Asia, as elsewhere, has contributed to the extinction of local languages, knowledge and entire peoples, and as we have already seen, there is a convincingly close association between levels of biodiversity, local biological knowledge and linguistic diversity (Chin et al. 1992; Sutherland 2003; Puri and Donovan 2004).

The Rediscovery of Traditional Knowledge: Indigenous and Exogenous In southeast Asia, as in other parts of the developing world, the failure of top-down projects encouraged professionals to take another look at traditional knowledge, but, more significantly, local people themselves, unable to sustain modernist solutions with a requirement for high levels of capital investment, were forced back on to local solutions. Reformasi in Indonesia, following the fall of Suharto in 1998, with its wave of democratization, led to the exponential growth of political parties and NGOs (Soemarwoto 2004: 34–36). The growth of these NGOs, at both a national and a local level, in part responded to the greater public awareness of environmental issues, such as wildfires; but at the same time there was a development of a collective consciousness amongst groups who labelled themselves masyarakat adat, including the foundation of the Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (AMAN, Alliance of Indonesian Adat Communities). Although traditional or indigenous movements had been evident in Malaysia and the Philippines (e.g. Brosius 2001; Aquino 2004) and generally (Gray 1995; Kalland and Persoon 1998), under Soeharto’s authoritarian New Order, indigeneity was not part of an acceptable vocabulary (and in the circumstances was utterly misleading). The nearest equivalent category was suku- or masyarakat-terasing, an official designation identifying ‘backward’ or isolated groups targeted for certain kinds of ‘development’ aid. Part of the role of these NGOs was to foster respect for traditional forms of knowledge, which underlay identity issues and issues relating to resource access; and in many cases they fused environmental consciousness, political self-interest and traditional knowledge (Dove 1998). We can see this well exemplified in the literature relating to NGOs in Maluku promoting the value of traditional ritual arrangements (sasi laut) for regulating access to marine resources (Zerner

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1994), and in the role of the NGO supporting Baduy environmental and cultural interests (Iskandar 1998). At the same time, the growth of local interest in traditional knowledge was encouraged by a growing academic and professional concern for the role of ethno-ecological knowledge and its application in development contexts. Until the 1980s ecological studies in anthropology, despite having the concept of cultural adaptation at their core, were concerned with relatively steady-state populations and with the long-term adaptive strategies that prevented populations from exceeding their carrying capacity. The work of Vayda (e.g. Vayda and McCay 1975) on local responses to natural hazards began to change that, just as the work of Conklin (e.g. 1957) had begun to demonstrate the relevance of local environmental knowledge two decades earlier. This new response to the perceived deficiencies of systems-oriented approaches had been theoretically inspired by the methodological individualism of economic formalism and evolutionary ecology, but focused on how people actually coped with the environmental hazards, the actual empirical events they confronted. In many parts of the world the partnership between an academic interest in ethno-ecology and local peoples’ interest in their own traditional knowledge was also well advanced (e.g. Warren, Slikkerveer and Brokensha 1995). Strangely, the application of such approaches in island southeast Asia – with the possible exception of the Philippines – were slow to get started, stunted perhaps by the apparent and real successes of the green revolution and other centralized development projects, and by the high levels of capitalization experienced in Malaysia and their seemingly complete irrelevance in Brunei.

Typologies of Crisis and Their Social and Cultural Embeddedness What I have so far provided in this introduction is essential background, but we have yet to define some key terms of reference: the kinds of crises upon which we are focusing, and how we might best theorize the responses they prompt amongst local peoples. I shall discuss these in the following two sections. It is conventional to distinguish (1) natural hazards, such as climatic fluctuations or earthquakes, what some economists call output uncertainty, and which can influence production activity; from (2) economic uncertainty, or the unpredictability of markets, and which particularly affects cash cropping, fishing and forest extraction; from (3) social and political uncertainty, which may affect differential control over resources (as, for example, in landownership) and the unpredictable behaviour of those in power (e.g. the events that led to the overthrow of Suharto).

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The kinds of crisis described in this book are those characterized by unexpected acute resource failure, which may have as their immediate or distant causes a variety of geological, climatic, biological or social factors, or a complex combination of one or more. Table 1.1 provides an approximate typology of crises, which may serve as a working framework. Susceptibility to particular kinds of hazard is limited geographically. Thus, earthquakes are widespread in the region, linked to a distinctive geography of joins between tectonic plates, and, on the whole, Indonesia is more vulnerable than the Philippines, and the Philippines are more vulTable 1.1. A tentative typology of natural disasters and other production crises for island southeast Asia Cause Physical crises Seismic Earthquake

Effect

Settlement destruction (including rice barns and other means of storing food), transport dislocation, mud slides and landslips, which destroy orchards and other crops

Tsunami

May follow from terrestrial or submarine earthquake or volcanic eruption: flooding, crop and habitation destruction, loss of potable water, disease epidemics

Volcanic eruption

Fire, suffocation, rock falls, whirlwinds, hot gas clouds, scorched earth, ash cover, atmospheric pollution; lava and ash may cause crop failure, block water sources, cause mud slides, kill vegetation, pollute potable water, destroy wild foods, animals and human settlements

Landslips

Settlement destruction, transport dislocation, loss of crops on hillsides, siltation of water sources for fishing and drinking

Climatic El Niño southern oscillation

Precipitation and temperature extremes: see below

Heavy rain

Flooding, soil deterioration, erosion and compaction, damage to irrigation systems, infrastructure damage to roads, sluices, dams, channels, bridges, runoff, mud slides and landslips; impacts on pest outbreaks

Extreme temperatures

Drought, forest fires, death of natural vegetation and crops; frost damage at higher altitudes

Strong winds (cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes)

Increased evaporation rates, structural damage to crops, vegetation and buildings, tree falls; water contamination, flooding

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Introduction | 17 Table 1.1. Continued Cause

Effect

Sea-level rise

Flooding, loss of potable water, crop destruction

Biological crises Human population growth

Intensification of production; settlement on reclaimed land and coastal fringes, on low-lying areas suject to flooding

Crop pest outbreak

Food shortage, famine

Animal disease epidemics

Food shortages

Human disease epidemics

Labour shortages

Agro-economic crises Reduction of fallow length, over-planting and other forms of agricultural intensification

Degradation of soil quality, habitat loss, loss of useful species in secondary growth

Chemical fertilizer and pesticide use

Water pollution, human health issues

Mine tailings

Water pollution, human health issues

HYV and GM crop introduction, crop specialization

Genetic erosion, problems of weed control

Irrigation

Water shortage, interference with upland hydrological cycles

Land acquisition and clearance

Forest and other fires

Over-extraction of non-timber forest products

Destruction of forest and modification

Over-extraction of firewood Deforestation Social, economic and political crises Communal, ethnic conflict Market dislocation, loss of access to production and political instability land and other resources, increased rates of human disease and mortality, loss of labour Financial crash, inflation

Unavailability of import items, fallback on local resources (endangered or protected species involved in wildlife trade, or in protected areas, especially vulnerable)

Commercial cash-cropping

Deforestation, forest fires, atmospheric pollution

Commercial logging

Deforestation, forest fires, atmospheric pollution; forest roads increase population access for settlement and extraction, soil erosion

Road-building

Increase population access for settlement and extraction

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nerable than Malaysia (Whitten, Soeriaatmadja and Afiff 1997: 93). The same gradient of susceptibility applies to volcanism (with 155 centres of active volcanism in Indonesia), and, of course, within high-risk areas, on the whole, it is those human populations within the immediate vicinity of volcanos who are most at risk. Tsunamis are only a problem in coastal areas, but, as the December 2004 tsunami has dramatically taught us, these may affect a very wide area around an epicentre. Wildfires are a problem mainly in forested or recently deforested areas (and within these in areas with peat or subsurface coal deposits), and it is these that appear to have been most susceptible to El Niño effects. Drought is mainly a problem in areas that are highly dependent on water, especially for irrigation, mainly in lowland deforested areas; upland dry-field cultivation is less at risk, except where steep slopes tend to be associated with thinner and rockier soils and where – as in Nusa Tenggara and southern Maluku – extreme seasonality increases vulnerability. Sustained flooding, rather than flash floods, is a feature of flat lowlands with high water tables. What is immediately apparent from an inspection of Table 1.1 is – apart from the range of causes – the way in which different causes may have the same outcomes for human populations (disease, crop failure), or the way in which different hazards combine to extenuate the outcomes and increase the level of risk. Thus, while El Niño increases the risk of wildfires, these are accentuated by deforestation, deliberate fires to establish claims or to clear land and the inadvertent ignition of dry trash left by plantation work and logging operations. Similarly, tsunami damage and flooding is increased by concentrated settlement on narrow coastal strips and lowland reclamation. In order to understand how people respond to such disasters we need to know how they conceptualize them in local cultural terms, in other words what framework they have for making sense of them and responding to them. This involves, in part, subjective judgements of probability, of ‘perceived risk’, and may include both rational and irrational calculations. One thing we can be clear about is that contemporary traditional societies – including all those discussed in this book – are at the intersection of two systems for making sense and dealing with uncertainty and risk. The first is embedded in a cosmology in which environmental events are linked causally to morally loaded social behaviour (e.g. Soemarwoto 2004). In terms of such a framework, perturbations in the natural realm may be interpreted as presaging perturbation in the social realm. Thus, the eruption of Merapi was for many Javanese a symbol of the overthrow of Suharto, and raised questions both about the ability of rulers to protect subjects and about their legitimacy to rule (Dove, this volume). In the second, risk and uncertainty are perceived through an abstract framework of game theory and pragmatic risk analysis, perhaps most obviously exemplified in this volume by Platten. In this latter causal system, risk is the

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probability of a material event being detrimental to the survival and reproduction of an individual or a population, and its degree of uncertainty. The two ‘systems’ mutually coexist and interconnect, but may be disconnected to make best sense of any particular event in its local context. For this reason, and for others, phrases such as ‘systems of knowledge’ – as Dove points out – can be highly problematic. Anthropologists have written a lot about how people conceptualize misfortune. For the Nuaulu of central Seram in the Indonesian province of Maluku, sickness or the failure to catch game or fish is described as mahesae, and, in a society where people depend on their own success in fishing or hunting, failure to catch game or fish is a major concern. The cause of the failure to catch game or fish is usually gender pollution, although sorcery is sometimes responsible. Because Nuaulu interpret the causes of many misfortunes in terms of cosmological infringement, ancestral disapproval, spirit attack or sorcery, most misfortunes are of this kind. However, Nuaulu also now use the word siraka for disaster, a transliteration of the Indonesian word ‘celaka’, the dictionary gloss of which is ‘misfortune’ or ‘accident’, and we can perhaps see in this the clearer emergence of the two explanatory systems outlined in the previous paragraph. However, in the Nuaulu case siraka is used specifically to refer to disasters such as village attacks or someone being killed, although it can also be used to refer to more minor problems such as stealing. The 1998–2003 ‘Maluku wars’ were, for the Nuaulu, an unmitigated siraka, but they also resulted in multiple local instances of mahesae.

Local Responses to Crisis: the General Picture The automatic and ethically understandable assumption is that people in ‘crisis’, ‘disaster’ or extreme ‘hazard’ situations need external assistance, and there are often very clear and inflexible official views as to what form this assistance should take (Scott 1998). Thus, state administrations and agencies may assume that the appropriate long-term response to continued disaster is, say, transmigration, resettlement in gridiron layouts or bureaucratized irrigation, or one ‘miracle’ high-yielding variety of rice rather than a messy collection of different landraces with varying properties, or rice rather than sago. Occasionally, administrations may be completely blinded by this kind of tunnel vision, such that drought relief programmes can neglect even bumper harvests of traditional crops, partly because they are officially invisible and partly because local people themselves may prioritize state-aided food despite adequate local provision for political or cultural reasons (Stini 1975; Wilmsen and Durham 1988: 84). As Dove points out in his chapter, the ideological stance of the nation state with respect to natural disasters is that poor villagers need to be saved

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from volcanic eruptions, even if they have reached some locally acceptable workable accommodation. Similarly, it is on the face of it bizarre that people should deliberately concentrate on small volcanic islands or on small islands susceptible to annual sea-level rise – except when it becomes clear that the long-term benefits of clove and nutmeg production, on the one hand, and the trading advantages of being located in central places, on the other, are seen to override the short-term, uncertain and asymmetric disadvantages of flooding, salinization of drinking water, lava flows and fireballs (Ellen 1987, 2003). The knowledge that accompanies state aid has been called by Jordan (1997) ‘authoritative knowledge’, the knowledge of those in power. If there are reasons to distrust it when it is part of a sustained, planned regime of knowledge transfer, is there any more reason to trust it when it is part of an emergency package? Authoritative knowledge, precisely because it is generic and because local people have no control over it, can never respond precisely to local conditions; indeed, it might be thought to be positively dangerous. When central government steps in, it often undermines the local village security system and bolsters pre-existing inequalities; at its worst, when major crises compel the internationalization of emergency services, it may sustain the inflexibilities, questionable practices and ethical dilemmas of ‘disaster capitalism’. The new emerging consensus in the development aid field (Pottier 1999: 149) – in contrast – is that better relief comes from supporting local initiatives and coping mechanisms, which prevent the further liquidation of whatever local productive assets there might be, as often follows from external aid interventions. Although it is necessary to question the durability of local safety nets and the consequences of uninformed over-reliance on ‘customary’ arrangements for social and technical sharing, as the studies which follow show, local populations often have mechanisms specifically to deal with crises they might periodically expect, and even in times of unanticipated disaster always utilize local knowledge as a part of a strategy ‘to cope’. Not to recognize this and, worse, to assume that local responses are inferior or inappropriate to introduced ‘aid’ and humanitarian programmes can marginalize important resources for survival, make interventions less effective than they might be and, worst of all, in themselves lead to the erosion of local knowledge and the creation of a dependency culture that can, over time, make populations more vulnerable to sudden change than they might otherwise be. Although in extreme and acute situations outside intervention may well be unavoidable, ideally it will always draw on local expertise as part of the solution. In order to make sense of the studies collected together in this book, it is useful to clarify the kinds of graded response that local people often have available. For convenience I distinguish here: (a) predictors of irregularity and disaster: prophylactic steps that can identify the likelihood of

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upcoming problems; (b) short-term cyclical failure, and (c) long-term irregular failure. The responses discussed here are all cultural, in the sense that they draw on skills or knowledge that have been acquired over many generations, even if they may be rapidly reconstituted and combined in novel ways. In addition, of course, human bodies respond to disasters through evolved biological responses, drawing, for example, on brown fat reserves in times of energy shortage (e.g. Speth and Spielman 1983). Also, since human populations have been responding to periodic crises for many thousands of years, very often these responses display a complex co-evolved form that involves mutually reinforcing cultural and biological resources, such as in the area of fertility control. Some biological anthropologists and nutritionists have recently become interested in those bio-cultural characteristics that might help people cope with uncertainties in food supply, including adaptation to seasonal protein and energy stress, as well as the epidemiology and seasonal pattern of both infectious (e.g. diarrhoea) and some non-infectious (e.g. malaria) diseases (Harrison 1988; Stini 1988).

Predictors of Irregularity and Disaster Obviously the best response to impending disaster is to avoid it in the first place and to take preventive measures. In reports of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (e.g. Glass 2005), there were accounts of how some Andamanese and Nicobarese peoples had managed to avoid disaster by some kind of intuitive knowledge of the imminence of the event. This is, I think, entirely credible, in that many peoples of island southeast Asia are able to read what evidence there might be of approaching disaster, such as the behaviour of animals and subtle changes in winds and sea currents. Non-human animals often have a remarkable ability to pick up infrasonic or other indications of future environmental changes and threats, and certainly there were many reports of the low levels of wild animal deaths compared with those of humans in the 2004 tsunami. The problem with such reports as they apply to humans, however, is that they reinforce a particular stereotype of ‘tribal’ intuitive knowledge of nature, while denying that similar kinds of knowledge may be more widely distributed. Thus, in Chapter 4, Iskandar shows how Baduy anticipated the 1997 El Niño by employing a combination of traditional and innovatory strategies. A traditional agricultural calendar, astronomical and botanical indicators and varying the time of harvesting from sacred fields (huma serang) were all used to determine the date of the new agricultural year, so as to maintain the viability of traditional swidden practices under increasingly uncertain conditions. Similarly, Dove and Kammen (1997) have shown how forestdwelling peoples of Borneo understand the dynamics of mast fruiting of dipterocarps, triggered by slight climate fluctuation, in places attributable

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to the El Niño. These events are irregular and local, but result in the mass flowering and then fruiting of different dipterocarp species, which allow local people to both anticipate a perturbation and make use of a windfall source of food. Soselisa shows in Chapter 6 how in Ambon the appearance of the spawning laor worm in coastal waters serves the same purpose. Indeed, the importance of studying farmer awareness of weather fluctuations, the ethnoscience of seasonality and conceptions of time for studies of the socio-economic impact of climate change (Vedwan and Rhoades 2001: 109) is at last being taken seriously, as Chapter 2 by Puri exemplifies.

Responses to Short-term Cyclical Failure Most global South agriculture assumes short-term seasonal or annual fluctuations in production. Strategies that make sense in such situations begin with storage. Thus, Nuaulu will store meat by smoking to ensure its availability for rituals during the wet season when hunting is difficult (Ellen 1996), while Baduy and Kasepuhan store rice in village barns for many years at a time. But strategies for coping with short-term cyclical failure also include social and market exchange, crop diversity, planting patterns, use of tolerant crop varieties, staggered planting schedules, technology such as irrigation and drainage, increased labour inputs and switching to other subsistence techniques (gathering wild resources, hunting, fishing). Of course, where the main occupation is fishing or hunting, then it may be agriculture that provides the backup. The strategies people employ in such situations are not always directly visible, given the methodologies of outside researchers. Thus, Nuaulu tend to make more use of fruits and wild sources of food during times of food scarcity, but, because these are often eaten opportunistically between main meals and away from the village, they are not easily open to techniques for recording food consumption. In such circumstances, as serious students of nutrition in developing societies know, methodologies involving total recall of all food consumed or spot checks are more accurate ways of ascertaining actual food consumption. As Puri points out in Chapter 2, seasonal variability in climate affects the scheduling of agricultural activities, such as the planting of staple rice crops, throughout island southeast Asia, and even the start dates and lengths of annual wet and dry seasons can vary from year to year. The numerous studies that have documented the ability of farmers to cope with these short-term variable conditions indicate that rarely do these conditions produce crop failures or food scarcity.

Responses to Long-term Irregular Failure These are failures that people know historically will occur sometime, but that are difficult to predict. It is their very uncertainty that increases their

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danger. Over time, if long-term irregular failure increases in frequency, people will develop permanent strategies to cope, and the patterns of response become more like those for short-term cyclical failures. But there are also events that are so rare that what memorate knowledge there is has not led to the introduction of specific intellectual or physical resources to cope with them, but instead people respond by using strategies developed for short-term cyclical failure and by innovating new appropriate responses. Thus, in Chapter 2, Puri shows how longer-term climatic variability, such as hundred-year floods, hurricanes, cold snaps, heat waves and droughts, tend to be unpredictable and overwhelm existing means for coping. There are, however, medium-term climatic events, such as the El Niño, which occur regularly, usually more than once in a lifetime, and yet can still have severe consequences for farmers, fishermen and even urban dwellers. Using data on Penan forager and Kenyah farmer responses to droughts in east Kalimantan caused by ENSO events in 1982/83, 1990/91, and 1997/98, Puri addresses the extent to which they and others distinguish these medium-term events from short-term climatic variation. He explores whether they involve different coping mechanisms, what specialized knowledge, ethnobiological or other, such responses utilize and how this is transmitted and preserved. The terms ‘crisis’ and ‘disaster’ are, of course, ultimately relative, and depend both on people’s experience of previous events of a similar kind and on cultural evaluations of what kind of event is more or less disastrous than another. The point at which a short-term failure becomes a disaster is not clear, neither is the difference between a short-term coping strategy and disaster or crisis management. They elide into each other. Sometimes there may be a hierarchy of responses depending on the severity of the perturbation. Thus, as Swift (1977) and others have shown, the immediate response to declines in production may simply be to increase effort in the same area. This ‘escalation of effort’ response is discussed here by Puri for foraging populations such as the Penan, who achieve this through increased diet breadth and search ranges in times of nutritional stress, consuming foods the location, harvesting and processing of which involve increasing amounts of labour. In many populations, if intensification is no longer viable, if it has declining or zero desired effects, then other more radical options will be considered, such as settlement movement. Slightly differently, Nuaulu intensify hunting efforts as returns decrease, though these often mean that return for effort declines further (Ellen 1996). If hunting for individuals or households shows chronically poor returns, then when cash is available these households may rely on purchased fish. It is only as the crisis intensifies that broad-spectrum strategies come into play. The periodicity and irregularity of a critical disaster event determine the calculation of risk and therefore the preparedness of people to cope with it.

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One of the few detailed accounts we have of response to crisis while it is developing, and with a focus on process, is Raymond Firth’s classic ethnographic study of the aftermath of the Tikopia hurricane and drought in 1952 (Firth 1959: 51–64). Firth shows that immediately following a hurricane food was not actually in short supply, but it was so later, and in a sense the famine could be planned for. He shows how over different months between March 1952 and June 1953 different foods became more or less important, and that food fluctuated in its availability, famine occurring during those months when few of the varied starch staples were available.

Famine and Fallback Foods Conventional acknowledgement of the relevance of traditional knowledge to production crises is often bound up in the notion of ‘famine food’ or ‘survival foods’ (Carr 1943) or ‘wild’, ‘supplementary’ or ‘emergency’ foods (Irvine 1952, 1957) or, more prosaically, ‘fallback’ foods (Pollock 1992: 49): the idea that peoples have a knowledge of plants or animals that they somehow hold in reserve and utilize only when under subsistence pressure. This idea was anticipated in the previous section, in relation to the Penan and the Nuaulu. Such foods are usually reckoned to be those that would not normally be harvested because the costs are high or the nutritional benefits low or because they are unpleasant or of low status. Some extreme instances of these would include bark (Maxwell 1916), bamboo seeds (Rao, Jacob and Ramasastri 1969) or mango kernels (Wilkins 1942). The notion of famine food makes much more sense for agricultural peoples, where the risks of production failure are greater than amongst pastoralists or hunters and gatherers. Indeed, it has been suggested that this is the reason why, on a global scale, agricultural populations report more names for plants than non-agricultural peoples (Ellen 1999). We begin to find an interest in documenting these kinds of foods in the late colonial period, as administrations begin to take a serious interest in responding to periodic famines, in India (e.g. Shortt 1887–88; Gammie 1902; Paton and Dunlop 1904,) or sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. HelyHutchinson 1898), a concern that has followed through into the postcolonial period for these same areas: see Gupta and Kanodia (1968) for India, Salih, Nour and Harper (1991) for Sudan and Zinyama, Matiza and Campbell (1990) for Zimbabwe. In the contemporary period international agencies are beginning to take seriously the role played by such foods in the context of their attempts to alleviate hunger (e.g. UNDP 2002). The accounts of famine foods tend to be for areas where levels of precipitation are normally low, desert areas (e.g. Bhandari 1974), or where human pop-

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ulation densities are high, with access to little land and reliance on one main crop. Published research on famine foods for island southeast Asia is less common than for India or Africa (see, for example, compilations such as Scoones, Melnyk and Pretty 1992: 99–117). This is partly because, although food shortages are far from unknown, the environment and food production system are, overall, much more reliable than in parts of India, sub-Saharan Africa or China (on the latter, see Read 1946; Christopher 1985). It is true that some general works cover the ground, e.g. Burkill (1935) for peninsular Malaysia, but we know less of the use of particular famine foods in particular places. This is partly because it is latent (often low-status) knowledge, but also because crises are themselves difficult to study, and because in many cases isolating specifically ‘famine’ foods is conceptually difficult. Thus, ‘sago’ is widely seen as a famine food in island southeast Asia (Ellen 2004b). But, although it may genuinely occupy this role in many places, for example amongst the Penan (Puri, this volume) and in Oecusse (Meitzner Yoder, personal communication), elsewhere it may only be reported as such because it is reputedly low-status. Moreover, to say as much glosses over the many different kinds of palms and cycads yielding sago, which often play very different kinds of roles in local subsistence systems. Frequently, a simple equation is drawn between a famine food and a rarely used wild food; and old journals in particular are full of (sometimes questionable) reports and lists of famine foods, as the references at the end of this chapter attest. Often, the most effective foods in times of crisis are not wild or unusual plants at all, but rather robust staples. Thus, in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami, coconuts proved to be ideal survival food, providing both sustaining flesh and nutritious fluid, both of which were protected from infection. The same might be said of manioc (Manihot esculenta) or sago (Metroxylon sagu), until, of course, the conditions are such that even these fail. In other places unambiguous non-staple fallback foods can be clearly identified and have been documented. Thus, in northern Timor, with reliable annual cultivated staple crop shortfalls for two to five months of the year, local expectations of the severity of the upcoming hungry season were tracked by Meitzner Yoder (personal communication) by noting how early people began collecting Tamarindus indica and other legumes: if the maize harvest was poor, collection began in June; in a better year, collection might not begin until October/November. We can explore the notion of foods specifically flagged for use in times of crisis in relation to a specific example: the Nuaulu of south Seram in the Indonesian province of Maluku. Nuaulu do not have a concept of famine food at all, but they do have a clear notion of foods that can be eaten in the forest when other food is short, or when spending long periods in the forest on hunting or other trips (Table 1.2). These are just alternative

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Scientific name

1. Forest plants used as source of water in emergencies meute wasaura Young Calamus sp. bunara wane Piper corylistachyon sopate wane Tetracera scandens kapine wane Uncaria sp.

Source of Water Water Water Water

2. Forest and other non-cultivated plants providing fruits, shoots, roots and leaves tom-tom wesie Glochidion borneenisis Fruit sune nimasae Artocarpus sp. Fruit, starch komine Garcinia celebica Fruit popote wane Ptemandra cordata Fruit awane unie Rubus fraxinfolius Fruit kikun werane Amomum aculeatum Seeds and roots meute wasaura Young Calamus sp. Shoots utatone Helmintostachys zeylanica Leaves katue Oncosperma filamentosum Heart katina wan anoi Melastoma affine Fruit pitiri Passiflora foetida Fruit ananione Horsfieldia bivalvis Fruit popote putie Eugenia aquea Fruit makakohi Amorum roseum Fruit naine Stenoschlaena palustris Fern shoots cintar manis Gynura procumbens Leaves and stalks inene Gronophyllum microcarpum Young shoots una mataponone Lenzites palisoti Bracket fungus kaheo pukune Aleurites moluccana Nuts 3. Secondary garden crops saumahu Abroma prob. mollis sesawi Brassica juncea

Leaves Leaves

foods. Many of the forest fruits, though not the majority, are varieties of domesticates, and, although not necessarily taxonomically different, may be described as forest equivalents of well-known domesticates. Other species are seen as substitutes for important cultural items, such as for the stimulant Areca nut in the case of the fruits of Nypa fruticans, which is also occasionally eaten as a snack. Others still are noted for their utility in constructing forest shelters, such as the leaf and stalk of Alpinia sp., or for use as soft bedding, such as the lichen ahane (Usnea sp.). What is important is not, therefore, any one species, but the breadth of knowledge. The point about Nuaulu emergency reserve foods is not that there are just a few ‘famine’ species that can be used in difficult situations, but rather that there is a very wide reserve of edible forest fruits in particular. The Nuaulu Ethnobotanical Database (Ellen 1999a) lists 148 plants as

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secondary foods, though these include both wild and cultivated plants, domesticates and non-domesticates, and incorporate the category of aie wesie, ‘forest foods’. But, as has emerged in debates about the human carrying capacity of tropical rainforest without cultivation, including for island southeast Asia (e.g. Headland 1987), the limiting factor for survival when faced with nutritional stress is not so much the number of different species that provide edible matter or the number of different fruits and potential green vegetables, as those that provide calories and protein. In the case of the Nuaulu, there is in this sense only restricted breadth. There are forest yams, but these are not found in great abundance and are no different from those planted in gardens. There are the edible seeds of pandans and bamboo shoots, but more importantly there are the high concentrations of Canarium trees, which provide a proteinaceous nut, which was almost certainly more significant formerly in the central Moluccas than it is now. There are numerous varieties of Canarium commune used, and also other species of Canarium, as well as Celtis and Aleurites. The main Nuaulu starch staple, however, is sago from M. sagu, of which eleven different named types are recognized. Each of these differ in their culinary properties, rates of growth and growth conditions; but, if they fail, then there are other palms that are used for their pith. And if these are not available then the preferred form in which this starch is consumed (what the Nuaulu call sonar and the Ambonese pepeda) can be obtained by boiling the pods of the leguminous vine, Mastersia bakeri. However, M. sagu is a robust crop, which despite its reputation as a swamp species can survive in dry soils. It is prone to few diseases and, although its processing is hard physical work, the technical problems of production relate to water availability (essential for processing) rather than growth conditions. Although for the Nuaulu it has never been anything but their iconic source of sustenance, its consumption is increasingly replaced by, most importantly, rice and manioc. It has nevertheless been the resource of choice during periods of instability and imported food shortages, for example during the Pacific War of 1942–45, and during the conflict between the Republik Maluku Selatan and the Indonesian state (1950–65). With the collapse of the local cash economy after the civil disturbances between Muslims and Christians in 1999 and subsequent population displacement on a massive scale, the role of sago starch in the food security system not only of the Nuaulu (Ellen 2005), but of Maluku more generally, has yet again proved crucial (von Benda-Beckmann, 1990: 163; Brouwer, 1998). Sago provides greater continuity, stability and reliability than probably any other domesticated crop, is less influenced by seasonality and annual variation and less subject to pathogens. What is significant about these various backup sources of starch and vegetable protein is that all the important ones now show clear evidence

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of being cultivated or even domesticated, even if the cultivated-non-cultivated boundary is blurred, as it is for Metroxylon, Canarium, Aleurites and Celtis. It is not, therefore, that people resort to ‘wild’ sources of food in times of nutritional stress, but rather that these reserves of food, their properties and distribution, are themselves the outcome of local anthropogenic processes. There is a continuum between what people grow in their gardens and what they find in the forest. Pollock (1992: 49–51) suggests that for much of the Pacific fall-back foods are often cultigens surviving on abandoned land or secondary regrowth. Moreover, distinguishing between primary, secondary and fallback foods, she shows convincingly how cultivated species move between the three categories depending on the ecological and biocultural characteristics of a particular place. Thus, while in Raratonga taro and breadfruit are equally primary, arrowroot (Tacca leontopetaloides) secondary and M. esculenta fallback, on Pulau breadfruit is fallback, and in western Fiji M. esculenta is primary (Pollock 1992: 49–51). Pollock’s tripartite scheme is reminiscent of Bates’s (1985: 247) three plant resource pools: primary, secondary and tertiary. Bates is taking an aggregate global view, but it is worth remembering that if we apply the concept of plant resource pools to human populations in specific localities, while a similar tripartite, quantitative, broad-based pyramid applies, the location of a particular species in the three pools can change dramatically from place to place.

Case Studies of Local Knowledge Responses to Crisis, 1997–2003 In comparing the case studies presented in this volume, it is clear that for each population we must take into account: (a) local and historical specificity, (b) the way technical knowledge is embedded in social strategies; and (c) how both technical knowledge and social strategies are themselves situated in geographically discrete regional systems with their own unique properties. All of these combined make generalization hazardous.

Local and Historical Specificity For virtually every case presented, the impact of the crises that erupted between 1997 and 2003 can only be understood properly in terms of much longer local histories of perturbation, resource pressure and conflict. Thus, for the Nuaulu, ecological pressure had been building up gradually over a thirty-year period, through logging, in-migration, population growth and road-building. With a broad-spectrum subsistence base and a largely intact repertoire of forest resources, they were insulated from many shortfalls of individual foods. But from 1990 onwards resource

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pressure began to have consequences for communal relations, accentuated by their adoption of an overt environmentalist rhetoric derived from NGO and media discourses and by the combined impact of the 1997 El Niño, the 1997–99 economic crisis and political reforms from 1998 to the present (Ellen 2004a: 59). Although, during the communal conflict between Christians and Muslims between 1999 and 2003, Christian Nuaulu fled to settlements of co-religionists elsewhere on Seram and there were incidents involving the burning of ritual houses, Nuaulu subsistence life continued much as before, with no real impact on nutrition. The main problem caused by the political trouble was the blocking of access to distant swiddens and plantations (preventing harvesting) and the blocking of market access. Thus, paraffin and batteries were no longer available, and people had to resort to kamane resin torches (Agathis alba, Shorea selanica, Canarium spp.). Similarly, clove, coconut and other cash crops could not be harvested, and if they were harvested could not be transported and sold. Similarly, while the dry year of 2003 led to the death of fruit trees, and even sago, none of this had more than a marginal impact on bodily survival. The socio-environmental situation in Maluku generally between 1999 and 2003 was very patchy and, in places, quite different from what was happening in south Seram. In Chapter 6, Hermien Soselisa examines the strategies employed by the people of Buano, a small island off the west coast of Seram. She shows how traditional coping mechanisms were used in response to dry periods between 1980 and 2003, and more recently in the context of communal unrest between Christians and Muslims and the population displacement and breakdown of market linkages that resulted from this. Soselisa reports drought and food shortages from Buano during 1997/98, and shows how these were alleviated only by traditional mechanisms (ma’anu) for acquiring sago from mainland Seram (also Brouwer 1998: 362–64). In a central Moluccan context, sago is still the cultural barometer of subsistence stress, but in some places (e.g. in semiurban areas of Ambon island and in the transmigration zones of Seram and Halmahera) sago palms have been uprooted and land drained in order to enable alternative land uses, production levels have declined, the process of mechanization has stagnated, and the knowledge and social base necessary for effective extraction has been eroded (Brouwer, 1998). The destruction of sago palms and movement to other foods and material resources, together with the knowledge loss that accompanied this, reduced the ability of local people to cope under pressure, especially during the 1997 economic crisis, which led to increased pressure on sago (Brouwer, 1998: 366, 370). Even Butonese migrants in Ambon began to consume sago, and with less money to buy corrugated iron there was more use of sago thatch and leaf stalks (the traditional Moluccan building material), even though they were more difficult to obtain.

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In the context of Indonesia, transmigration and population movement more generally pose a problem for the use of traditional knowledge. What is perhaps most adaptive about traditional ecological and biological knowledge is that it is local. Transmigrants, if they come with local knowledge at all, are attempting to transfer knowledge from the localities of their places of origin. Where this happens, it may work well – as with the introduction by Balinese transmigrants in southeast Sulawesi of the subak (irrigation association) system during the mid-1970s – but often persistent attempts to apply knowledge gained over generations elsewhere result in abject failure. Dove (2000) provides an example of this in connection with the introduction of Hevea rubber as a cash crop in Malaysia and Indonesia at the beginning of the last century. But while failure of migrants to learn the local knowledge of their new home may result in disaster, an ability to flexibly adopt new habits from indigenes, as have many Butonese migrants from southeast Sulawesi in relation to the extraction of sago on Seram, may make the difference between success and failure.

Social Strategies So far I have referred mainly to quite specific instances of technical knowledge, but how people respond to individual perturbations is always situated in the ways they understand and organize social relationships. Thus, the same perturbation may elicit different responses from different social groups, and different perturbations may elicit the same response from the same group. Whereas the cultural values and social relationships of some populations described in this book can be generalized as ‘risk-averse’, some exhibit strategies that are in some sense more risk-prone, such as the inhabitants of the slopes of Gunung Merapi. As a distinction between different types of groups this is pretty coarse-grained, and on the whole, since social relationships are entirely strategies for maintaining security of one form or another, it might be more accurate to speak of degrees of risk-averseness. However, it is the case that some populations are more prepared than others to forgo potential higher returns for effort and tend to prioritize security of supply, whereas a few seek to maximize returns and emphasize security of tenure; some are more cooperative and some more individualistic in their responses (see, for example, Minnegal and Dwyer 2000). In the context of the present book, and in these simplistic terms, the rule-bound Baduy described by Iskandar are at the extreme collectivist end of the spectrum and the Minahasans described by Platten at the other, individualist, end. But, whatever the matrix of social norms and expectations, technical knowledge is innovated, transmitted, modified and utilized within them. In some cases, the institutionalized relationships in which such knowledge is embedded are specialized institutions of resource regulation, such as Kasepuhan matuh-batur or Moluccan maano. Much has been written

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about another Moluccan institution for spreading risk, sasi (Zerner 1994; von Benda-Beckmann, von Benda-Beckmann and Brouwer 1995), which has become the iconic and somewhat over-optimistic example of how traditional institutions conserve resources. Both governments and NGOs have sought to revive sasi. Quite frankly, much of what is written is idealistic but the institution may be plausily helpful in specific instances. The problem with sasi in the context of the crises of the late 1990s and early 2000s is that, precisely because the communities were disrupted, sasi and similar kinds of regulators could not be relied upon. For example, the sasi in the Seramese domain of Sepa was under the control of the (Muslim) raja and involved cooperation between Muslims, Christians and Nuaulu animists. With the Balkanization of Seram along strictly confessional lines, traditional sasi could not work properly, which was also the case for maano in west Seram, described by Soselisa. Meitzner Yoder, in Chapter 9, is dealing with a similar kind of institution in East Timor. Until 1975, local ritual authorities had elaborate mechanisms and strict regulations regarding sandalwood harvest, which effectively limited access to the traditional kings and colonial officials. During the Indonesian period from 1975 to 1999, the narrative of sandalwood decline parallels the traditional authorities’ loss of power as their forest control functions were supplanted by a national forestry department. After East Timor gained independence in 1999, conservation and economic development plans aimed to ‘reinstate’ the ritual authorities, reinvesting them with their former sandalwood monitoring functions. In an ongoing national programme, government departments have supported the revived practice of this Timorese seasonal restriction on forest use (tara bandu), putting this re-formed tradition to the service of contemporary conservation programmes. This effort appeals to nationalist sentiment as one strategy to explain and to address the forest decline that occurred in recent decades.

Regional Systems While it is important to focus on local knowledge and on individual strategies, it is equally important to note that these are not simply situated in their immediate social contexts, such as Moluccan sago extraction within notions of ma’anu exchange, or irrigation knowledge in relation to Balinese subak associations. They are also, invariably, simultaneously part of a wider geographical system that has evolved over the longer term, and that provides additional and more robust opportunities to cope with local subsistence stress, but opportunities that in themselves do not necessarily travel. Thus, in Maluku, zones of inter-island exchange and division of specialist labour, which exploit local terrestrial and marine ecologies, have provided defences against volcanic eruption, sea-level rise, and local

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resource deficiencies over many centuries (Ellen 2003), allowing people to tolerate periodic ‘disasters’. In Chapter 10, Michael Dove looks at another example of a complex multi-zonal agro-ecological system that embeds local strategies for coping with endemic volcanism. He notes that, while wider Javanese society places considerable credence in villagers’ beliefs regarding volcano spirits and their ability to predict eruptions, it ignores the role of this high-elevation agro-ecological system in utilizing grasslands near the lava fields to stall-feed cattle and supply manure to intensively cultivated lower-elevation fields. This system is so successful that it seldom fails the villagers, despite the fact that death and destruction due to volcanic hazard are not uncommon. Public focus on the latter supports the state imperative to resettle people away from the volcano, whereas attention to the former would raise issues of competition with state elites for the fertile lands on the volcano’s slopes. His analysis sheds light on what sorts of local knowledge become visible or not to wider societies and why.

Changing Knowledge Repertoires The idea of a corpus of ‘stock’ (or off-the-shelf) traditional knowledge that can been deployed in moments of physical catastrophe or nutritional stress is, I have suggested here, almost always false. In virtually all cases, knowledge is constantly being spontaneously recombined and produced either during default times of normality in anticipation of production problems or in actual moments of crisis.2 Island southeast Asia, no less than any other part of the world, has been a historical recipient of many new species, deliberately and inadvertently introduced. Many of these have been subjected to critical experimentation, which have increased the capacity to respond to crises and cope in times of hardship. The introduction of post-Columbian crops from the New World after 1500 not only challenged the status of traditional root crops (Xanthosoma at the expense of Colocasia esculenta, for example; and sweet potato (Ipomaea batatas) at the expense of other tubers, especially various species of Dioscorea), but, in the form of maize (Zea mays) and, most importantly, manioc (M. esculenta), provided crops that challenged the primacy of M. sagu as a robust food crop in times or areas of shortage, either raising productivity under normal conditions or being more resilient to pests and changing environmental conditions. Both maize and bitter manioc proved to be particularly crucial in Timor, the Kei islands and the southwest Moluccas, with their low precipitation levels and poor soils. And, within island southeast Asia, more productive and risk-averse species have over several thousand years replaced endemic ones: for example, M. sagu has steadily moved westwards from New Guinea, supplanting other palms as the pre-

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ferred source of stem starch (Ellen 2004c), while rice has moved eastwards, supplanting locally more ancient grains, such as millets, sorghum and Coix lachryma-jobi (Hill 2004). The recent literature on indigenous, traditional and local knowledge has emphasized its provisional, dynamic and contingent character. Rather than conservatism characterizing most farmer knowledge, we now know it to be flexible and responsive to modification and innovation. This has been expressed in different ways by different authors. Scott (1998), for example, speaks of ‘metis’: knowledge needed to respond to changing circumstances; Richards (1993) speaks of ‘performative’ knowledge, of a toolkit of skills (see also Ellen and Harris 2000). What is particularly significant here is the way local savoir-faire can override local ‘authoritative knowledge’, including on occasion tabooed symbolic knowledge. Thus, Dove notes that throughout recorded history there has been great interest amongst Javanese in monitoring the behaviour of Merapi volcano. Analysis of public discourses preceding and following the last major eruption in 1994 showed wide recognition of three distinct sources of knowledge: the government volcanology department, the Yogyakarta palace, and also the local villagers, who, despite living high on the volcano’s slopes, appear to behave in denial of the first two sources of authoritative knowledge. But local knowledge, while ultimately overriding other kinds of outside generic knowledge, also routinely hybridizes with new, often scientific, knowledge. Indeed, the process of hybridization is a protean, immanent and historically continuous one, not something that is especially new, except perhaps in terms of its scale. Moreover, we might almost say that individual local knowledges are nowadays all necessarily the outcome of the interaction of local and official/global knowledges (Dove et al. 2006). Chapter 5, by Iskandar and Ellen, uses a case study drawn from the upland Baduy of west Java to address some fundamental issues concerning what we might mean by hybridization applied to ethnobiological knowledge, and the conditions that influence knowledge transfer. Baduy sacred law constrains the process of innovation, most new crops or cultivars being prohibited. However, Baduy are also committed to the practice of swidden cultivation in an area of depleted forest. After initial resistance, Baduy have successfully introduced the leguminous tree Paraserianthes falcataria, which reduces fallow length and has thus afforded some protection against further depletion of surrounding mature forest. Successful innovation in this instance is grounded in Baduy pre-existing understanding of other nitrogen-fixing plants, but they have also drawn on the resources available in government departments involved in farmer extension work. The innovation and its apparently successful outcome were achieved only after initial resistance, and then after a period during which the local population could consider the advantages and disadvantages of the intro-

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duction and make the decisions for themselves. Similar examples could be demonstrated for other parts of island southeast Asia, for example the planting of the traditional fodder crop lamtoro (Leucaena leucocephala) along contour lines to form anti-erosion terraces in west Timor and Sikka (Metzner 1976, 1983). Chapter 3, by Rini Soemarwoto, provides us with a case study drawn from the Kasepuhan, an upland cultural enclave in west Java, who, despite having accepted the use of high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of rice, continue to increase the total number of recognized traditional landraces. In 1997 146 extant rice landraces were reported by Kasepuhan, and in 1998 at least one new landrace was identified and validated. In her chapter Soemarwoto examines the process by which new traditional landraces are identified and culturally validated, and the local process for assessing introduced HYVs. She demonstrates how Kasepuhan balance the advantages and disadvantages of different landrace combinations and how this has been used as a buffer against uncertainty since the onset of the Reformasi period in Indonesia. The responses to subsistence pressure reported for Baduy and Kasepuhan evinced gradual solutions to situations of cyclical subsistence failure. In the more acute crises faced by various localities after 1997, more drastic and rapid solutions were required. Thus, Soselisa addresses the question of how people innovate in situations where traditional subsistence responses are impossible, by combining local knowledge and market strategies. In particular she shows how an old exchange crop, the oil of Melaleuca cajuputi, previously neither husbanded nor harvested by Christian Buanoese, was collected, processed and the oil sold as a way of utilizing the market to obtain basic food supplies, at a time when they had no access to many gardens and plantations, following the breakdown of relations with neighbouring Muslims. In Chapter 8 Dario Novellino shows how in the Philippines traditional knowledge and practices are tolerated by political elites for electoral reasons, choosing not to enforce restrictions on shifting cultivation during the national election. In this way, they gain the highest amounts of votes from their upland constituents. Local communities, such as the Tanabag Batak, take advantage of this opportunity to increase the size of their swiddens, and even to clear patches of old growth forest. Instead, during the two consecutive years preceding the election, most Batak will clear lands where only small-diameter trees and shrub vegetation are found. The Batak’s attempt to adjust their agricultural cycle to the cycle of politics has crucial implications for the sustainability of their own swiddens, and for the way in which traditional ecological knowledge is rethought and transformed. This chapter argues that, to be resilient, Batak swidden practices must be structurally modified in a form of ‘dependency’ to state demands and political contingencies. Furthermore, it proposes that any

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discrepancy between the official requirements and actual implementation of national laws blurs the distinction of what is legal and what is not. Today, to gain access to their natural resources, Batak have learned new strategies to make use of this vagueness (as well as of government institutional weakness, clientship and administrative inefficiency). These strategies may serve to counter domination by central authorities, but – unavoidably – they also foster government dysfunction and a state of permanent crisis in the uplands. Finally, in Chapter 7 Simon Platten shows how Minahasa, a predominantly agricultural region of north Sulawesi, and one of the more developed agricultural areas of Indonesia outside Java, has a ‘tradition of change’. Over 500 years Minahasa has become part of an increasingly global network of trade and influence that has radically altered the landscapes of the Minahasan plateau and the province in general. The introduction of maize, which allowed the expansion into the uplands of other areas in Indonesia, created a similar agricultural revolution on the Minahasan plateau, though in a somewhat different context. In the contemporary uplands of Minahasa, characterized by land fragmentation, new strategies have developed, locally orchestrated and yet building on existing patterns brought about through the conditions of colonial rule. This chapter explores the similarities between the contemporary agricultural system in the village of Rurukan, with its emphasis on carrots and cloves as a means of achieving stability, and the previous agricultural system based on maize and coffee that led the upland expansion into the area 150 years previously. Platten demonstrates that, although the building blocks of the agricultural system, the landraces and cultivars, have changed, culturally continuity with regard to the selection of cultivars in the agricultural system has remained intact. Here subsistence uncertainty is less important than market uncertainty; but with the erosion of many traditional agricultural practices, it is the market that has also become the main mechanism for responding to crises, supported through the endorsement of flexibility and change as dominant cultural values, and with social institutions that facilitate this.

Conclusion So far in this introduction I have deliberately sidestepped addressing what might be considered the most crucial conceptual issue of all: what we might mean by ‘crisis management’ or a ‘coping strategy’. What is clear from this account is that, on the whole, people do not have a discrete body of knowledge that comes into play as a response to acute or prolonged disaster. True, there may be some foods described as famine foods, but generally speaking the responses employed, and certainly the suc-

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cessful responses, arise from a general strategy of maintaining high levels of diversity, and of implementing coping strategies that are constructed from a body of general principles people can resort to quickly and flexibly when required. Part of what makes for a successful response is simply the availability of resources constituting the long-term adaptation of a people to a particular set of circumstances, where the knowledge is, as it were, devolved in the ecology, distributed in a range of techniques, and not constituting deliberate remembered knowledge available when it is needed. The concepts of ‘coping mechanism’ and ‘crisis management’ in the context of our present understanding of traditional environmental knowledge, and people’s general responses to environmentally and socially induced subsistence stress are somehow inadequate. A crisis for Gunderson (2003: 37) is a ‘failure of policy’ or of ‘rules, norms, behaviours and infrastructure of management action’. But whose policy are we speaking of here? Although in extreme cases, such as the December 2004 tsunami, all stakeholders would easily agree that a crisis was what occurred; in other cases the notion of crises is itself culturally nuanced, as we have seen. To speak of ‘management’ suggests an overall planning strategy. Coping, in comparison, is a ‘short-term process of stress reduction’ through which individual organisms respond to fluctuations in the environment (Alland 1970). Coping is always opportunistic, intuitive, a tactical rather than a strategic process, always circumstantial, ad hoc, whereas crisis management gives the impression of being more strategic, planned in advance with set options for different eventualities: as found, for example in the bureaucracies of UN agencies, major aid-giving NGOs and government departments. Coping, of course, works as a response because certain bodies of knowledge and performative and intellectual skills are in place, but of itself it is spontaneous. It can anticipate outcomes to a degree, but must respond in a context of uncertainty about when those outcomes will occur and what form they will take. Much of the time cultural adaptation is about the constant reorganization of anticipatory behaviour in the context of previous anticipated and unanticipated events and outcomes, to resist future entropy and randomness. So what those in positions of power need to insist upon and ensure, whether governments, local administrations, agencies, NGOs or consultants, is simply that the conditions of development and disaster relief planning always leave space for the free and voluntary employment of local knowledge to find its way into the response patterns of those confronted with crises, by first of all valuing and not demeaning that knowledge, but also by proactively encouraging those conditions that minimize its erosion while at the same time identifying the kinds of situations where it is most relevant.

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Acknowledgements This introduction was written with support made available through ESRC grant RES-000-22-1106, ‘The ethnography, ethnobotany and dispersal of palm starch extraction’. Through their chapters and abstracts, all authors of this volume have made a direct, and as they will note, a recognizable textual contribution, but I would like to thank the following in addition for their advice on various matters connected with its preparation and completion: Perpetua George, Piers Locke, Laura Meitzner Yoder, Dario Novellino, Raj Puri and Rini Soemarwoto. Simon Platten has prepared the map in Figure 1.1, and Rosemary Bolton provided some of the Nuaulu data. Earlier versions were presented at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, and at a conference at the University of Oxford in July 2005 to celebrate the half-century of Queen Elizabeth House. I would like to thank Patricia Howard in connection with the first, and Laura Rival with respect to the second, an event that was generously funded by the UK government Department for International Development.

Notes 1. Based on the Dutch colonial archives for southeastern Kalimantan, Knapen (2001: 41–45, 141) is able to discuss in some detail and with surprising accuracy the occurrence of dry years, including ENSO years, for 1748–1838, as well as floods, fires, earthquakes, devastating winds and the impact of epidemic diseases, such as smallpox. He is able to make the point most effectively that the image of Borneo as an environmentally stable area (when compared, for example, with Java) is difficult to sustain, ecological variation and unpredictability being much more pronounced than most people might expect (ibid., 367). See, especially, his meticulous ‘Overview of disasters, 1747–1880’ (ibid.: Appendix 1, 404–10), in which he logs recorded events for the following descriptors: heavy rain, drought, forest fire, cholera, smallpox, measles, rodent infestation and war. 2. Understandably, crises themselves are not moments that easily lend themselves to rational planning, and in such contexts some stock responses are essential. Equally, we know from the psychology of stress that this often provides the extra stimulus for the body and brain to go into coping overdrive (e.g. Cox 1978: 53–90), which may encourage especially innovative behaviour.

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Introduction | 43 Minnegal, M. and P.D. Dwyer. 2000. ‘Responses to a Drought in the Interior Lowlands of Papua New Guinea: a Comparison of Bedamuni and KuboKonai’, Human Ecology 28(4): 493–526. Murphy, D. 2001. ‘The Rise of Robber Barons Speeds Forest Decline’, Christian Science Monitor, 24 August. Nabhan, G.P. and S. St. Antoine. 1993 ‘The Loss of Floral and Faunal Story: the Extinction of Experience’, in S.R. Kellert and E.O. Wilson (eds), The Biophilia Hypothesis. Washington, DC: Island Press, pp. 229–50. Oliver-Smith, A. 1986. Natural Disasters and Cultural Responses. Studies in Third World Societies, 36. Williamsburg, VA: Department of Anthropology, College of William and Mary. ___. 1999. ‘“What Is a Disaster?”: Anthropological Perspectives on a Persistent Question’, in A. Oliver-Smith and S. M. Hoffman (eds), The Angry Earth: Disaster in Anthropological Perspective. London: Routledge, pp. 18–34. Ormeling, F.J. 1956. The Timor Problem: a Geographical Interpretation of an Underdeveloped Island. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Paton, D.N. and J.C. Dunlop. 1904. ‘The Nutritive Values of Some Uncultivated Foods Used by the Bhils During Recent Famines’, Agricultural Ledger 6: 37–73. Persoon, G. 1992. ‘From Sago to Rice: Changes in Cultivation in Siberut’, in E. Croll and D. Parkin (eds), Bush Base: Forest Farm: Culture, Environment and Development. London: Routledge, pp. 187–99. Pollock, N.J. 1992. These Roots Remain: Food Habits in Islands of the Central and Eastern Pacific Since Western Contact. Hawaii: Institute for Polynesian Studies. Pottier, J. 1999. Anthropology of Food: the Social Dynamics of Food Security. Cambridge: Polity. Pottier, J., A. Bicker and P. Sillitoe (eds). 2003. Negotiating Local Knowledge: Identity, Power and Situated Practice in Development Intervention. London: Pluto. Puri, R.K. and Donovan, D.G. 2004. ‘Asia’s Tropical Forests in a Changing Global Context: Can Expert-led Policy Making Cope with Change?’ Proceedings of the International Symposium Tropical Forests in a Changing Global Context, 8–9 November 2004. Brussels: UNESCO (MAB) and the Belgian Royal Academy of Overseas Sciences (RAOS). Rao, P., C.M. Jacob and B.V. Ramasastri. 1969. ‘The Nutritive Value of Bamboo Seeds’, Journal of Nutrition and Dietetics (Coimbatore) 6(3): 192–95. Read, B.E. (ed.). 1946. Famine Foods Listed in the Chiu Huang Pen Ts’ao [of Ting Wang Chou]: Giving their Identity, Nutritional Values and Notes on their Preparation. Shanghai: Henry Lester Institute of Medical Research. Richards, P. 1993. ‘Cultivation: Knowledge or Performance?’, in M. Hobart (ed.), An Anthropological Critique of Development. London: Routledge, pp. 61–78. Sahlins, M. 1972. Stone Age Economics. London: Tavistock. Salih, O.M., A.M. Nour and D.B. Harper. 1991. ‘Chemical and Nutritional Composition of Two Famine Food Sources Used in Sudan, Mukheit (Boscia senegalensis) and Maikah (Dobera roxburghi), Journal of the Sciences of Food and Agriculture 57: 367–77. Schulte Nordholt, H. 2002. ‘A Genealogy of Violence’, in F. Colombijn and J. Thomas Lindblad (eds), Roots of Violence in Indonesia: Contemporary Violence in Historical Perspective. Verhandelingen 194. Leiden: KITLV Press, pp. 33–61. Schwarz, A. 1999. A Nation in Waiting: Indonesia’s Search for Stability. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin. Scoones, I., M. Melnyk and J. Pretty. 1992. The Hidden Harvest: Wild Foods and Agricultural Systems: a Literature Review and Annoted Bibliography. London: International Institute for Environment and Development.

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44 | Roy Ellen Scott, J.C. 1976. The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. ___. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. Sharma, S.D. 2001. ‘The Indonesian Financial Crisis: From Banking Crisis to Financial Sector Reforms, 1997–2000’, Indonesia 71: 79–110. Shortt, J. 1887/88. ‘List of Wild Plants and Vegetables Used as Food by People in Famine Times’, Indian Forester 3: 232–38. Sillitoe, P., A. Bicker and J. Pottier. 2002. Participating in Development: Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge. London: Routledge. Smith, A.E. 1979. ‘Chayanov, Sahlins, and the Labour-Consumer Balance’, Journal of Anthropological Research 35(4): 477–80. Smith, J., S. Obidzinski and I. Suramenggala. 2003. ‘Illegal Logging, Collusive Corruption and Fragmented Governments in Kalimantan, Indonesia’, International Forestry Review 5(3): 293–302. Sodhi, N.S., Lian Pin Koh, B.W. Brooks and P.K.L. Ng. 2004. ‘Southeast Asian Biodiversity: an Impending Disaster’, Trends in Ecology and Evolution 19(12): 654–60. Soemarwoto, O. 1991. ‘Human Ecology in Indonesia: the Search for Sustainability in Development’, in J. Hardjono (ed.), Indonesia: Resources, Ecology and Environment. Singapore: Oxford University Press, pp. 212–35. Soemarwoto, R. 2004. ‘ Changing Perceptions of Nature in Upland West Java: the Kasepuhan Case’, Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Kent at Canterbury: Sowerwine, J.C. 2004. ‘Effects of Economic Liberalization on Dao Women’s Traditional Knowledge, Ecology, and Trade of Medicinal Plants in Northern Vietnam’, in T.J.S. Carlson and L. Maffi (eds), Ethnobotany and Conservation of Biocultural Diversity. Advances in Economic Botany, 15. New York: New York Botanical Garden Press, pp. 235–62. Speth, J.D. and K.A. Spielman 1983. ‘Energy Source, Protein Metabolism, and Hunter-Gatherers’, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 2: 1–31. Stauffer, R.B. 1985. ‘The Philippine Political Economy: (Dependent) State Capitalism in the Corporatist Mode’, in R. Higgott and R. Robison (eds), South East Asia: Essays in the Political Economy of Structural Change. London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul, pp. 241–65. Stini, W.A. 1975. ‘Adaptive Strategies of Human Populations Under Nutritional Stress’, in E. Watts, F.E. Johnston and G.L. Lasker (eds), Biosocial Interrelations in Population. The Hague: Mouton, pp. 19–41. ___. 1988. ‘Food, Seasonality and Human Evolution’, in I. De Garine and G.A. Harrison (eds), Coping with Uncertainty in Food Supply. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 32–51. Strauss, J., K. Beegle, A. Dwiyanto, Y. Herawati, D. Pattinasarany, E. Satriawan, B. Sikoki, Sukamdik and F. Witoelar. 2004. Indonesian Living Standards: Before and After the Financial Crisis. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Sunderlin, W.D. 2002. ‘Effects of Crisis and Political Change, 1997–1999’, in C.J.P. Colfer and I. Resosudarmo (eds), Which Way Forward? People, Forests, and Policymaking in Indonesia. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future and Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), pp. 246–76. Sutherland, W.J. 2003. ‘Parallel Extinction Risk and Global Distribution of Languages and Species’, Nature 423: 276–79. Swift, J. 1977. ‘Sahelian Pastoralists: Underdevelopment, Desertification and Famine’, Annual Review of Anthropology 6: 457–78. UNDP. 2002. Wild-food Plants in Ethiopia: Reflections on the Role of ‘Wild-Foods’ and

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Introduction | 45 ‘Famine-Foods’ at a Time of Drought. UN Emergencies Unit for Ethiopia, United Nations Development Programme. Utrecht, E. 1973. ‘Land Reform and BIMAS in Indonesia’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 3: 149–64. van Dijk, K. 2001. A Country in Despair: Indonesia Between 1997 and 2000. Verhandelingen 186. Leiden: KITLV Press. van Klinken, G. 2001. ‘The Maluku Wars: Bringing Society Back In’, Indonesia 71: 1–26. van Steenis, C.G.G.J. (ed.). 1948. Flora Malesiana. Jakarta: Noordhoff-Kolff. Vayda, A.P. and B.J. McCay. 1975. ‘New Directions in Ecology and Ecological Anthropology’, Annual Review of Anthropology 4: 293–306. Vedwan, N. and R.E. Rhoades. 2001. ‘Climate Change in the Western Himalayas of India: a Study of Local Perception and Response’, Climate Research 19: 109–117. Vel, J.A.C. 2001. ‘Tribal Battle in a Remote Island: Crisis and Violence in Sumba (Eastern Indonesia)’, Indonesia 72: 141–58. von Benda-Beckmann, F. 1990. ‘Sago, Law and Food Security on Ambon’, in J.I. Bakker (ed.), The World Food Crisis: Food Security in Comparative Perspective. Toronto: Canadian Scholar’s Press, pp. 157–99. von Benda-Beckmann, F., K. von Benda-Beckmann and A. Brouwer. 1995. ‘Changing “Indigenous Environmental Law” in the Central Moluccas: Communal Regulation and Privatisation of Sasi’, Ekonesia 2: 1–38. Walker, P.J.C. 1995. ‘Indigenous Knowledge and Famine Relief in the Horn of Africa’, in D.M. Warren, L.J. Slikkerveer and D. Brokensha (eds), The Cultural Dimension of Development: Indigenous Knowledge Systems. London: Intermediate Technology Publications, pp. 147–54. Warren, D.M., L.J. Slikkerveer and D. Brokensha (eds), 1995. The Cultural Dimension of Development: Indigenous Knowledge Systems. London: Intermediate Technology Publications. Wertheim, W.F. 1968. ‘Changing Southeast-Asian Societies: an Overview’, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 1: 423–38. Wessel, I. and G. Wimhöfer. 2001. ‘Introduction’, in I. Wessel and G. Wimhöfer (eds), Violence in Indonesia. Hamberg: Abera, pp. 8–14. White, B. 1983. ‘“Agricultural Involution” and its Critics: Twenty Years After’, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 15(2): 18–31. Whitten, A., R.E. Soeriaatmadja and S.A. Afiff. 1997. The Ecology of Java and Bali. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilkins, E.G. 1942. ‘Mango Kernels as Food’, Indian Farming 3: 636–37. Wilmsen, E.N. and D. Durham. 1988. ‘Food as a Function of Seasonal Environment and Social History’, in I. De Garine and G. A. Harrison (eds). Coping with Uncertainty in Food Supply. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 52–87. Zent, S. 2001. ‘Acculturation and Ethnobotanical Knowledge: Knowledge Loss among the Piaroa of Venezuela’, in L. Maffi (ed.), On Biocultural Diversity: Linking Language, Knowledge and the Environment. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 190–211. Zerner, C. 1994. ‘Through a Green Lens: the Construction of Customary Environmental Law and Community in Indonesia’s Maluku Islands’, Law and Society Review 28(5): 1079–122. Zinyama, L.M., T. Matiza, T. and D.J. Campbell. 1990. ‘The Use of Wild Foods During Periods of Food Shortage in Rural Zimbabwe’, Ecology of Food and Nutrition 24(4): 231–55.

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CHAPTER

2

Responses to Medium-term Stability in Climate El Niño, Droughts and Coping Mechanisms of Foragers and Farmers in Borneo

Rajindra K. Puri

Introduction Geographical scale is repeatedly emphasized as critical in analysing the human dimensions of environmental change. Human responses to environmental change occurring at different temporal scales need similar attention, especially mechanisms of knowledge transmission that preserve knowledge relevant only intermittently. Even in the tropics, seasonal variability in climate affects the scheduling of agricultural activities, such as the planting of staple rice crops. Furthermore, the start dates and lengths of annual wet and dry seasons can vary from year to year. Numerous studies document the ability of farmers to cope with these short-term variable conditions, through tolerant crop varieties, staggered planting schedules, technology such as irrigation and drainage and increased labour inputs, to name but a few strategies. Rarely do these conditions produce crop failures or food scarcity. Longer-term climatic variability such as hundred-year floods, hurricanes, cold snaps, heatwaves and droughts tend to be unpredictable and overwhelm existing means for coping. One need only examine the recent past for such calamities: the Mississippi floods of the 1990s, Thailand’s floods of 1988, the Sahelian droughts of the 1980s, the U.S. dust bowl of the 1930s and hurricane Katrina on the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005. There are, however, medium-term climatic events, such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), that occur regularly, usually more than once in a lifetime, and

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yet can still have severe consequences for farmers, fishermen and even urban dwellers. Do farmers and others distinguish these medium-term events from short-term climatic variation? Do they have different coping mechanisms for them? Is specialized knowledge, ethnobiological or other, utilized in such responses? How is it transmitted and preserved? These questions are examined through a comparison of Penan and Kenyah farmers’ responses to droughts and floods caused by ENSO events in 1991–95 and 1997–98. This chapter addresses concerns and needs in two realms, one academic and one applied. First, studies of ethno-climatology can be used in debates concerning the functions of folk-classification systems as either intellectual or utilitarian, as Orlove (2003) points out. Would the lack of distinct local categories for El Niño events indicate the lack of distinguishable discontinuities in weather in those particular locales, or the inability of local people to perceive them? Or is it the case that no innovative qualitatively different responses are required for such events and therefore they are simply perceived as extreme cases of known climatic events? Answers to these questions may also be used to explore discussions in environmental anthropology concerning the relationship between perception and practice in human-environment relations. Sillitoe’s (1994: 247) analysis of the Wola and their weather in New Guinea showed the value of ethno-climatology as a means of comparing indigenous categories, statements and explanations with quantifiable data. Following Ingold’s (2000) model, Vedwan and Rhoades (2001: 116) argue that understanding human-environment interactions, such as responses to drought, fire and crop failure, is best accomplished ‘not by consideration of disembodied, abstract and a priori models and categories but by recovering it from the web of concrete practices which are historical and context bound’. Thus studying environmental practice should take priority over uncovering categories that correspond to ENSO as a means of understanding perception and action (Vedwan and Rhoades 2001: 116, footnote 8). So, if Penan and Kenyah people do not have categories for certain weather phenomena, we should not be too concerned; their understanding should be embedded in their actions. Secondly, if El Niño events are coming more frequently and with greater severity (Salafsky 1994; Burton 1997; Curran et al. 1999; Tudhope et al. 2001) and the impacts of drought and fire are increasingly widespread and devastating (Brookfield, Potter and Byron 1995; Walsh 1996; Potter and Lee 1999; Slik 2004), then there is greater need to know how people understand and respond to climatic variability and if their understanding is changing somehow, either due to new knowledge such as weather forecasts or due to an erosion of traditional knowledge accompanying changing coping strategies for all kinds of crises. As Vedwan and Rhoades (2001: 117) conclude for the western Himalaya:

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48 | Rajindra K. Puri climate variability and changes have rendered the role of planning and research in agriculture more crucial than ever before, and the climate factor thus needs to be included in any program aimed at maintaining and enhancing the agricultural sustainability of the northwestern Himalayan region … Since it forms the basis of decision making, local knowledge of climate should be incorporated into any strategy meant to mitigate the impact.

Scale in Environmental Change and Ethnobiological Research Ethnographers, geographers, linguists and ethnobiologists have long been aware of and indeed interested in local understandings of geographical scale and variation in ecological space, what Meilleur (1986, 1989) calls folk ecological representation and what many think of as the subject of ethno-ecology (see Fowler 1990). As is illustrated in Figure 2.1, researchers have described classification schemes of land cover and landuse units that represent various scales, and their significance for reckoning, resource extraction and environmental manipulation by various groups of indigenous peoples (Conklin 1954; Meilleur 1986; Hunn 1990; Puri 2005a). From a review of the literature, Meilleur (1989: 2–4) identifies three levels of native categories representing vegetative groupings at several scales. At the widest environmental breadth, Level 1 categories are similar to scientific concepts such as ‘biome’ or ‘formation’. For example (see Figure 2.1), the Penan Benalui of east Kalimantan use tana’ to refer to ‘all the land’ that they live in, which can be further divided into ke bai (‘riverine’) and ke daya (‘upland’), and ba’ is a general term for ‘forest’, which can be found in either of these areas. Level 2 categories are logically similar to concepts such as ‘association’, ‘biotope’, ‘community’ and ‘habitat’. For the Penan, uma is a rice swidden and bokken refers to all forms of vegetative regrowth. Level 3 categories are still smaller in scale, referring to successional stages, such as bokken sik (‘small fallow’) and bokken jau (‘large fallow’). Level 3 categories can also refer to borders or edges of Level 2 categories, as in unyuk the Penan term for the ‘canopy’ of the forest (Puri 2001, 2005a). As can be gleaned from the above, categories for the spatial dimension are nested in a hierarchy of expanding scale. Meteorologists also organize weather phenomena in this manner (Figure 2.2), but do the Penan, or other indigenous peoples, have a similar hierarchical taxonomy for the temporal dimension, and are medium-term stabilities such as ENSO represented? Also, do these conceptions influence responses (or behaviour) designed to predict or mitigate its consequences for agriculture and other livelihood activities? In a wide-ranging volume on ethno-climatology, Katz, Lammel and Goloubinoff (2002: 16) conclude that indeed all societies accumulate

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Figure 2.1. Penan Benalui ecological representation (from Puri 2005a)

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Figure 2.2. Hierarchies of vegetation, landform structures and atmospheric processes for the tropical forest (based on Hollings, Gunderson, Peterson 2002: 68)

knowledge of weather and climate. With regard to the small-scale stabilities of ‘seasons’, Ben Orlove (2003), in a recent essay entitled ‘How People Name Seasons’, analyses nomenclature for seasons among twenty-six languages around the world, and concludes that ‘the tendency to name seasons seems a widespread characteristic’ (Orlove 2003: 136). He notes that the number of seasons named varied from two to six, and that there could be variation in the referents of categories within a particular language group if populations occupied different geographical and altitudinal zones. While atmospheric features were the main criteria for categorizing seasons (precipitation, temperature, wind), other criteria could also include flooding cycles, stages in the agricultural cycle or the dominance of certain crops, the flowering or fruiting of wild plants, bird and animal migrations, and rituals or movements/migrations of the group (see also Sillitoe 1994: 251). There are examples of sub-seasons, such as Orlove describes for the Nuer, but no mention is made of categories for inter-annual variation. However, there is variation in the relative fixity of the seasons within a year, with some arriving on a specific date, and others coming at any time within a period of weeks in either direction. From year to year, then, some seasons may be much more predictable than others. Also, seasons may or may not be sharply bounded, and there may be uncertainty among mem-

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bers of a group as to when a season actually begins. In reality, there are often times when no season can in fact be specified, though there are no cases in Orlove’s database where intermediate, unnamed times between seasons are recorded. This may in fact be an artefact of a methodology that assumes ‘that a year can be wholly divided into seasons’ (Orlove 2003: 132). Orlove’s findings are intriguing; they suggest that a rich domain of human knowledge and understanding lies waiting for further exploration, and, for the purposes of this chapter, suggest that there is no reason why societies should not also notice inter-annual fluctuations in climate and possibly classify and name them. Several studies from Africa indicate that farmers and pastoralists can and do detect long-term trends in rainfall (Sollod 1990; Ovuka and Lindqvist 2000). Similarly, West and Vásquez-León (2003) showed that some ranchers and farmers in southeastern Arizona accurately detect climate variability. Long-term residents were more likely to note that the climate was changing and roughly a third of them correctly perceived a seasonal shift in rainfall pattern – increasingly wetter winters and drier summers – that has been occurring at the time scale of decades since the beginning of the twentieth century. However, their perception that the area was becoming increasingly arid was not borne out by the meteorological data (West and Vásquez-León 2003: 244–45). The authors concluded that farmers’ perceptions were not based on short-term meteorological phenomena or events, but did in fact reflect climatic trends, some of which may be considered medium-term stabilities. While their respondents did not mention it, the authors point to the increasing frequency of extreme El Niño years (Burton 1997: 187), which tends to increase precipitation during the winter months in the southwestern United States, as a possible cause of the shift in rainfall dominance to the winter months. Fortunately, winter rains appear to be beneficial to both farmers and ranchers. They increase the abundance of grasses and edible shrubs for livestock forage in winter and raise the water table, thus reducing pumping costs for farmers during the spring planting season (West and Vásquez-León 2003). On Borneo itself, King’s (1996: 183) survey of 222 Iban households in the Bintulu area of Sarawak suggested that these farmers perceive the weather to be increasingly unpredictable, but that variability is due to a longer rainy season, which delays the planting of rice swiddens, or increased rains, rather than an increase in droughts shown to be occurring elsewhere on the island (Salafsky 1994, Walsh 1996). What is really surprising is that their perceptions differ from rainfall statistics, which show no marked change in the predictability of rainfall periods. In fact, informants saw commercial logging as a greater threat to their environment rather than increased climatic variability, and the discordance of local perceptions with the reality of objective weather records is left unexplained

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by King. The lack of dramatic effects of ENSO events in the northwestern part of Sarawak such as prolonged droughts and extensive fires may in fact account for this insensitivity to inter-annual variability associated with ENSO periods. Perhaps the best place to look for evidence of ENSO representation has to be the Paita fisherman of Peru, who gave us the term El Niño. They have observed for hundreds of years an annual warm current, Corriente del Niño, that flows down the coast of northern Peru around Christmas time. Normally lasting for a few weeks only, every few years the warm waters extend further south and stay for months, causing dramatic reductions in fish catches along the coast and hardship for fisherfolk communities. On the other hand, the extended warm currents cause heavy rains inland, which mean bumper crops and a year of plenty, años de abundancia, for these communities (Couper-Johnston 2000: 6). Orlove’s study of weather forecasting methods among Andean farmers in Peru and Bolivia supports this conclusion (Orlove, Chiang and Cane 2000, 2002). Farmers observe the appearance of the Pleiades constellation over several days in June every year in order to predict whether the rainy season will be on time in October or delayed, and whether the amount of rain will be sufficient or not. While their study demonstrates the empirical validity of such forecasts – El Niño events affect the atmospheric conditions in June and rainfall later in the year – the authors do not mention specific nomenclature or a system of classification for weather that might indicate the psychological salience of El Niño. How farmers evaluate what they see seems to vary among villages, some having but two categories, bright or dim, others seeing how dimness varies over several days, and some counting the number of stars visible in the Pleiades. Unfortunately, the actual responses of farmers are not presented in detail. Does the start date of potato planting vary between the usual time and the three-week or so delay that is reported during severe El Niño years? Since there is a continuous relationship between the strength of the El Niño years and aridity, and similarly between potato harvests and rainfall, such that potato harvests vary inversely with El Nino’s strength (Orlove, Chiang and Cane 2002: 431), then one might also expect continuous variation in the date that farmers plant potatoes. If that were the case, from the farmer’s perspective, then, an El Niño year would not be qualitatively different from any other year, and it would not be surprising to find that no specific terms mark these years off. If seasons are the most salient of temporal phenomena, then perhaps they should be thought of as generic, and equivalent to Level 2 categories in ethno-ecology. Inter-annual variation or the longer-term stabilities would be superordinate to seasons and thus similar to Level 1 categories. We might not expect to find labelled categories for such high levels as ‘interglacial warming’, but the data seem too incomplete to rule out those

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of El Niño length and scale. Subordinate categories, equivalent to Level 3 categories, might include sub-seasonal occurrences such as ‘heatwaves’, ‘dry spells’ or ‘storms’, and those transitional or intermediate periods ‘between seasons’, such as ‘Indian summer’, which often occurs during the transition from summer to autumn in New England. This is obviously a very simple and preliminary sketch, and clearly a folk taxonomy of climate could be as complex as any other folk taxonomy. We should expect many levels, covert categories, polysemy and all the characteristics uncovered by ethnobiologists for other classificatory domains (Berlin 1992). While the literature on cross-cultural responses to climate change and weather-related disasters seems to be growing exponentially, the cognitive study of climate has been neglected and remains a wide open field for future research.

Models of Human Response to Climatic Variation: the Role of Local Knowledge If the route to understanding the perception of climate is through a people’s practices, their ‘perceptions in action’ so to speak, rather than solely through their classificatory systems and other cultural models (see Ingold 2000), then surely examining responses to El Niño events and other climatic variations is a necessity. An analysis of the practices of foraging and farming groups also allows us to explore the full scope of indigenous knowledge that is brought to bear on climate prediction, disaster planning and mitigation of such consequences as drought, crop failure, famine and forest fire. Climate-related knowledge is embedded in stories, myths, oral history, the scheduling of subsistence activities, crop selection, hunting and gathering techniques, political and social institutions and, critically, the ability to link and adapt the full gamut of experiences and skills of the past to the present-day circumstances that people find themselves in, what I have called elsewhere ‘performance knowledge’ (Puri 1997a, 2005a). Since these are temporal phenomena, fleeting in time and space, they cannot be captured and held for study, nor can they be ‘visited’ when someone expresses the desire to learn about them. Thus the transmission of knowledge about climate and human responses to it is of great importance. Each of these forms of climate knowledge can be expected to be learned and transmitted in different ways: some verbally, some through demonstration, imitation and practice, and others through participation or personal experience alone. Thus perception, practice and transmission are all closely interlinked. In the next sections , then, I briefly review what others have discussed as the basic ways in which foraging and farming people respond to El Niño events and some of the specialized knowledge associated with it. This is followed by a first-hand account of such responses among the Penan and Kenyah peoples of East Kalimantan.

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Forager Responses to Climatic Variation Brian Fagan notes that, in general, mobility, social collaboration, muddling through, innovations to increase carrying capacity and decisive centralized leadership are the usual responses to accumulated climatic stress, the alternative being societal collapse (Fagan 1999: xvi). Indeed, accounts of hunter-gatherer groups in arid climates such as the Kalahari desert and Australia, and in the dry Arctic describe their use of mobility and social collaboration to respond to uncertainties in water and food supply (Lee 1968; Lee and DeVore 1976; Wiessner 1982; Peterson and Long 1986; De Garine and Harrison 1988; Hayden 1992). First of all, De Garine and Harrison (1988: 470) note the biological adaptations to drought and food scarcity that may have evolved among hunter-gatherer populations: There is certainly evidence that hunter-gatherers, including rather atypical ones that have persisted till today in the more inhospitable ecosystems of the world, have in-built mechanisms for coping with the sort of seasonal and other food shortages they are likely to experience. In particular, human beings have stores and reserves to see them through quite acute food shortages as long as these are not too prolonged.

In broad outline, forager peoples typically respond to increased severity of drought and scarcity of foods with a series of responses escalating in effort (see Couper-Johnston 2000: 57–67).1 First, foragers broaden their diet breadth to include secondary and tertiary foods, such as bitter roots and tubers that need to be processed before eating, fungi, fruit normally eaten by animals, edible leaf buds, shoots and even difficult-to-digest leaves. Secondly, making use of their mobility, they will increase their search ranges, move camp and return to areas where they know of water and food resources. As vegetable foods begin to disappear, animal foods may also begin to increase in their diet especially smaller creatures like fish, reptiles, snakes, frogs, turtles, rats, mice and insects. Clearly foragers in desert ecosystems have different constraints from those in tropical forest. The tropical foragers in the western Pacific and southeast Asia have significant food resources in sago, coconut and other tree palms, rattans and vines, wild yams, gingers, bamboos and many species of forest fruit. Desert foragers may have sacred wells or waterholes that they can retreat to for water and where they can also hunt. This knowledge of famine foods, hidden water sources and hunting grounds may be coded in myths and traditions, as well as learned through first-hand experience. Thirdly, foragers will move beyond the affected area, assuming the consequences of climatic variation are localized. Such a move is often predicated on preestablished social relationships with neighbouring groups, who may be distant kin or historical allies. In the Kalahari, the San groups rely on alliances created through the practice of reciprocal gift-giving, known as

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hxaro. Maintaining these relationships requires occasional travel and the delayed exchange of rather utilitarian gifts, such as tools, in contrast to ceremonial gift exchanges involving high-prestige goods, as among the Trobriand islanders’ Kula or the Pacific Northwest potlatch. Wiessner (1982) found that 60 per cent of San conversations concerned the state of hxaro relationships, so clearly these were important to maintain. Their options in times of need are increased by spouses maintaining different hxaro relationships. Australian Aborigines follow ‘song lines’ or ‘dreaming tracks’ that link groups across large distances through shared totemic ancestors and myths. These alliances are also maintained through visits (going ‘walkabout’) to distant relatives and neighboring clans, and through gatherings (‘corroborees’) in places where there are periodic explosions in food supplies. For example, heavy rainfall associated with La Niña years may be responsible for the mast fruiting of bunya nut pines in Queensland and the large corroborees that accompanied them. Even in the Arctic, the Tareumiut whale hunters and Nunamiut caribou hunters of northwest Alaska have developed a system of long-distance alliances, nyuuviq, whereby caribou skins are exchanged for whale oil and where partners can go in times of food scarcity at home. Among complex huntergatherer societies, such as those in the Pacific Northwest, potlatch ceremonies ‘bank food surpluses into greater status with other communities, thereby providing an investment policy for leaner times’ (CouperJohnston 2000: 71; see also Piddocke 1965). In many cases involving tropical forest foragers, alliances may be formed with farmers, traders and government officials from different linguistic and cultural groups. In some cases this may be due to the breakdown of traditional intra-cultural networks, in others it is simply a result of long-term trading relationships or interdependent economic systems (Headland 1987; Bailey and Peacock 1988: 113). Neighbouring farmers, if not struggling themselves, may be able to provide food as gifts or in exchange for forest products, such as bush meat, animal skins, fruit, medicinal plants and useful materials such as rattan, resins and wood products. Foragers may labour in farmer’s fields in exchange for vegetable foods such as rice, manioc or maize. Bailey and Peacock (1988) studied the Efe pygmies and Walese farmers of Zaire in 1982/3, when they experienced two small harvests in a row. The Efe did not move to the forest, but kept their camps on the edges of the gardens of the Lese. They could then hunt in the forest, forage in old, abandoned gardens for manioc and sweet potatoes, steal crops from current gardens, beg or offer their labour to the Lese: Certain Efe are thus able to call upon certain Lese families to support them in times of crisis …. It is difficult for a Lese to refuse refuge to an Efe if it is generally recognized that the Efe is his traditional trading partner. However, if the Efe presses his case too far and if food is particularly scarce

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56 | Rajindra K. Puri in the Lese’s garden, conflict inevitably arises and the Efe is expelled from the household. In such a case, the Efe usually changes his affiliation to a different village for a period of weeks, months or even years, until wounds are healed on both sides. (Bailey and Peacock 1988: 111)

Efe may also move to a new village where food is more plentiful, though this may require two to three days of walking to escape the microclimatic conditions. ‘Efe are able to switch their affiliation from one village to another – even from one tribe to another – by maintaining close ties, often based on fictive kinship relationships and hereditary obligations, over the years with several villagers in various localities’ (Bailey and Peacock 1988: 111). This somewhat ‘mutualistic’ relationship is also quite common among southeast Asian foragers and farmers, and may have been more common in the past in Amazonia. Commercial relationships offer a different set of options for foragers who have exhausted famine foods and the capital to borrow or trade for food with neighbours. Many forager groups in southeast Asia are routinely indebted to traders, among them ethnic Chinese and Malay businessmen, who provide them with food and manufactured goods in exchange for exclusive rights over valuable forest products. While an outsider might see this as an essentially exploitative economic relationship, from the forager’s point of view, it offers an important safety net. These patron-client relationships are often construed in terms of fictive kinship, where, despite the indebtedness of the clients, the traders are also obligated to care for them in times of great need. This is exactly what has happened to Penan forager/farmers in Borneo during El Niño droughts, as described below. Thus, foragers move through a series of responses as drought and food scarcity increase in length and severity, from relying on their knowledge of alternative food and water resources, to increasing their range of foraging and then, finally, reaching out to a wide social network of long-term kin-based relationships and/or economic relationships. Couper-Johnston (2000: 75) perceptively observes that most surviving hunter-gatherer groups, except the Arctic Inuit, can be found in areas subject to El Niño influence, where the rainy season cannot be relied upon. Rather than viewing these groups as primitive relics, their complex and sophisticated responses to drought and food scarcity suggests they are highly adapted to these environments.

Farmer Responses to Climatic Variation Farmers, on the other hand, appear to have even more options available, including many of those used by foragers and others embedded in the complexity of their food production and storage systems. Farmers

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typically have both field crops, usually their vegetable staple such as rice, wheat, sweet potato or manioc, and secondary crops growing in home gardens, orchards, swamps and gardens on the edges of staple crop fields. The use of staggered planting across this landscape mosaic, and of both annual and perennial crops – for example bananas are less seasonal and less susceptible to drought (Bailey and Peacock 1988: 111) – allows for food production year-round in the tropics, though farmers in arid areas may have more restricted growing seasons. Ethnobiologists have noted that some farmers have much larger and more complex ethnobotanical classificatory systems than foragers, often including many wild plants and animals that can be exploited in times of partial or complete crop failure, and many varieties of domesticated and semi-domesticated crops that may be adapted to a variety of environmental conditions (Hunn and French 1984). They may also have knowledge of a wider range of animal capture techniques, including trapping and various fishing techniques. Their social, economic and political networks may be more extensive and varied too. However, farmers have different, more costly, constraints they have to overcome, primarily larger population sizes and higher densities, restricted ranges for farming and gathering, higher labour requirements for food production, and reduced mobility due to permanent settlements, livestock and more numerous material possessions. These constraints are greater and thus harder to overcome for ‘permanent cultivators’, such as irrigated rice farmers, in comparison with swidden or shifting cultivators. Waddell (1975) describes the way Enga farmers in the highland valleys of New Guinea prepare for and respond to extreme frosts caused by severe El Niño years. They also have a graduated set of responses to increasing severity of frosts. Planting their staple crop of sweet potatoes in mulch mounds protects against the annual threat of ground frost. Planting two gardens, one in the frost-prone valley and one on the less fertile slopes, guards against less frequent frosts that may wipe out the valley crops. In years when both these gardens are ruined, they may have usufruct rights to the land of affines in neighbouring valleys, or actual clan territory where they maintain a house and extra gardens. These intraregional contacts are also important for acquiring new planting material. Finally, during the severest of climatic conditions, when the whole of the highland agro-ecosystem is devastated, they can migrate down to the lowlands to stay with kin in other tribes. These kinship links are intentionally forged and maintained with periodic visits, exchanges of bridewealth and gifts of pandanus nuts and pig meat, which are considered to be of high quality. Lowlanders participate because they depend on their highland contacts for access to important trade goods, such as salt, tree oil, seashells and stone axes, and as allies and recruits during intertribal warfare. Waddell refers to Vayda (1974) when suggesting that these

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adaptations represent a means to successfully track the increasing magnitude of perturbations. Similarly, Watts (1988: 275–76) describes Hausa farmer responses to famine in Nigeria. [H]ouseholds do not respond arbitrarily to food crises for which they are in some sense conceptually prepared; rather they do so serially, with respect to the intensity of what one might call famine ‘signals’. … Their behavior, in an aggregate sense, is graduated with respect to time and the proportion of domestic resources they commit. … Low order responses, such as planting changes, borrowing food from kin, or wage labouring are relatively flexible and pliant. To the extent that these coping mechanisms are incapable of securing reproduction, slower and deeper responses follow, such as the sale of livestock, grain loans, liquidation of assets, or pledging. The terminal strategies in this sequence may be, as in the case of farm sale, largely irreversible.

While this model of escalating responses seems to hold for traditional swidden cultivators in Borneo and elsewhere in southeast Asia, communal ownership of agricultural lands precludes sale to outsiders. Instead, among their lower-order responses are a fallback on hunting and gathering, and at the terminal end, once social networks and commercial options have been exhausted, is either migration, which may involve violent takeover of new territories, or appeals to colonial or contemporary States for aid. Emergency aid, in the form of food, fuel, transportation or monetary compensation, constitutes new and increasingly important options that farmers everywhere look to as El Niño events increase in severity. Not surprisingly, these options may depend on expending political capital, such as votes or party allegiance, and thus may not be available to all. Keeping these models of forager and farmer responses in mind, the remainder of this chapter examines El Niño in southeast Asia, in particular Borneo, and local knowledge of and responses to crises associated with the El Niño years of 1991–95 and 1997/98.

Temporal Scales and Climatic Variation in Southeast Asia What climatic stabilities might be perceived by the indigenous peoples of southeast Asia? The longest climatic timescales affecting southeast Asia and elsewhere are those associated with glacial-interglacial fluctuations, where deep ocean cores suggest a pattern across the Sunda shelf of cool, dry glacial periods and warm, humid interglacials (Taylor et al. 1999). At the peak of the last ice age, 18,000 years ago, the Malay Archipelago was virtually a single land mass with sea level 100m lower than today. Conversely, sea levels were 5m higher than at present just 4,000–6,000 years ago (Taylor et al. 1999: 1165). Whether such marine inundations are those recorded in the ‘flood myths’ of indigenous peoples across south and

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southeast Asia is open to speculation. It seems highly unlikely, but not impossible, that such slowly occurring oscillations would be noticeable and recorded in local myth. More likely to be recognized are the submillenium-scale variations (sensu Taylor et al. 1999), such as the ‘hundredyear floods’ or extended dry periods (which I refer to as long-term stabilities) or the subcentury-scale variations such as those associated with ENSO events (medium-term stabilities). As already described above, most research in human ecology and ethnobiology focuses on intraannual or seasonal climatic variation (shorter-term stabilities), which are well known, recorded in seasonal calendars, and around which, and in relation to which, much of local agriculture and other subsistence activities are planned and have evolved (see Chin 1985; Grove 1997; Fagan 1999; Orlove 2003).

History of ENSO Events in Borneo and the Western Pacific Tudhope et al. (2001) claim that ENSO has been active for at least the last 130,000 years and Colgan (1990) argues that ENSO events may have been initiated some three million years ago and that they may be more common during interglacial periods. Similarly, Brookfield (1997: 42, footnote 30) concludes that ‘ENSO has been a continuous feature of Pacific climate, but its vigour has varied substantially through time.’ The palaeobotanical evidence for the western Pacific, including Australia, suggests that before 8,000 years ago the climate was cooler and drier, and there was little evidence of vegetation adapted to a drought-flood sequence. After 5,000 years ago the climate began to get wetter and by 3,000 years ago the present level of climatic variability was evident in the pollen record. Fire has also been associated with most, but not all, of the major El Niño events since the 1870s (Brookfield 1997: 44, footnote 33), the southeast of Borneo being particularly vulnerable to large-scale forest fires burning on peat deposits and through dry grasslands, primarily Imperata cylindrica (see Brookfield, Potter and Byron 1995). These are believed to have been maintained and spread by either natural fire or man-made fire for the hunting of deer and banteng (Bos javanicus) and the pasturing of cattle (Brookfield 1997: 44–45). In the twentieth century, ENSO extremes associated with El Niño occurred in 1905, 1911/12, 1914/15, 1923, 1925/26, 1934, 1940–42,1953, 1965/66, 1972/73, 1977/78, 1982/83, 1987, 1991–93 1994/95, 1997/98 and most recently in 2002–3 (see Figure 2.3). King’s (1996: 178) analysis of rainfall data across northern Borneo during the twentieth century showed significant differences between northwestern Sarawak and the east coast of Sabah, with the former showing less of a trend towards increasing intensity of drought associated with

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ENSO events in the latter part of the century, contrary to findings for the latter, and contrary to the results of Salafsky (1994: 378) for Pontianak in West Kalimantan. The recent intensity of droughts in the Bintulu area of Sarawak was replicated in the 1920s and 1930s. King’s results emphasize the variability of climatic conditions across Borneo, a likely consequence of several factors: its large size, dissecting central mountain ranges, the shallow South China Sea on the Sunda continental shelf to the west, its location intersecting the summer and winter monsoons to the west, and the influence of westerly winds from the Pacific to the east (see Taylor et al. 1999: 1161). Unfortunately, there are no weather statistics or pollen record from the Kayan Mentarang area of east Kalimantan, where the Penan and Kenyah live, to ascertain historically how closely these ENSO events have correlated locally with drought, changes in vegetation, fire and human patterns of settlement and subsistence. The evidence of the recent past (ENSO events of 1982/83, 1991–95, 1997/98) suggests all of these factors are indeed co-occurring and correlated (Salafsky 1994; King 1996; Taylor et al. 1999; Vayda 1999; Guhardja et al. 2000; Tacconi 2003). Even though the archaeobotanical record remains to be explored for many places in Borneo, confirmation of much older ENSO events and local responses can be found in the historical records of colonial governments, merchants, travellers and scientists.

Historical Evidence of Human Responses to ENSO in Borneo Knapen’s (1997) research on materials from the Dutch colonial period (1747–1891) in southeast Borneo suggests a dynamic and uncertain climate with numerous events resulting in floods and drought, with consequences such as famines, epidemics and warfare. At least for this part of Borneo, the historical record emphasizes that ‘risk and uncertainty have always been a fact of life on Borneo’ (Knapen 1997: 121). Since all evidence suggests that the indigenous Dayak groups of the coast and inland areas were not unprepared for such events, we can assume they had some understanding of climatic variability and its impacts. What is not clear is whether these people had ways to predict climatic irregularities, and whether they perceived some of these events as linked in the weather pattern we now know as the ENSO. Reports of government officials, military officers, travellers and scientists describe how local people responded to such events. There is evidence that communities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had developed strategies to minimize the risks of extreme weather events, such as planting several rice varieties adapted to different climatic condi-

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tions and staggered planting (Christensen and Mertz 1993). Knapen (1997) describes three agro-ecological zones in southeast Borneo, one based on shifting cultivation of rain-fed hill rice, the second based on swamp rice planted in the dry season, and the third based on rice grown in tidal areas at the end of the wet season. Risk is spread out over the region by trade between the zones that evens out surpluses and shortfalls (Knapen 1997: 127). How such a system of complementary strategies evolved or was possibly intentionally created is unknown. Hose (1988: 119), working for the Sarawak colonial government in the late nineteenth century, described how Kayan and Kenyah swidden farmers prepared small fields of secondary crops while waiting for the felled trees to dry in their new rice fields. Fast-growing rice varieties, maize, sugar cane, sweet potatoes and manioc were all noted, but Hose never explains why such small fields were planted. Amongst the Kenyah and Penan of the Kayan–Mentarang area, these crops usually supplement the diet, but also serve to carry a family over the pre-harvest lean months (November–February) when rice stores are low, to back up the main rice crop in case of failure and nowadays to provide food for the Christmas and New Year festivals. Spreading the risk across several fields and several crops, planted at different times, ensures that some food is available at all times. But did Hose discover local means of forecasting particularly bad years or special responses to them? He does note the use of a sundial by the unofficial village ‘weatherman’ to measure the sun’s altitude by the length of the midday shadow and thus predict when to clear new swiddens and when to sow the new seed. There is a certain leeway built into this calendar, but straying too far from the predictions could mean larger than usual numbers of pests, such as monkeys, insects, rats and sparrows. The same practice was still in use by the Kenyah Badeng of Long Peliran in 1990–93, when I first conducted research there. It is also possible that this system was able to track El Niño-related droughts and floods. Hose (1988: 124) writes: In the case of each successful harvest, the date of the sowing is recorded by driving a peg of ironwood into the ground at the point denoting the length of the midday shadow at that date. The weather prophet has, however, other marks and notches whose meaning is known only to himself; his procedures are surrounded with mystery and kept something of a secret.

This tantalizing suggestion may be impossible to follow up today, at least in the Kayan-Mentarang area, as the burning of swidden fields is now coordinated at the level of the Kepala Adat Besar (the district chief of local law). He determines when all the villages are going to burn, often just after the Indonesian Independence Day celebrations on 17 August and after a spell of three to five dry days. Synchronizing the schedule of the area’s agricultural cycle is critical to ensure that all crops mature at the

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same time, which reduces the losses due to pests for each farmer. As with mast fruiting in the forest, an abundant harvest overwhelms pests and seed predators. Whereas the ethnographic record from societies living in more arid climates, such as the Kalahari or the Australian outback, suggests that extensive social relationships were in fact the ultimate fallback in times of severe food and water shortages, Knapen finds that, in southeast Borneo during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in response to uncertainties the trend among Dayak communities was towards isolationism rather than trade and commerce. There were, of course, exceptions, and by the nineteenth century many farmers had broadened their economic base and were engaged in irrigated rice cultivation, forest product collecting (of rattan and gutta-percha) and growing cash crops after the rice harvest, indicating a greater integration into the colonial market economy (Knapen 1997: 141; Potter 1997). Commerce between the interior and the coast was also facilitated by pacification and thus increased freedom of movement along the rivers. Dayak communities could now trade themselves out of a disaster. While the diversification of the economy for some served to reduce the vulnerabilities to uncertainties such as crop failure, specialization in forest product collecting among some groups led to a new dependence on store-bought rice. Dayak collectors were urged on by Chinese and Malay merchants offering advances and high prices. As long as demand and prices for these products remained high and there was a surplus of rice being produced elsewhere, these new professional collectors did quite well. But, in times of severe crop failure, rice would have to be imported from Java or elsewhere. Potter (1997: 289) reports that in western Borneo a greater intensity of forest product collecting, primarily gutta-percha, occurred after a near complete failure of crops following two years of drought and then flooding between 1877 and 1879. Similarly in the upper Mahakam River area of East Kalimantan, Bock (1881: 118, in Potter 1997: 289) noted the increase in forest product collecting, and, without making the connection, a severe food shortage. He was told that the Dayaks had subsisted for over a year on wild fruits and roots (Potter 1997: 289). Climatic uncertainties, resource scarcity and the vagaries of the global market for forest products and cash crops led to the booms and busts now characteristic of tropical agro-ecosystems and non-timber forest product (NTFP) based economies (Homma 1992), so by the late nineteenth century colonial resource extraction had switched to more secure resources, such as minerals, coal and oil. Dayak communities were now more vulnerable and actually had fewer options, and when climatic anomalies struck, as they did during the ENSO events of 1870/1, some had to labour in Dutch infrastructure projects in order to obtain enough for their families to eat (Knapen 1997: 143–44). One wonders, however, what local strategies were

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adopted by those families or communities unable to secure these jobs, and how other families survived while some of their members were away. With greater involvement in the market economy, were more traditional means of coping abandoned and forgotten? Overall, Knapen characterizes the responses of southeast Borneans to uncertainties as ‘rational, calculating and opportunistic’ (Knapen 1997: 145), rather than inherently risk-averse. ‘When one uncertainty was taken away, people tended to take new risks instead. Their strategies sometimes resulted in misery and sometimes in fortune, depending on the economic, climatic, medical or political situation of the moment.’ The historical record as uncovered and interpreted by Knapen and others (see Boomgaard, Colombijn and Henley 1997) gives us a hint of the broad sweep of changes occurring over several centuries in one part of Borneo and how populations as a whole have responded to opportunities presented by greater engagement with the global economy of the time. What we are missing is the detail and variation of the day-to-day strategies of inland foragers and farmers as they engage with their forest environment, their Dayak neighbours and the increasing influences of the coastal Malay sultanates, the colonial government and the global economy. It is at the local level that we can expect to discover alternative foodgetting strategies being implemented, old or innovative knowledge about plants and animals emerging, and special social arrangements involving kin, non-kin and neighbouring ethnic groups arising. It is the details of local knowledge that are critical to preserve for future generations, for possible transfer to other places and for use in contemporary situations, such as the concatenation of economic, political and environmental crises that hit Indonesia beginning in 1997 and continues to reverberate across the country to this day.

Local Knowledge of and Responses to ENSO Events in Long Peliran The following account of Penan Benalui and Kenyah Badeng responses to El Niño events is based on several research projects conducted in and around the village of Long Peliran between 1990 and 1998, including one minor (1991–95) and one major (1997/98) El Niño event (Puri 1997a, 1997b, 1999, 2001, 2005a, 2005b). During the former, I had no idea that I was working during an El Niño period. In fact, heavy rains in February of 1991 spoiled a much-needed rice harvest, as 1990 had been a dry year and rice stocks were depleted. The rest of 1991 was much drier than usual and normal rains for that area did not return till late 1992. Long Peliran (long. 115.47.24 E; lat. 2.42.37 N; 225 m a.s.l.) has never been famous for high yields of swidden rice; it is surrounded by steep

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hills and has narrow river valleys and generally poorer soils than can be found in other communities of the Pujungan district (Sellato 1997). There are only a few locations suitable for irrigated rice paddies, amounting to barely two hectares in area. Many farmers in the district combine a small amount of wet rice with their rain-fed swidden rice as insurance against drought. In fact, the amount of land under irrigation appears to be increasing throughout the district, as farmers respond to a noticeable increase in the frequency of dry years (Eghenter, Sellato and Devung 2003: 28). Still, the village is surrounded by groves of fruit trees and planted rattan, some over fifty years old, home gardens of vegetables, ornamentals and cash crops such as pepper, manioc, banana, coffee and cacao gardens, stands of bamboo, scrub areas, grasslands, swidden fallow of various ages, hilltops covered with sago palms (Eugeissona utilis) and even stands of primary forest on steeper slopes (see Figure 2.1). Most cultivated rice swiddens were located along the Bahau and Lurah Rivers, both up- and downstream of the village. At each swidden field, families had temporary huts (pondok) surrounded by gardens of sugar cane, papaya, manioc, maize, beans, sweet potato, taro in wet areas, aubergine and chilli peppers. These gardens are maintained over the years, as families retain user rights to the swidden and its fallow, and in some cases these grow into fruit orchards (see also Sørensen and Morris 1997; Eghenter, Sellato and Devung 2003). Long Peliran had twenty-one households in early 1991: eighteen Kenyah (fifty-six members) and three Penan (thirty-nine members).2 The Penan were living in an old abandoned Kenyah home and in two small raised shelters on the edge of the village proper. While the Penan sent their children to the village school and were usually present for village festivals and the beginning and end of the agricultural cycle, they would frequently move into the forest to make sago from tree palms (predominantly Arenga undulatifolia), collect fruit and hunt, or to collect rattan (predominantly Calamus caesius) and gaharu (from Aquilaria species) to sell. Some families made small rice swiddens, although these were often neglected after planting because the Penan would move into the forest with the migration of wild bearded pig (Sus barbatus) into the area and the fruit season between September and November. They all had manioc and banana gardens either in the village proper or in abandoned swiddens. Everyone in the village hunted, trapped and fished for meat, animal fat, pets and animal products such as feathers, skins, teeth, antlers and organs used in medicines. Most households had chickens, cats and hunting dogs; a couple had tethered goats they were raising for Muslim officials in the district town of Long Pujungan, just 10 km downstream (Puri 2005a). The Penan use two basic terms to denote seasons based on rainfall, baran te’ (rainy season, between September and March) and baran taga (dry season, between April and August). In practice, these terms have a

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wide range of reference, often used to refer to spells of rainy or dry weather within a season. My records confirm that the weather did change every few weeks throughout the year; there could be torrential downpours and flood in the dry season and long periods of dry weather when everyone expected rain. The planting season of 1992 was delayed several weeks because of unceasing rain. Hunters and farmers also recognize important variation in daily weather patterns, such as fog and mists in the morning, the hot dry midday and the gathering clouds and late afternoon showers. All of these are important in scheduling subsistence activities. Fogs and mists make working or travelling in the morning preferable and are critical sources of moisture for fields and gardens during dry spells. Swiddens are always burned at high noon, the hottest part of the day, when there is a strong updraught of warm air rising from the valleys. This causes the fires, lit at the bottom, to burn hot and to race up the slopes, with most swiddens being reduced to ash in less than an hour. Hunters also recognize the daily changes in wind direction though they do not have specific terms for them. Hunters want to remain upwind of their prey, but, on cloudy mornings, trapped warm air in the valleys tends to rise up the small river and stream valleys, making it difficult to pursue animals along those routes. Instead the hunters hike up to the ridge tops. Good hunters monitor the breezes all day long and adjust their search patterns accordingly (Puri 1997a, 2005a). Thus, for the Penan and, for the most part, the Kenyah, there appear to be at least three levels in their classificatory system for climate: the generic level of annual shifts in climate equivalent to our ‘seasons’, a subgeneric level of more short-term climatic stabilities and events associated with ‘weather fronts’ and ‘storms’, and an even finer level of climatic stability associated with daily variation in cloud, sun, wind and rain. The Penan also refer to seasons based on the presence or absence of pigs, fruit and the stages of the rice cultivation cycle when dividing up the year. Interestingly, Penan use Kenyah or Indonesian terms in daily conversation when referring to some of these, such as dalo babui nyatong, the Kenyah phrase for the annual pig migration, meaning literally ‘time of the swimming pigs’. The Penan translation baran kan pelangui was never heard in use. There is variation from year to year, but a basic schema for the Penan and Kenyah calendar is given in Figure 2.3. If the Penan and Kenyah do have a supra-generic rank for inter-annual variability in climate, then it is likely to be covert, or unnamed, and somewhat indirectly related to their understandings of the variability in drought, fruit seasons and pig migrations. A simple adjective, laleh (‘very’), jau (‘large’) or lebeh or aru (‘long’) is added to the basic season to refer to severe or extended seasons, as in baran taga aru (‘long dry season’) or baran bue’ jau (‘big fruit season’), two variations normally associated with El Niño events. The Penan recognize that mast fruiting in the forests

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Figure 2.3. Schematic Penan Benalui (P) and Kenyah Badeng (K) seasonal calendar

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happens after prolonged drought, ‘every few years’, and some years are bigger than others. As for their ability to predict these years, they watch the bees, bats and pigs that migrate into the area one after the other before the fruit season. Some hunters say that a lot of pregnant pigs migrating into the area in June and July foretells a good fruit season in the autumn. Several species of birds (e.g. Gracula religiosa) and cicada are said to augur rain or the coming fruit season (Puri 2005a), though I never witnessed or heard of Penan or Kenyah farmers basing any decisions on the appearance of these indicators. Across the mountains to the west, Brosius (1992) reports that the Penan Geng of Sarawak organize their subsistence and settlement on a yearly cycle. This cycle has two aspects, the annual fruiting season in the forests and the relation between vegetable foods derived from agriculture and wild sources. No mention is made by Brosius of pig migrations or of climatic seasons, or relations between all these events. Those Penan families that farm consume rice and garden crops while available, then switch to manioc and finally return to eating sago (E. utilis) until the next rice harvest. There is, however, great variation in this cycle within communities and from year to year, as Brosius (1992: 113–14) describes: On a year to year basis, the amount of fruit occurring in any particular area varies greatly. In some years fruit is extremely plentiful while in other years it is very poor. The Penan Geng refer to these as bua darek, a year with heavy fruiting, and bua unyin, a year of poor fruiting. Good fruit years occur perhaps once every five years, with exceptional years perhaps every twenty years. It is further significant that in any given year, one area may be experiencing poor fruiting, while in another area the fruiting is heavy.

Thus the Penan Geng do perceive a cycle of inter-annual variability, but indirectly through the abundance of fruit. The Penan Benalui in East Kalimantan do not perceive such regularity in the occurrence of mast fruiting or distinguish the abundance of fruit with just two categories, though they do notice and comment on major fruiting events. For them, there is a continuum of variation in fruiting, largely unpredictable from year to year, with the exception that, after a mast fruiting, forest fruit is certain to be at its lowest abundance. In 1990 the Penan families abandoned their rice swiddens for the forests of the upper Peliran River, a two-day walk up the long but narrow tributary of the Bahau River across from the village. A mast fruiting and a large migration of bearded pigs were under way at the time, and they were under obligation to collect raw rattan cane for an ethnic Chinese trader based downriver. They returned to the village occasionally for tobacco, sugar and rice, and then for several weeks over the Christmas/ New Year holidays. Soon after, they returned to the forest to continue to collect rattan. Some of this rattan was used to make drawstring baskets (bukui) and frame packs (kiva), which could be traded or sold when nec-

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essary. The drought affected their ability to trade for rice from the Kenyah, but they always had the option of requesting rice from their sponsor. Otherwise, the Penan were largely unaffected by declining rice yields in 1991 and 1992; in the forest they had an abundance of fruit, pigs, fish and sago, in the village they had manioc and banana gardens to harvest, and they could trade meat, rendered pig fat and sago flour for rice and vegetables. Being a rather mild El Niño event, the Penan did not have to resort to famine foods or other means to support themselves. On several occasions, I witnessed periods of food scarcity among forest product collectors far from home. From the stories I have heard over the years this is a common enough experience, especially among the young men that set out for months at a time to visit the far reaches of their territory. During those times, the Penan fan out across the forest to collect fruit, mushrooms, ferns, bamboo shoots, edible leaf bud (ubut) from a variety of tree palms, rattans and wild gingers, the sap of lianas and honey. They also use their hands, rattan traps, mosquito nets and fish poison (from tuwa ilang, Strychnos sp.) to catch fish, frogs and reptiles in the streams and set snares to catch forest pheasants, such as the great argus (Argusianus argus) and Bulwer’s pheasant (Lophura bulweri). They will raid a hornbill or other bird nest for chicks or eggs and search out sago grubs (Rhynchophorus ferrugineus) in decaying trunks of palms, which they roast over the fire. I have never heard of the Penan eating other insects, such as grasshoppers or cicada. I was shown several plants that could be eaten if necessary, such as the medicinal livang (Homalomena cordata) and the bitter luan (Dioscorea sp.), the latter being extremely rare and unknown to all but the older Penan. None had ever eaten these wild yams, but the knowledge of them had been passed down from their ancestors. All the other food and capture techniques are well known and learned by young boys and girls while hunting, gathering and travelling in the forest; there is no special training for young people in finding food during prolonged droughts. Children also learn about the precautions taken with regard to establishing a forest camp. One of the greatest fears of the Penan is falling trees and dead branches. They are always vigilant in observing their surroundings before choosing a camp site, preferring young secondary vegetation on the edge of streams. Rarely do they ever have to establish a new site, and most camps are in fact made in old ones. During serious droughts, as in 1997/98, many trees die standing, especially on steep slopes, and thus present an increased risk to living in the forest. Also, the presence of a deep and dry leaf litter makes hunting quietly well-nigh impossible; thus it is considered easier to ambush animals at salt springs or fruiting trees. The danger of wild fires is also recognized and the Penan will bank their embers before leaving a site. However, I have never seen the Penan douse a fire, it being considered bad luck.

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So, while there is little evidence that ENSO events are perceived as discrete categories of inter-annual climatic variability by the Penan, there is recognition that every few years extended drought will produce a mast fruiting and an abundance of pigs in the forest. But the high variability in the length of these droughts and the consequences for fruit, pigs and local agriculture from year to year are just too unpredictable to form a noticeable pattern. Instead, these events are seen as extreme cases of the usual variability in seasonal rainfall. Penan families not dependent on agriculture can easily ride out these periods of scarcity; they present opportunities to consume large amounts of fruit, pigs, fish and other animals, which can compensate for lack of vegetable foods for months at a time. They also have five species of sago palm they can process for sago flour and numerous other palm and bamboo species from which they can harvest shoots and edible leaf buds. Even if all of these resources have been exploited, they are still able to move into adjacent valleys, especially in the upper reaches of the Lurah, Bahau and Pujungan Rivers where there are dozens of abandoned Kenyah village sites, rich in old fruit trees and wildlife (Puri 2005b). They run into difficulties when they must compete for resources with their neighbouring Kenyah farmers, who claim most of the land in the Pujungan district, including many of the abandoned villages. Even though the population density of the whole district is very low (0.3 per sq. km), when confronted with outside pressure on local resources the Kenyah farmers can become territorial, establishing strict entry rules, including fees and fines, confiscating property of trespassers and even resorting to threats of violence. These responses have been observed when gaharu, rattan or certain species of fruit become valuable commodities, when fly-by-night logging operations try and set up camp and even during the annual pig migration. As far as I know, no such antagonism has broken out among the Penan and the Kenyah during El Niño droughts, most likely because the Penan are often the ones to come to the aid of the farmers by providing them with sago flour, fruit and wild meat. The long-term social relationships, including marriages between particular Penan and Kenyah families, ensures that in times of need they cooperate instead of competing. In reviewing the voluminous literature on contemporary central Borneo farmers for comparative material, with the exception of articles by Christensen and Mertz (1993) and King, who showed a marked discordance between Iban perceptions and weather records (King 1996: 183), I was surprised at how little information is available on perceptions of seasons and climate and responses to drought or other climatic variability (Chin 1985; Rousseau 1990; King 1993, 1996; Sellato 1994, 1997; Sørensen and Morris 1997; Eghenter et al. 2003). As described above, research on the cognition of spatial variability dominates the literature, with descrip-

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tions of the agricultural cycle of swidden cultivators being the sole analysis of temporal variation. Still, it is possible to pick out aspects of farmer adaptation that appear to prepare for the consequences of a drought or reduce the risk that a prolonged drought will produce food scarcity and famine. Like the Penan, the Kenyah Badeng do not appear to have a category corresponding to an El Niño year, but their discussions and actions suggest they do indeed recognize that dry seasons can vary from year to year and that some years these can be particularly destructive. They point to the droughts of the early 1970s and 1982/83 as being two such periods in recent memory, when they could walk across the Bahau River, which flows by the village of Long Peliran, and when there was a near total failure of the rice harvest. During those years they processed sago palms with the help of their Penan neighbours. One elder also spoke of 1941 as a bad drought year when much of the village was destroyed by a fire that spread through the dry thatch of the longhouses and rice barns on the edge of the village.3 The Kenyah farmers’ responses to El Niño events appear to follow the model proposed by Watts (1988) discussed earlier, except that there is variation among families as to what steps they will take and in what order they will take them. There are also several preventive measures to insure against food scarcity. The oma sidang (‘church field’) is a small field (less than half a hectare), usually collectively planted and weeded, very close to the village, and whose harvest is stored in a separate rice barn and either sold or distributed to needy families. Even in a good year the rice is usually distributed or sold before the next harvest. The money is used for maintenance of the church and contributes to village festivals. The most important insurance against potential drought or excessive rainfall is to diversify their agriculture in terms of location, crops and even crop varieties. Those farmers with access to wet or irrigated land will often have two rice fields, one dry and one wet. For the others, rice fields are typically planted on the edges of the big rivers (the Lurah or the Bahau) where it is possible to have access to water during even the driest of years. In 1997/98, some Kenyah farmers planted maize and other crops in the sand and silt of the newly exposed river bottom, about as close to the water’s edge as they could get. On the other hand, during years of heavy rains, the lower portions of the swidden may be subject to flood inundations while the upper parts drain well and remain dry. The other option is to make swiddens in the upper reaches of the small tributaries in mature forest, where cloud cover and mists can provide some moisture even if rains are delayed. However, a year of heavy rainfall may retard growth or cause fungal attacks in these upland fields. Of course, considerations of climate is but one of many factors taken into account when choosing one or more locations for rice fields (Chin 1985, Sørensen and Morris 1997).

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The Kenyah also establish gardens, at their rice fields, next to their homes in the village and in old fallow fields; some families may have three or four locations planted in bananas, manioc, taro, sweet potato, maize, sugar cane and other fruits and vegetables. Most of these varieties are fairly drought-resistant. Many of the Kenyah groups in the Pujungan prefer their rice mixed with boiled taro or manioc, which is said to lengthen the available rice stores (Eghenter et al. 2003: 29). The village proper is shaded by large groves of fruit trees, including mangoes, coconut, rambutan, durians, langsat, jackfruits, to name but a few (Puri 1997a, 2001). As for sago palms, A. undulatifolia grows in abundance along the riverbanks in secondary forests close to the village, the towering Caryota no is fostered in swidden fields and gardens, and there are extensive stands of E. utilis on most of the surrounding ridges, including one just behind the village. While the new shoots of Arenga and Eugeissona are occasionally harvested for their edible leaf buds (ubud), most are left to grow into tall flowering stems, which can be processed into sago flour in times of need (Puri 1997b). Most rice fields are planted in two to four varieties, including the sticky varieties (padai pulut) used for rice wine and festival foods. Some varieties are planted in small patches simply to maintain fresh seed stocks. If the previous year’s harvest has been poor, a fast-growing variety (padai sanggit) may be planted to provide a harvest in three months, when rice stocks are usually running low. This happened in August of 1992, with four or five families planting small quarter-hectare plots side by side in a fairly protected area just across the river from the village of Long Peliran. This was an expensive option, for it required a separate field and then weeks of vigilance from dawn until dusk as the rice was ripening or birds and other pests would have decimated the crop. Since the ability to predict a dry or wet season is limited, varieties that are drought-tolerant are always planted; a process of artificial selection for drought resistance is ongoing since varieties that wilt in dry conditions are never replanted (see also Setyawati 2003: 45). In contrast, wet rice varieties are almost always traded in from downriver farmers, as far away as Java or Bali, and are almost exclusively planted in irrigated fields or swampy areas. Unfortunately, these varieties cannot be used in anticipation of particularly rainy periods, especially if the rains come just prior to or during the harvest, as happened in February 1991. All varieties suffer from lack of sunshine and the damp conditions of prolonged rainy weather. All of these aspects of Kenyah agriculture are normal precautions, built into the system to reduce the risk of food shortages. When the rice harvest is lower than expected or fails entirely, then there are secondary crops to harvest from other locations. Some of these are naturally droughtresistant; others may be protected under forest canopy or growing in areas that have retained moisture or are near permanent sources of water.

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The Kenyah men and women will also gather wild plants, such as ferns, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, fruits and leaf buds from rattans and tree palms. One of the most intriguing responses to food scarcity is the consumption of a soft grey clay, said to be particularly favoured by pregnant women, which serves to stifle hunger pangs and is recommended when consuming large amounts of leafy vegetation. Presumably, the clay serves to detoxify secondary compounds found in tropical forest vegetation. Clearly this would be useful knowledge to have if all other food sources were exhausted and one were reduced to eating leaves. As for animal resources, after the harvest festival in March 1991, the whole village spent a day noba (fish poison from Derris species) fishing on the Kedayan River, which was reduced by the drought to a series of pools dense with fish. In 1982/83 the Bahau River was so low they invited all the surrounding villages for a noba, which netted huge quantities of fish, eels and turtles. A low river is also ideal for collecting small river snails (siput) left exposed on the rocks, and for using a variety of fish dams and traps. As already mentioned for the Penan, mast fruiting events and increased numbers of pigs also provide abundant animal protein, fat and fruit for the Kenyah. So droughts present opportunities to extract a variety of resources using specialized techniques, and do not necessarily imply a scarcity of animal resources. The Kenyah still prefer rice and will use numerous means to acquire it. In 1991/92 and again in 1997/98 many travelled a day upriver to the villages of the upper Bahau, where they bought rice planted in irrigated fields. They also travelled downriver to the district town to buy rice from merchants with cash or on credit. If cash is unavailable, the Kenyah may mount expeditions, from an overnight hunting trip to week-long forest product collecting trips. Several men and teenagers were engaged in such trips following the poor harvest of 1991 and again in 1997/98. They sought cage birds, such as the strawheaded bulbul (Pycnonotus zeylanicus), gaharu and rattan to sell to downriver traders (Puri 1999). Money may also come from selling fruit, fish, pig meat, handicrafts such as baskets, wooden paddles and punting poles, steel machetes and other tools. Some may go so far as to trade their fishing nets, wooden boats and outboard engines, which are among the most costly of options. Surely the most drastic step would be to migrate to a new area, but, unlike the hunting bands examined earlier, this requires long-term planning and is rarely a response to short-term events such as a drought.

Climate Change and Vulnerability Clearly, contemporary economic and political conditions in the interior of Borneo and elsewhere have had an impact on the ability of local people to

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deal with more extreme/frequent El Niño events. As Knapen (1997) discovered for late nineteenth-century southeastern Borneo, the arrival of market economies, professional forest product collecting, extractive development and plantation crops can increase the vulnerability of subsistence-based societies to environmental or other crises. When these strike the resources needed are no longer available or the rules and knowledge necessary to respond have lost their relevance or been forgotten; either the cupboard is bare or no one remembers where it is! Many villages in the interior of Borneo have moved downriver closer to the coastal towns and cities during the last fifty years. This has been sometimes at the request of the government, as well as a response to remoteness, poor transport infrastructure and the desire for access to schools, health care and business opportunities. Droughts, too, play a role in encouraging migration but not entirely because they cause food scarcity. Since travel is primarily by boat, droughts (and occasionally floods) make it impossible for large longboats carrying fuel, rice, sugar, medicines and other goods to pass through the rapids, literally cutting off the interior from potential sources of aid. In 1991–95 and again in 1997/98, there were periods when no boats could reach the interior for weeks at a time. Merchants and government officials had to charter small aircraft owned by the Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) to bring in fuel, medicine, rice, sugar and cooking oil (and carry valuable forest products and sick residents out), but there were never enough planes available to carry sufficient amounts. Prices also skyrocketed even though the flights were supposedly government-subsidized. In early 1998, sacks of emergency aid rice sat in a warehouse downriver because there was no way to transport them to the interior. While these consequences of droughts were hardly a problem a generation ago, the increasing dependency of people on the market economy, modern medicines, machines and other manufactured goods has changed the nature of droughts making them more complex, more costly and, seemingly, more difficult to respond to (see also Waddell 1975). While in the past people relied on a diversified subsistence base and their knowledge of famine foods, today people are increasingly searching for cash rather than sago. There appears to be a shift away from traditional coping mechanisms, which relied on the forest and ‘nature’s subsidy’, towards market-based responses and government aid. This does not mean that traditional knowledge has been forgotten: there is plenty of evidence that in serious and prolonged droughts all the responses discussed earlier are put into play. Since most of these responses are embedded in subsistence practices and general forest survival training, which all children will be exposed to as they grow up in the villages, there does not appear to be any immediate danger that this knowledge will be lost. However, children growing up in degraded landscapes, in towns or at

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boarding schools will most probably only learn about these coping mechanisms through the stories of their elders and eventually from books and movies, and then never be in a position to use them anyway. Similarly, Colfer (1997: 2) reports that the Kenyah of Long Segar are finding it increasingly difficult to rely on their traditional coping mechanisms for drought and food scarcity, which are based on the presence of a nearby and intact forest ecosystem. They face dramatic reductions in rice harvests during severe drought years, from a typical 1–1.2 tons per hectare to less than 100 kg per hectare. Research during and after the droughts of 1970/71, 1982/83, 1990–95 and 1997/98 suggested that wild and destructive fires have increased in the surrounding forest due to increased logging, and in the 1990s much of the surrounding forest has been converted to timber plantations, permanent agriculture and settlements for transmigrant labourers. In the past, the surrounding forest provided the backup resources (for subsistence and sale) that could support the local residents during these drought years. With the forest now largely gone or severely degraded, their vulnerability to El Niño events has now increased dramatically. ‘The forest people whose much maligned slashand-burn agricultural systems allowed them to co-exist with and benefit … from the forest for centuries, may now genuinely be about to lose it (and lose out) completely’ (Colfer 1997: 2).4 While it seemed in the 1990s that collective responses to drought and food scarcity were still largely in use among the Penan and Kenyah, a recent trip to the area in 2004 suggests that the importance of the market economy has grown, with the arrival of a logging concession downriver of the district town and increased trade between the coast and the interior. The Penan, now living in their own community with many working for the nearby logging company, lament the breakdown of their traditional sharing practices. It appears that village-level responses are increasingly being replaced by household responses; every family is to some extent on its own when it comes to generating and spending cash income. Almost unimaginable even a few years ago, hunters are even selling pig meat to their neighbours. In this regard, they seem to be following in the footsteps of the rest of the world’s foragers and farmers who have been exposed to market economies. De Garine and Harrison (1988: 472) warned nearly two decades ago that ‘networks of mutual obligation are vanishing, thus jeopardizing the existence of many groups, especially those which do not produce food’. They pointed to the loss of traditional rules associated with food production, distribution and consumption as significant causes: ‘this pursuit, which used to be carried out collectively and involved solidarity based on kinship and residence, is becoming an individual endeavour in a disrupted social and natural environment and in the framework of a monetarized economy, sensitive to fluctuations in world trade and not always able to make up for the old traditional system’ (De Garine and Harrison 1988: 473).

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There are plans to build a road linking the new regency capital of Malinau to the interior of Pujungan district, which could dramatically reduce transport times to the coast and solve many of the problems created by droughts and floods on the river systems. Though this may reduce some of the costs associated with certain coping mechanisms, such as mobility, roads also bring the unexpected. There may be new opportunities to become further interconnected with regional economic markets, information networks and political programmes. One can imagine situations where local communities are either increasingly dependent on statebased solutions to climate-induced disasters, or increasingly able to mitigate these disasters on their own terms through access to information, such as weather forecasts, new technology and new markets. Thus traditional responses to droughts can be expected to continue to shift and adapt as old vulnerabilities vanish and new ones appear.

Conclusion Penan and Kenyah understanding of El Niño and its consequences is not explicit in their classificatory systems for seasons and climate, but rather is implicit in their understandings of inter-annual variability in climate and its consequences for the tropical forest environment. They understand the linked occurrence of droughts, mast fruiting and pig migrations. But they have not developed the ability to predict El Niño events in a way similar to that reported by Orlove and his colleagues in the Andes, though the observations of Hose (1988) suggest that maybe in the past there was some knowledge of the regularity and predictability of droughts. The Penan and Kenyah claim that the time between these events varies, and thus it may be this lack of regular periodicity that makes it difficult to connect precursor indicators to drought and future harvests. Furthermore, it is clear from meteorological studies that local consequences of the ENSO vary greatly from place to place. While the rest of Kalimantan burned through 1997 and 1998, rain still fell periodically in the Pujungan District, no fires devastated the area, and no one was forced to process sago palms. Rice harvests were low in areas with no irrigation, but rice did get through despite the low rivers and no one suffered famine conditions. So does El Niño really exist here? Of course, climatic variation here does vary with the ENSO, but it does not have the periodicity of extremes that now define El Niño in the popular imagination. In the twentieth century, the term El Niño has come to refer to those particular years when the rains are so severe they cause flooding, failure of irrigation systems and serious soil and crop erosion in the eastern Pacific, and drought, forest fires and smoke in southeast Asia. ‘In global terms, the name El Niño has emerged from almost total obscurity to

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Figure 2.4. Southern oscillation index (SOI) 1876–2004. SOI is calculated from the monthly or seasonal fluctuations in the air pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin. (Source: Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology, Australia, 2004)

become synonymous with natural disaster’ (Couper-Johnston 2000: 7). From what little information there is on ethno-climatology, it seems that, among the indigenous groups in the Andes, New Guinea and Borneo, these climatic conditions are seen as annual events, with periodic extreme variations. So are we, Western scientists, the media and the public at large the ones creating the category? Are we just reifying the extreme moments of a continuous, oscillating phenomenon? Certainly the historical record of measurements of sea temperatures and atmospheric pressure differentials across the Pacific suggests a fairly chaotic pattern of variation (see Figure 2.4). Yes, there are spikes that represent extremes, but they are not regular and, as we know, they have been increasing in strength and frequency in the last twenty years (Salafsky 1994; Tudhope et al. 2001; but see also King 1996). And, even if there was a regular fluctuation at the level of the Pacific basin, that does not mean that it would affect all localities in the same way (Walsh 1996; Tudhope et al. 2001). A spike in the data does not always translate into a major event everywhere. This is probably why the Peruvians have to check the Pleiades every year instead of once every few years. Is it in fact legitimate to call El Niño a medium-term stability? Or is it really the consequences of the phenomenon for forests, water availability, agriculture, fishing, disaster policy and relief efforts, etc. that are the object of our interest in classifying weather? While this is a topic for future research, it seems obvious that classifying weather phenomena as discrete events, some of which can then be further labelled as ‘disasters’, serves to facilitate decision-making with regard to declaring emergencies (whether regional, national or international) and thus putting in motion a whole

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series of policies and actions designed to mitigate their consequences. Obviously this is a good thing for people overwhelmed by circumstances whose coping mechanisms have ceased to function. Likewise, not declaring a ‘state of emergency’ because weather conditions or their consequences have not met the criteria of the disaster category can have serious implications for a minority of people (for instance, indigenous subsistence farmers with little or no political capital) that are more severely affected and indeed in need of assistance (see Harwell 2000). In fact, from the review of responses to climatic variation, it seems that most traditional societies have a fairly diverse and flexible set of responses to the consequences of climatic variation, arranged in a series of responses that track the increasing severity or length of the events. These responses may become more and more costly (see Watts 1988), but there do not appear to be responses that are specifically geared for El Niño events: rather, as time passes in such an event, additional steps are taken when others have outlived their usefulness. There is, in fact, a process of coping that involves specialized knowledge and economic, technical, social and political responses. It is clear that this process is changing for the Penan and Kenyah, particularly in the light of recent economic and political changes in the region. When roads link the interior to the coast, a whole range of changes are expected, many of which will have marked effects on traditional coping mechanisms. If climate change really does have an impact on the frequency and severity of El Niño events, then we can expect to see those responses continuing to adapt, albeit in new contexts, to better track their consequences. Given these finding, there are many questions that deserve further research. What are the implications for advance warnings of El Niño events? Can the coping process be shortened? Must there be a gradual build-up of smaller, cheaper actions before taking costly responses? What will be the effects of new technologies, such as water pumps, and new sources of energy, such as electricity, on agriculture and the way farmers perceive and deal with risk? Will the continuing loss of forests in the area reduce options for extracting famine foods? What is the future of community-based institutions for reducing the risk of, or coping with, food scarcity? Finally, it is a wonder that a phenomenon as old, widespread and influential as the ENSO was only identified by scientists in the early twentieth century and has been only seriously studied since the 1970s. What else might we have missed? What biases have thus been introduced into anthropological research on human-environment interactions? I acknowledged early on my ignorance of El Niño as I was conducting my first research in Long Peliran, but once I became aware of the phenomenon I began to see everything in terms of El Niño, from forest ecology to human adaptation. The implications for research set in quickly and now seem

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Figure 2.5. Research periods of early anthropologists and the southerm oscillation index (SOI) 1880–1900 (Source: Amit 2004)

profound. In areas subject to the ENSO, how much can we really understand about its human ecology if we only conduct research for a year? In a review of research periods of some of our most famous ecological and environmentally oriented anthropologists, I discovered that many were conducting research entirely during supposed El Niño or La Niña years (Figure 2.5). I have yet to examine what exactly the local climate conditions were in their research areas, or what impacts this might have had on data collection and conclusions, but it seems likely that what they observed was but a snapshot of the full range of local adaptations people might experience during a lifetime. Clearly, how people respond to variation in the environment, and especially extreme events that result in crises, is critical to understanding the resilience of human-environmental systems. To find this out we need to encourage researchers to spend more time in the field or to sample a field site over time, and, in support, we need long-term stabilities in funding to be able to track changing human responses to changing climatic variation.

Acknowledgements Thanks to Roy Ellen, Deanna Donovan, and Paul Sillitoe for comments on drafts of this chapter.

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Notes 1. This section on adaptation to drought by foragers in arid environments is largely derived from Ross Couper-Johnston’s (2000) excellent synthesis. 2. In fact, it was the Kenyah Badeng of Long Peliran that first invited the Penan Benalui to join them in the Pujungan area in about 1895. They were given the Upper Lurah area as their territory and provided their Kenyah patrons with valuable forest products, including guiding hunting expeditions for the valuable Sumatran rhinoceros. Over the last century the Penan split into several groups, two are still allied with the Badeng, one is now with the Kenyah Bakung, one with the Kenyah Uma’ Long and one with the Kenyah Uma’ Lasan and Kenyah Uma’ Alim. Each group also maintains patron–client trading relationships with merchants and river traders. This gives the Penan a very wide social and economic network to draw on in times of need (Puri 1997a, 2005a). 3. This conflagration led to a split in the village, with the majority moving up the Lurah River and the remainder establishing a temporary village at Long Kedayan, near the mouth of the Lurah. They re-established Long Peliran between 1946 and 1951 (Puri 1997a). 4. Several studies demonstrate that logging across Borneo since the 1970s has played a part in exacerbating the effects of drought and fire on the tropical forest landscape, through clearance of the undergrowth and creation of wood debris, damage to the canopy that increases drying of the undergrowth and decreases soil moisture (organic peat deposits are especially vulnerable), creation of timber trails, which facilitate movement of fire, and the opening of forest areas to local farmers and settlers, which increases the incidence of fire (Mackie 1984; Beaman et al. 1985; Wirawan 1993; King 1996; Walsh 1996; Slik 2004).

References Amit, V. (ed.). 2004. Biographical Dictionary of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London: Routledge. Bailey, R. and N. Peacock. 1988. ‘Efe Pygmies of Northeast Zaire: Subsistence Strategies in the Ituri Forest’, in I. De Garine and G.A Harrison (eds), Coping with Uncertainty in Food Supply. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 88–117. Beaman, R.S., J.H. Beaman, C.W. March and P. Woods. 1985. ‘Drought and Forest Fires in Sabah in 1983’, Sabah Society Journal, Kota Kinabal 8: 10–29. Berlin, B. 1992. Ethnobiological Classification: Principles of Categorisation of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bock, C. 1881. The Head-Hunters of Borneo: a Narrative of Travel Up the Mahakam and Down the Barito …. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington. Boomgaard, P., F. Colombijn and D. Henley (eds). 1997. Paper Landscapes: Explorations in the Environmental History of Indonesia. Verhandelingen Series No. 178. Leiden: KITLV Press. Brookfield, H. 1997. ‘Landscape History: Landscape Degradation in the Indonesian Region’, in P. Boomgaard, F. Colombijn and D. Henley (eds), Paper Landscapes: Explorations in the Environmental History of Indonesia. Verhandelingen Series No. 178. Leiden: KITLV Press, pp. 27–59. Brookfield, H., L. Potter and Y. Byron. 1995. In Place of the Forest: Environmental and

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80 | Rajindra K. Puri Socio-economic Transformation in Borneo and the Eastern Malay Peninsula. Tokyo: United Nations University Press. Brosius, J.P. 1992. ‘The Axiological Presence of Death among the Penan Gang of Sarawak, Malaysia’. Ph.D. thesis. Ann Arbor: Anthropology Department, University of Michigan. Burton, I. 1997. ‘Vulnerability and Adaptive Response to the Context of Climate and Climate Change’, Climatic Change 36: 185–96. Chin, S.C. 1985. ‘Agriculture and Resource Utilization in a Lowland Rainforest Kenyah Community’, Special Monograph no. 4, Sarawak Museum Journal New Series 35(56). Christensen, H. and O. Mertz. 1993. ‘The Risk Avoidance Strategy of Traditional Shifting Cultivation in Borneo’, Sarawak Museum Journal 44 (65): 1–18. Colfer, C. 1997. ‘El Niño’s Human Face’, CIFOR News 16: 2. Colgan, M.W. 1990. ‘El Niño and the History of Pacific Reef Building’, in P.W. Glynn (ed.), Global Ecological Consequences of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Elsevier Oceanography Series, 52. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 183–229. Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology, Australian Government. 2006. S.O.I. (Southern Oscillation Index) Archives – 1876 to present. Online: http:// www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/soihtm1.shtml (accessed 19/7/2006.) Conklin, H.C. 1954. ‘An Ethnoecological Approach to Shifting Agriculture’, Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences 17: 133–42. Couper-Johnston, R. 2000. El Niño: the Weather Phenomenon that Changed the World. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Curran, L.M., I. Caniago, G.D. Paoli, D. Astianti, M. Kusneti, M. Leighton, C.E. Nirarita and H. Haeruman. 1999. ‘Impact of El Niño and Logging on Canopy Tree Recruitment in Borneo’, Science 286: 2184–88. De Garine, I. and G.A. Harrison (eds). 1988. Coping with Uncertainty in Food Supply. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Eghenter, C., B. Sellato, and G.S. Devung (eds). 2003. Social Science Research and Conservation Management in the Interior of Borneo: Unravelling Past and Present Interactions of People and Forests. Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). Fagan, B. 1999. Floods, Famines and Emperors: El Niño and the Fate of Civilizations. New York: Basic Books. Fowler, C. 1990. ‘Ethnoecology’, in D. Hardesty, Ecological Anthropology. New York: Academic Press. Grove, R.H. 1997. Ecology, Climate and Empire: Colonialism and Global Environmental History 1400–1940. Cambridge: White Horse Press. Guhardja, E., M. Fatawi, M. Sutisna, T. Mori, and S. Ohta (eds). 2000. Rainforest Ecosystems of East Kalimantan: El Niño, Drought, Fire and Human Impacts. Tokyo: Springer. Harwell, E. 2000. ‘Remote Sensibilities: Discourses of Technology and the Making of Indonesia’s Natural Disaster’, Development and Change 31: 307–40. Hayden, B. (ed.). 1992. A Complex Culture of the British Columbia Plateau: Traditional Stl’aìtl’imx Resource Use. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press. Headland, T.N. 1987. ‘The Wild Yam Question: How Well Could Independent Hunter-gatherers Live in a Tropical Rainforest Ecosystem?’, Human Ecology 15: 463–92. Hollings, C.S., L.H. Gunderson and G. Peterson. 2002. ‘Sustainability and Panarchies’, in L.H. Gunderson and C.S. Holling (eds), Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Washington, DC: Island Press, pp. 63–102.

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Responses to Medium-term Stability in Climate | 81 Homma, A.K.O. 1992. ‘The Dynamics of Extraction in Amazonia: a Historical Perspective’, Advances in Economic Botany 9: 23–32. Hose, C. 1988 [1926]. Natural Man: a Record from Borneo. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Hunn, E. 1990. Nch’i-wána, ‘The Big River’: Mid-Columbia Indians and their Land. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. Hunn, E. and D.H. French. 1984. ‘Alternatives to Taxonomic Hierarchy: the Sahaptin Case’, Journal of Ethnobiology 3: 73–92. Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Katz, E., A. Lammel and M. Goloubinoff (eds). 2002. Entre ciel et terre; climat et sociétés. Paris: IRD/Ibis Press. King, V.T. 1993. The Peoples of Borneo. Oxford: Blackwell. ___. 1996. ‘Environmental Change in Malaysian Borneo: Fire, Drought and Rain’, in M. Parnwell and R. Bryant (eds), Environmental Change in Southeast Asia: People, Politics and Sustainable Development. New York: Routledge, pp. 165–189. Knapen, H. 1997. ‘Epidemics, Droughts, and Other Uncertainties on Southeast Borneo During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, in P. Boomgaard, F. Colombijn and D. Henley (eds), Paper Landscapes: Explorations in the Environmental History of Indonesia. Verhandelingen Series No. 178. Leiden: KITLV Press, pp. 121–152. Lee, R.B. 1968. ‘What Hunters Do for a Living or How to Make Out on Scarce Resources’, in R.B. Lee and I. DeVore (eds), Man the Hunter. Chicago: Aldine Press, pp. 30–48. Lee, R.B. and I. DeVore (eds). 1976. Kalahari Hunter-gatherers: Studies of the !Kung San and their Neighbours. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press. Mackie, C. 1984. ‘The Lessons Behind East Kalimantan’s Forest Fires’, Borneo Research Bulletin 16: 63–74. Meilleur, B.A. 1986. ‘Alluetain Ethnoecology and Traditional Economy’, Ph.D. thesis. Seattle: Department of Anthropology, University of Washington. ___. 1989. ‘On Folk Ecological Representation’, paper presented at the 12th Annual Ethnobiology Conference, Riverside, California. Orlove, B. 2003. ‘How People Name Seasons’, in S. Strauss and B. Orlove (eds), Weather, Climate, Culture. Oxford: Berg, pp. 121–40. Orlove, B., J. Chiang and M. Cane. 2000. ‘Forecasting Andean Rainfall and Crop Yield from the Influence of El Niño on Pleiades Visibility’. Nature 403: 68–71. ___. 2002. ‘Ethnoclimatology in the Andes’, American Scientist 90: 428–35. Ovuka, M. and S. Lindqvist. 2000. ‘Rainfall Variability in Murung’a District, Kenya: Meteorological Data and Farmer’s Perceptions’, Geografiska Annaler 82: 107–19. Peterson, N. and J. Long. 1986. Australian Territorial Organization: a Band Perspective. Oceania Monographs 30. Sydney: University of Sydney. Piddocke, S. 1965. ‘The Potlatch System of the Southern Kwakiutl: a New Perspective’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 21: 244–64. Potter, L.M. 1997. ‘A Forest Product Out of Control: Gutta Percha in Indonesia and the Wider Malay World, 1845–1915’, in P. Boomgaard, F. Colombijn and D. Henleym (eds), Paper Landscapes: Explorations in the Environmental History of Indonesia. Verhandelingen Series No. 178. Leiden: KITLV Press, pp. 281–308. Potter, L.M., and J. Lee. 1999. Oil Palm in Indonesia: Its Role in Forest Conversion and the Fires of 1997/98. Jakarta: World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) – Indonesia. Puri, R.K. 1997a. ‘Hunting Knowledge of the Penan Benalui of East Kalimantan, Indonesia’, Ph.D. thesis. Honolulu: Anthropology Department, University of Hawaii.

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82 | Rajindra K. Puri ___. 1997b. ‘Penan Benalui Knowledge and Use of Tree Palms’, in K.W. Sørensen and B. Morris (eds), People and Plants of Kayan Mentarang. London: WWFIP/UNESCO, pp. 194–226. ___. 1999. ‘Trade in Songbirds in East Kalimantan’, IIAS Newsletter 20: 11. ___. 2001. The Bulungan Ethnobiology Handbook. Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). ___. 2005a. Deadly Dances in the Bornean Rainforest: Hunting Knowledge of the Penan Benalui. Verhandelingen Series No. 282. Leiden: KITLV Press. ___. 2005b. ‘Post-abandonment Ecology of Penan Fruit Camps: Anthropological and Ethnobiological Approaches to the History of a Rainforested Valley in East Kalimantan’, in M.R. Dove, P.E. Sajise and A. Doolittle (eds), Conserving Nature in Culture: Case Studies from Southeast Asia. Monograph Series, 54. New Haven: Yale University Council on Southeast Asia Studies, pp. 25–83. Rousseau, J. 1990. Central Borneo: Ethnic Identity and Social Life in a Stratified Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Salafsky, N. 1994. ‘Drought in the Rain Forest: Effects of the 1991 El Nino-Southern Oscillation Event on a Rural Economy in West Kalimantan, Indonesia’, Climatic Change 27: 373–96. Sellato, B.J.L. 1994. Nomads of the Borneo Rainforest: the Economics, Politics and Ideology of Settling Down. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ___. 1997. ‘Agricultural Practices, Social Organization, Settlement Patterns, and Ethnogenetic Processes in East Kalimantan’, in K.W. Sørensen and B Morris (eds), People and Plants of Kayan Mentarang. London: WWF-IP/UNESCO, pp. 27–57. Setyawati, I. 2003. ‘Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge: Rice Varieties Among the Leppo’ Ké of Apau Ping’, in C. Eghenter, B. Sellato and G.S. Devung (eds), Social Science Research and Conservation Management in the Interior of Borneo: Unravelling Past and Present Interactions of People and Forests. Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), pp. 35–48. Sillitoe, P. 1994. ‘Whether Rain or Shine: Weather Regimes from a New Guinea Perspective’, Oceania 64: 246–70. Slik, J.W.F. 2004. ‘El Niño Droughts and their Effects on Tree Species Composition and Diversity in Tropical Rain Forests’, Oecologia 141: 114–20. Sollod, A.E. 1990. ‘Rainfall Variability and Twareg Perceptions of Climate Impacts in Niger’, Human Ecology 18: 267–81. Sørensen, K.W. and B. Morris (eds). 1997. People and Plants of Kayan Mentarang. London: WWF-IP/UNESCO. Tacconi, L. 2003. Fires in Indonesia: Causes, Costs, and Policy Implications. CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 38. Jakarta: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). Taylor, D., P. Saksena, P.G. Sanderson and K. Kucera. 1999. ‘Environmental Change and Rain Forests on the Sunda Shelf of Southeast Asia: Droughts, Fire and Biological Cooling of Biodiversity Hotspots’, Biodiversity and Conservation 8: 1159–77. Tudhope, A., C. Chilcott, M. McCulloch, E. Cook, J. Chappell, R. Ellam, R., D. Lea, J. Lough and G. Shimmield. 2001. ‘Variability in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation through a Glacial-Interglacial Cycle’. Science 291: 1511–17. Vayda, A.P. 1974. ‘Warfare in Ecological Perspective’, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 5: 183–193. ___. 1999. Finding Causes of the 1997–98 Indonesian Forest Fires: Problems and Possibilities. Jakarta: World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) – Indonesia. Vedwan, N. and R.E. Rhoades. 2001. ‘Climate Change in the Western Himalayas

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Responses to Medium-term Stability in Climate | 83 of India: a Study of Local Perception and Response’, Climate Research 19: 109–17. Waddell, E. 1975. ‘How the Enga Cope with Frost: Responses to Climatic Perturbations in the Central Highlands of New Guinea’, Human Ecology 3: 249–73. Walsh, R. 1996. ‘Drought Frequency Changes in Sabah and Adjacent Parts of Northern Borneo since the Late Nineteenth Century and Possible Implications for Tropical Rain Forest Dynamics’, Journal of Tropical Ecology 12: 385–407. Watts, M. 1988. ‘Coping with the Market: Uncertainty and Food Security among Hausa Peasants’, in I. De Garine and G.A. Harrison (eds), Coping with Uncertainty in Food Supply. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 260–89. West, C.T. and M. Vásquez-León. 2003. ‘Testing Farmers’ Perceptions of Climate Variability: a Case Study from Sulphur Springs Valley, Arizona’, in S. Strauss and B. Orlove (eds), Weather, Climate, Culture. Oxford: Berg, pp. 233–50. Wiessner, P. 1982. ‘Risk, Reciprocity and Social Influences on !Kung San Economics’, in E.B. Leacock and R.B. Lee (eds), Politics and History in Band Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 61–84. Wirawan, N. 1993. ‘The Hazard of Fire’, in H. Brookfield and Y. Byron (eds), Southeast Asia’s Environmental Future: the Search for Sustainability. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, pp. 242–60.

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CHAPTER

3

Kasepuhan Rice Landrace Diversity, Risk Management and Agricultural Modernization Rini Soemarwoto

Introduction This chapter examines the process by which new landraces are identified and culturally validated, together with the local process for assessing introduced HYVs amongst the Kasepuhan, an upland Sundanese cultural enclave in west Java. I shall attempt to demonstrate how Kasepuhan balance the advantages and disadvantages of different landrace combinations and how this has been used as a buffer against uncertainty since the onset of the Reformasi period in Indonesia. Although, unlike the neighbouring Baduy (see Chapters 4 and 5), all Kasepuhan have accepted the use of high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of rice, the total number of recognized traditional landraces continues to grow. In 1997 146 extant rice landraces were reported by Kasepuhan, and in 1998 at least one new landrace was identified and validated. This picture is counter-intuitive in the context of the literature on genetic erosion of domesticates, which has tended to suggest that the broader trend is the disappearance of traditional varieties and techniques (e.g. Palmer 1976; Cederroth and Gerdin 1986; Lansing 1991; Brush 1992) in the face of agricultural modernization.

Kasepuhan Swidden Practice and World View Kasepuhan number about 20,000 individuals practising huma (swidden) cultivation and living in villages scattered around Gunung Halimun, on the edges of the Halimun-Salak National Park, West Java, Indonesia, at a

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distance of about 180 km from Jakarta. They differ from most other Sundanese in their adherence to traditional forms of ancestor worship and animism, linked to a strict obligation to practice swidden cultivation. The practice of swidden reflects the cyclical nature of alam (the world). A swidden, after passing through various linear successional stages of growth and production, is recycled through fallow. Similarly, human life is apparently linear, but ultimately subject to the cyclical movement of alam, oscillating continuously between night and day, sunset and sunrise. Alam itself passes through various predestined cycles, or eras (usum), which have particular characteristics (perbawa) that define their destiny (uga) as to what has to be (kedah) and when this has to happen (waktos). Knowledge of uga is shared and made widely known among people through the telling of sajarah, history. However, unlike history in the Western sense, or sejarah in the wider Indonesian sense, which applies only to the past, sajarah for Kasepuhan moves cyclically in the alam, applying both to the past and to the future. Thus alam is predictable according to its sajarah. Alam works according to the pancer–papadon Kasepuhan view of the unity of the world, in which various unique component parts are complemented by others of an opposite quality (lawan). Such complementary relations are called by Kasepuhan katurutan (affinities), which then become a basis for taking decisions that affect individuals. Humans too are ordered in terms of pancer–papadon relations, through five symbolic points: the upper and lower papadon, the central pancer, and the right and left papadon. In this metaphorical human body, the central trunk represents human affective qualities (rasa), the head papadon the focus of cognitive ability and reason (kapinter), and the limb papadon areas of action (lampah) (Figure 3.1). It is in the context of a symbolic discourse of pancer–papadon and sajarah that subsistence risk is expressed and conceptually managed by Kasepuhan. But while this cosmovision is the context in which decisions about daily subsistence practice are made, contemporary Kasepuhan are not averse to reaching significant accommodations with the modern world. Agricultural, educational and literacy programmes, along with extensive programmes for improving communication and electricity, have been welcomed. Kasepuhan have adopted the practices that reflect state notions of social control, official and bureaucratic validation, for example. In the political realm they have their own official residency and identity card; in the subsistence domain each rice landrace is named, validated and written into an official list.

High-yielding Rice Varieties, Pest Disease Infestations and Crop Failure Beginning in the late 1960s the Indonesian government launched a food campaign,1 which was focused on rice and which became known as the

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Figure 3.1. Metaphorical human body representing the concept of pancer– papadon

BIMAS (Ind. bimbingan massal, lit. ‘mass guidance’). Its primary aim was to encourage new ‘IR’ rice varieties that had been developed at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) at Los Baños in the Philippines. The BIMAS programme consisted of a ‘green revolution’ package: better land preparation, better irrigation, high-yielding rice varieties (HYVs), pesticides and fertilizers, all of which had to be strictly implemented. The agricultural officials under the supervision of the governor of the respective provinces were under great pressure to achieve targets for area planted and production levels set by the central government. Not only officially, but also in practice, the area of land devoted to BIMAS and production levels became instruments to measure the overall success of a regional head, from the governor down to the village head.2 In their effort to achieve a high ranking in their performance, local people adopted an unofficial policy, which was frequently encouraged by village heads (see, for example, Hansen 1978), that when a non-HYV variety, a traditional landrace, was discovered it would be destroyed. Naturally,

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this practice was not officially reported and neither did the press report it. But it was common knowledge. The BIMAS programme had reached Kasepuhan by the 1970s. Kasepuhan recognize that HYVs, locally called paré anyar (= ‘new rice’), can produce higher yields, and see the advantage of HYVs due to their fast growth rate, which permits a single coordinated harvest period. Unlike the Baduy, Kasepuhan do not reject new varieties. For example, Mang Ahali brought the ‘Ahali’ landrace to Kasepuhan when he was sharecropping outside the Kasepuhan area, receiving the rice in payment for his labour. Around 1972 HYVs were experimentally planted by the Kasepuhan ritual leader, Sesepuh Girang, on his land in Ciarca. Although people generally recognized that HYVs grew faster and had better overall yields, in fact they created more problems than benefits. The HYVs easily shed their grains and hence could not be harvested with the étém (finger knife). Instead it was necessary to use an arit (a sickle), which violated the traditional belief that rice had to be harvested in a prescribed fashion. Furthermore, because HYVs shed their grains so easily, the rice could not be dried and stored in bundles and instead had to be dried on a woven bamboo mat spread on the ground. This, however, was difficult, given the uneven surface area of Kasepuhan settlements. For the same reason, HYVs had to be stored in sacks, which Kasepuhan say do not quite suit their barns. Kasepuhan also claim that there is no need to increase their production, since they are already self-sufficient in rice. This is shown by the fact that, according to the guard of the Si Jimat barn (the community rice barn), for the years 1996–98 only a few Kasepuhan had to borrow rice from the barn. People also believe that it is not wise to grow and harvest rice two to three times a year, which they metaphorically compare to circumcising someone two or three times during a lifetime. Moreover, the soil is thought not to have an opportunity to rest, which, in turn, violates the traditional belief of sharing the time with Batara Kala (the god of destruction), and hence brings disaster. Through the concept of pancer–papadon, Kasepuhan recognize that other creatures are dependent on rice in addition to humans. Although Kasepuhan are aware of the damage done to rice by other organisms, such as rats, and of the reduction in yields that results from this, they do not consider them as hama (pests) in the same way as might an agricultural scientist. Kasepuhan refuse to kill them, as they say that these organisms are not causing any harm, only participating in life (ngilu), and anyway will not eat everything. In this view each organism must have its own share of life and non-humans are, in the opinion of Kasepuhan, disadvantaged when compared with humans since they can neither plant, hoe nor plough. Consequently, Kasepuhan tolerate, for example, the rats, live off the grain in the rice barns and, in many places around the village, and which are permitted to live freely inside houses, even when they eat food.

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Parallel to this morality of sharing is the Kasepuhan prohibition on using semprotan, literally meaning ‘sprays’ but referring here to artificial pesticides that are sprayed on to plants. For Kasepuhan, pesticides kill living creatures in an improper way: massively and non-selectively. Mass killing is not thought to be consistent with Kasepuhan teaching. In the pancer–papadon context humans must relate themselves to other living creatures on an individual basis since each creature has its own share, character and arrangement as taught by Batara Guru (the god of wisdom). So to use pesticides is perceived to definitely invite risk, create bad energy in the alam, contaminating air, sky, soil and water. In order to be able to kill jodog (wild pigs), for example, it is necessary to undertake a magar pakaya, a ritual to protect rice plants. The magar pakaya transforms the once neutral ordinary wild pigs into members of the category ‘pest’. The pest label can only be applied to animals of so many kinds after an arrangement has been made with the batara-batari (gods and goddesses) and following successful negotiations with the animals concerned. A successful negotiation means that a particular animal has willingly decided to stay near or on the rice plots and accepts the risks so entailed, surrendering to the will of humans and, consequently not bringing any misfortune. Despite this morality of cross-species commensality, it is undeniably the case that Kasepuhan reduce the ‘risk’, so to speak, of rats consuming more than their ‘fair share’, by building higher stilts for the rice barns. When the central village was located at Lebak Larang it was a prosperous time for Kasepuhan as they had an abundant harvest of rice, but also the population of rats increased. It is said: ‘It should not be surprising if when one side becomes higher the other side, the lawan, would follow and go up accordingly.’ It is always necessary to keep the alam in balance; killing rats would have reduced rice yields, increasing the height of the stilts on which the rice barns are built simply prevents rats from entering. Kasepuhan believe food will always be available as long as they behave appropriately and understand their position in relation to other inhabitants in the universe. But mistakes happen. In this sense people are expected to and do contribute to the Si Jimat barn as a communal reserve when harvests are good. How much they give depends on their own judgement, but this is always influenced by fear of being regarded as antisocial by fellow villagers and by fear of retribution from the ancestors. If there is a shortage anyone is entitled to borrow rice, a transaction that is then recorded by the guard of the Si Jimat barn. The borrowing time is unlimited and no fine is imposed, regardless of when it is paid back. If those who have borrowed have themselves made modest rice surpluses, then they are expected to give back whatever it is they still owe. The obligation to return is effective because not to do so would result in rasa éra (shame). On the basis of the combination of moral and practical considerations, particularly connected with the status of huma, Kasepuhan have therefore

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rejected HYVs and the technological package accompanying them as the primary mode of rice production. Indeed, to follow BIMAS would upset the cosmological arrangements with batara–batari and result in much uncertainty.

The Owner–Batur Relationship Each Kasepuhan rice plot is usually planted with three or four different landraces, with different colour-coded types in separate plots.3 The explanation for this lies in the pancer–papadon concept of katurutan (affinities), which I have already introduced. Each household has a particular landrace affinity relating to the unique personal attributes and descent of those households.4 Affinity is defined by the colour of rice in terms of three categories: red (beureum), white (bodas) and black (hideung). People consider colour to be jelas, the most obvious feature present in all landraces. As individual households may wish to obtain a particular landrace but be limited by their affinity, they seek to cooperate with other households through an owner–batur relationship. The owner–batur relationship then defines the selection of rice and distribution of labour. Batur literally means ‘other person’, and implies that the landowner and the worker are equal, and that ‘help for’ and ‘work for’ are distinct. A single Kasepuhan agricultural field (kotakan) generally measures about 400 square metres and is divided into two: the edges and the inner part of the plot. The rice plantings in the inner part are called kepakan. The kepakan, to some extent, is the joint property of the landowner and the batur established through matuh, a long-term relationship between a collective group batur and a particular landowner. Over several generations certain batur are established as ‘the owner’ of each particular kepakan. It is thus the case that these individual households – the matuh-batur – are obliged to help during seed selection and preparation, and to complete work on the kepakan at the planting and harvesting stages. In return the matuh-batur will obtain bawon (a share) of the yield of pre-dried rice.5 The bawon ratio is five to one, which means that for every five pocong (a rice bundle estimated at weighing four kilograms) the batur produces from his kepakan he can take one for himself. Reciprocal matuh exchanges usually take place between the owner and his batur directly after work on a particular day. The right to help must be guaranteed by the owner of the land, i.e. he should not allow someone else other than his matuh-batur to help him on that kepakan. If another batur has an interest in this particular kepakan he has to seek permission from the matuh-batur rather than from the owner of the land. If permission is granted then that part of kepakan which is given to another individual household batur is called derepan, and accordingly another

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batur can obtain his bawon. The derepan negotiations usually happen at a time near to the harvesting season. A particular landrace planted along the edges of a field is called dumpingan. Dumpingan are treated in the same way as kepakan. Dumpingan differ from kepakan, however, in that, as they are positioned along the edges of a plot, they are exposed to the external elements, which limits landrace choice. Thus, while a Kasepuhan individual may own a piece of land, this does not necessarily mean that he or she alone determines decision-making with respect to it. Decisions concerning what landraces are to be planted are the outcome of a negotiation between landowner and batur. The collectivity of individual household matuh-batur has the right to participate in deciding what rice landraces should be planted. Though there are no strict rules as to what percentage, or how much, the matuh-batur receives, on the basis of their long-standing relationship, the landowner and matuhbatur usually reach an agreement without too much dispute. Though the seeds have to be provided by the owner of the land together with other material agricultural inputs, such as fertilizer, it is also common for the matuh-batur to contribute seeds, though these must be within the range of what is in accordance with the landowner’s affinity. The matuh relationship between landowner and batur is not strictly defined by kinship, but can also be based on social relationships, such as friendship or neighbourhood. Although matuh relationships are considered ideally to be long-term, particular situations do not always remain the same, i.e. circumstances may change. For example, changes may be necessary following demographic shifts within households, most fundamentally in relation to marriage. Another aspect of the owner–batur relationship is the maro system. In the case of maro, affinity, labour arrangements and all expenditure on the land are borne by the batur themselves (that is, the linked households). Maro, literally, means ‘make it half’, that is, once deducted by the bawon, half of the yield goes to the landowner and half to the batur household (of which there might, rarely, be more than one). This arrangement is prevalent when an expanse of land is cultivated by batur households because respective landowners have insufficient labour of their own, or when the land is located a long way from the owner’s house. The maro relationship is based on trust, percaya. Consider, for example, the following case: Mang Kokon owned one huma plot and one barn in Cikarancang, a village about two and half hours walk from where Mang Kokon’s family lives. This huma was inherited from Bi Heni’s (Mang Kokon’s wife) parents. Because of the distance it was more convenient to maro with Bi Heni’s brother, who lived near the huma. Every year the brother reports back on the yield by saying only that Mang Kokon’s share has been put into his barn. Because of trust it is accepted that there is no need for Mang Kokon to check the field itself.

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Another variant of maro is where the cost of fertilizer is divided between the owner and the batur. Usually the owner pays the cost of fertilizer use by way of a deduction from his incoming maro yield.

Selecting Landraces for Planting There are several sets of factors that need to be taken into account when reaching decisions as to what landraces are to be planted. The selection is described as being associated with the pancer–papadon relation of five symbolic parts of the human body i.e. the pancer (trunk) and the papadon, the head and the limbs. Thus rice plants must be selected carefully in order to obtain a balance of affective, cognitive and practical qualities. The first set of qualities refers to moral obligations and affective considerations. The second set refers to growth rate, suitability for elevation and stock availability. The third set involves the tangible characteristics of rice but also with respect to position in a plot.

Affective Qualities Kasepuhan divide rice into three types that reflect their moral attributes: buhun (ancient), biasa (regular) and ketan (glutinous). Buhun rice, commonly called ageung (lit. big) or asal (lit. original), is regarded as the most sacred. They must plant buhun landraces, such as Beureum Karang, Srimahi and Srikuning, in the ritual centre of a swidden (pupuhunan) of, at least, their first huma, to give symbolic validity, sah, to the whole farming activity. The buhun obliges people to complete properly all stages of ceremonial agricultural activity. In addition, the buhun rice can only be consumed as a staple food for main meals, which means that it cannot be processed further, for example as cookies or snacks. These various restrictions and beliefs ensure that Kasepuhan maintain buhun characteristics as part of their aggregate rice genome. Biasa rice, in contrast, is not surrounded by such rules, and it is up to an individual farmer whether, for example, he might perform the mipit ceremony (the ritual conducted before harvesting) or not. Ritual is, therefore, optional where a plot does not consist of buhun rice. Biasa rice can be processed into snacks and cookies. In the case of ketan rice, associated rituals are more relaxed in that the mipit and nganyaran (the tasting of newly harvested rice) ceremonies need not necessarily be performed. In general, Kasepuhan do not describe ketan as paré ketan because ketan is not used as a staple in main meals, most being consumed in the form of snacks or cookies. Finally, the mabay activity prior to the mipit ritual reflects the importance of selecting rice seed that has come from the best context, sauyunan, walking in the same direction, and sapamikiran, having the same thoughts and ideas.

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Cognitive Qualities In terms of growth rate, rice landraces are divided into two groups: leuir and hawara. Leuir grows more slowly and is planted at cooler and higher elevations than hawara. Management of time in terms of rice growing rate and elevation is important for Kasepuhan. The basic objective is to achieve unison, each household endeavouring to ensure that their rice plants ripen and are ready to be harvested at the same time as plants in fields belonging to other households. This has consequences in terms of what landraces are selected and grown at what altitude. Thus, the planting of slower-growing rice at higher elevations should take place earlier than that of faster-growing landraces at lower elevations. If someone is late in planting their rice seed, they will try to catch up by harvest time by planting a faster-growing rice, regardless of elevation, even though in the end this may result in a lower-quality yield. The harvest as a whole has to have been completed before ‘Kidang medang turun kungkang’, when the star constellations of Kidang and Kerti are low in the sky to the west and when the insect kungkang (Leptocorisa acuta) will attack the rice plants. Sometimes this latter danger is referred to as kaméian, ‘to reach the month of May’, the word mei being borrowed from the fifth month of the Western calendar.6 This unified strategy effectively ensures that pests and diseases do not become concentrated in the fields of just a few households, but instead are widely spread, thus reducing the risk to individual households by distributing macro-predators throughout all the Kasepuhan fields (especially those belonging to a single settlement). A reduced risk of animal attack, therefore, is achieved through sharing (ngabagi), whereby the costs and benefits are distributed throughout the population. The success of their farming activity is described by Kasepuhan as follows. First, men from each household measure the total (jumlah) rice production for the current year in terms of the total number of bundles, not including the bawon (share) taken by batur, but consisting of the share obtained from batur before the rice has dried. The time taken for each landrace to dry while the bundles are hanging on the bamboo rack is carefully noted. After about two months, because the bundles have now dried and shrunk, the men re-form the bundles, and, by comparing the total bundles before and after drying they are able to measure how much each landrace has shrunk. Consequently, men are able to compare the yields of different landraces and note which of them produce the most grain, and how each type is faring with respect to other growing qualities that are regarded as important. While depositing them into barns men count these new bundles of dried rice as the total production for the current year, adding these to the stock remaining from previous harvests to calculate the total amount available for each landrace. Each household is able to talk knowledgeably about the stock (and its various landraces). Each

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Kasepuhan Rice Landrace Diversity | 93

household will also remember how much labour, fertilizer and bundles of seed rice they have used, and will also be aware of the quality of seed they have planted in a given year and how this compares with the yield they ultimately obtain. New rice landraces are evaluated further by the women of the household at the time of nganyaran, when the new harvest rice is tasted. It is at this stage that each household finally knows the measure of their success for the current year through declarations that are made and announced by the wife, including the success of a particular landrace, especially a new one. Success, therefore, is not only quantitively defined in terms of the total weight or bundles, but also contextually, indicating the hasil (i.e. result) of each household, as Kasepuhan claim that their farming activity is based on teu-nomi (i.e. it is an economic calculation). Of course, to enable this comparison each household must ensure that the yields for different landraces, particularly any new landrace, are be kept separate. Each household examines their yield carefully and secures good seeds during the mipit ritual, which might be suitably planted in subsequent years. But since farmers do not necessarily always follow the general rule that the growing rate be correlated with the elevation they might have to rearrange their seed stock. Thus, while the ancestrally sanctioned advice, mediated through Sesepuh Girang, for the 1999 agricultural year was that people should plant slower-growing rice because the prediction for that year was that it would be rainy, cool and windy, the advice for the 1998 agricultural year had been to plant faster-growing rice. That the dissemination evidence with respect to planting strategies for the next agricultural year might need to differ from those adopted during the current year encourages households to look for seeds that might fit with the new advice. The occasions of ponggokan (a two-week period when farmers do not work on soil at all), ngembang (the pilgrimage ritual) and serah taun (the thanksgiving ritual), when many people are gathered together at the central village, give appropriate opportunities for members of different households to discuss the merits of various landraces, compare the advantages and disadvantages of each, and thus provide a stock of knowledge from which to inform individual households, thus feeding back into the process of making planting decisions. After discussions have taken place within the household as regards planting strategies, if it is considered necessary, men proceed to exchange seed. As a result of such exchanges a consensus emerges, which is given symbolic force by attributing this consensus to the ancestors. The exchange of seeds may be conducted directly and immediately, or by lending. An immediate exchange is a two-way process that benefits both parties at the same time. This usually happens where one household is clearly seeking a particular landrace that it does not possess or of which it has an insufficient quantity and quality, and where at the same time it

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has a surplus of a particular landrace in demand by a second household. Such an exchange may be prompted when there is a change in the situation of the household, for example following marriage, when the household rice affinity must be redetermined. ‘Lending’ is a long-term, delayed exchange that occurs where there is a demand in one direction only. In this case the lender will accept any landrace from the borrower on the basis that these may be useful at some, as yet undetermined, point in the future. Although the seed may not be of a landrace required in that year, the lender may insist that it is of a higher general quality. Thus, this increases the success with which a household can buffer against some future, as yet unknown, risk. It is evident that most Kasepuhan followed the new direction, whereby most of them planned to plant slower-growing rice in 1999, even at lower elevations where this would not normally be appropriate. But, equally, just because the 1998 advice had been to prioritize faster-growing rice, this did not mean that all households complied and planted nothing else. Indeed, many successfully planted slower-growing rice. Members of different households do share their previous and present experiences, and, whilst they discuss their future strategies, they also recognize that they have their own needs and conditions. For Ki Karma, the rice stock is an important factor that led him to plant slower-growing rice last year. He needed this rice for celebrations on the occasion of his daughter’s circumcision. Each household inspects the rice stored in barns and turns the stacks in such a way that the more recently harvested rice is at the bottom, and the oldest at the top every year. In this way rice is consumed consistently with the harvests. For example, rice harvested in 1998 will be consumed before that harvested in 1999. This reduces spoilage, such as visible discolouring (e.g. blackening), although discoloured rice is still consumed. By inspecting their rice, individual households are able to estimate which landraces are in short supply, in terms of what is needed for daily consumption, for ritual needs or for snacks to accompany important ceremonies, such as those held for circumcisions and weddings. Through this case we can see that local knowledge systems operate flexibly, often permitting – in this case – a reinterpretation of the combination of landraces thought appropriate for particular conditions, even though decisions are made within a framework of unchanging cosmological referents and in accordance with beliefs about supernatural guidance. Thus, Kasepuhan practice contradicts older, less informed, characterizations of traditional technical knowledge as fixed and mechanistic.

Practical Qualities Seed rice is selected by Kasepuhan on the basis of practical considerations, a number of which relate to the ease of harvesting, which in turn

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determines the speed at which harvesting can take place. The speed of a harvest is influenced by many factors. To begin with there is the height of the plant. Plants that produce rice panicles at shoulder height are the most easy and speedy to harvest, because the harvester does not get tired as quickly as when harvesting shorter or taller varieties. Srikuning is a good example of this feature. In contrast to Srikuning, most ketan rice plants have panicles that are higher than shoulder height. The elasticity of the stem is another factor. Hard but brittle stems (e.g. Srikuning) are easier to cut than soft but tough stems (e.g. mostly ketan), which have to be pulled. The regularity of planting is another factor to be considered. Regular planting, such as that found in wet-rice fields, where rice is planted in rows, makes harvesting easier by allowing the harvesters to walk between the rows. This is not the case in a dry-rice field, where the seeds are sown and the plants grow in a random pattern (see Figure 3.2). The growth pattern of the plants also influences the speed of harvesting, and landraces with a stalk that grows straight and does not lodge (Ind. ambruk) are easier to be cut. The final factor which influences the speed of the harvest is the position of the plants in a plot, as plants at the edges are easier to harvest than those in the centre.

Figure 3.2. Comparison of huma and sawah Kasepuhan planting patterns

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Identifying Rice Landraces Data provided by Budi (1997) – based on Adimihardja’s compilation and the Sesepuh Girang’s note, further confirmed by the Pamakayan (the Kasepuhan agricultural ritual specialist) – indicate that in 1997 there were 146 Kasepuhan rice landraces classified under the name, the type of field (sawah, wet rice; or huma, dry rice) and the elevation (Table 3.1). My own field research, conducted during March–April 1999, yielded seventy-eight landraces. The collections were made in several places in the Kasepuhan area, at elevations between 700 and 1200 metres above sea level. However, only fifty specimens were actually collected (Table 3.2), as the owners had not conducted mipit (a ritual to initiate rice harvesting) in the fields where the remaining landraces had been identified. Also, we must be careful not to translate number of names into claims for an equivalent degree of genetic diversity. My 1999 field survey found some names to be synonymous while some landraces are not listed (see Table 3.2). But the list cannot be simply ignored. First, the 1998 field survey did not cover the entire Kasepuhan agricultural area. Secondly, landrace planting is not evenly distributed, with the same landraces dominating fields. Thirdly, there may be stored rice seeds not in the fields. Lastly, to reach a conclusive agreement is not a significant issue for Kasepuhan themselves. In the field it is often that people just agree to disagree about the name of certain landraces. Locally, it is not necessary for them to be uniform in their opinions. Field research indicated that the same landrace might be referred to using several names, although since these names are widespread and known by most Kasepuhan, especially adult males, they are more likely to be shared synonyms rather than geographical, idiolectal or socially distributed variants. Thus Srikuning (No. 114 in Table 3.1) was dominant in the fields surveyed, whilst Umpay Lutung (No. 126), admitted by some Kasepuhan people, was very rare. Gajah Panjang, Leuir Loyor, Pacing, Ketan Ulam, Ketan Mujair, Ketan Ranté, Leuir Badigal and Maliwarna (bold in Table 3.2) were not included in the list. Whilst Gajah Panjang was defined by people in the field as synonymous with Gajah Bairah (No. 59), others were not found, at least not in the fields studied, under a different name. Ketan Alean (No. 128) is said to be the same as Ketan Lepo (No. 141), though I did not encounter this directly in the field. In Table 3.1 Gajah Bairah (No. 59) and Raja Denok (No. 100) appear to be synonymous for the same landrace, as are Tampeuy Hideung (No. 120) and Séro (No. 111). Again these conclusions are based on explanations by people in the field, as the list still indicates substantive difference: Gajah Bairah is the buhun rice and planted in sawah, while Raja Dénok is the biasa; Tampeuy Hideung is planted in sawah while Séro is in huma. But we should also bear in mind that the list is work in progress based on a compilation undertaken by a researcher dependent on the cooperativeness of the

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Kasepuhan Rice Landrace Diversity | 97 Table 3.1. Kasepuhan landraces recorded up to 1997 (listed alphabetically; italics indicate an ancient landrace) Elevation No. Landrace name 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

Angsana Bagoan Bandung Bangban Banteng Baok Belut Beureum Batu Beureum Beunying Beureum Dadapan Beureum Gede Beureum Geulis Beureum Karang Beureum Keris Beureum Kui Beureum Peuteuy Beureum Seungkeu Bunar Cangkudu Canor Cere Abah Cere Ahali Cere Aok Cere Apel Cere Batu Cere Beureum Cere Beureum Pondok Cere Demul Cere Gebang Cere Gelas Cere Gemek Cere Gombal Cere Hanjuan Cere Hoe Cere Kalapa Cere Jaer Cere Jambe Cere Jenah Cere Kawat Cere Kiara Cere Layung Cere Limas Cere Malati Cere Mantare Cere Marilen Cere Markoti Cere Moniar Cere Pager

Present Present in in sawah huma +

Are/ low

Sedengan/ medium

+ +

+

+

+ + + +

+ +

+

+ +

+

+ + + +

+ +

+ + + +

+ + + + +

+ +

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Leuir/ high

+ + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ + +

+

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+

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98 | Rini Soemarwoto Table 3.1. Continued Elevation No. Landrace name 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

Cere Raja Sikep Cere Ramaga Cere Sugih Cere Tambaga Cere Walet Cinde Denok Dirah DT Gadog Gajah Bairah Gajah Beuneur Ganala Gandreng Ganggarangan Gantang Gebang Hapit Hawara Beunteur Hawara Beureum Hawara Huma Hawara Jenggi Hawara Leneng Hoe Bulu Hurip Jambe Jambu Jamudin Jidah Kadut Ketan Alean Ketan Beledug Ketan Beureum Ketan Bodas Ketan Bogor Ketan Bungsu Ketan Cikur Ketan Hideung Ketan Hideung Bulu Ketan Huis Ketan Keuyeup Ketan Kidang Ketan Langgasari Ketan Lepo Ketan Nangka Ketan Putri Ketan Ruyung Ketan Samarang Ketan Uncal

Present Present in in sawah huma + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ + +

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Are/ low

Sedengan/ medium

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Leuir/ high

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ + + +

+ + + + + + + + +

+

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Kasepuhan Rice Landrace Diversity | 99 Table 3.1. Continued Elevation No. Landrace name 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146.

Kewal Beureum Kewal Bodas Koropak Layar Layung Kuning Layung Sari Limar Mangyu Manglar Manjora Maringgeuy Mayang Sari Menteng Menur Nani Nemol Pandan Wangi Pelita Peuteuy Muhara Peuteuy Hideung Rachik Raja Denok Raja Sana Raja Wesi Ranji Rante Emas Renong Rere Resik Rogol Beureum Rogol Bodas Salak Séro Sisit Naga Songleng Srikuning Srimahi Srimanggala Sunli Tambleg Tampeuy Tampeuy Hideung Tampeuy Koneng Tampeuy Perak Terong Terong Beureum Terong Bodas Umpay Lutung Wirun

Source: Budi 1997.

Present Present in in sawah huma + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Are/ low

Sedengan/ medium

Leuir/ high

+ + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+

+ + + + + + + + + + +

+ + + +

+ + + +

+ + + + +

+

+ + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ + + + + + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+

+ + +

+

+ +

+ + + + + +

+

Jidah Nani Nemol Srikuning

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20

+ +

+ + + + +

2 April 2 April 2 April

Ciptarasa

2 April 2 April

13 April

Cikaret Cicemet Ciptarasa Ciptarasa

Ciptarasa Ciptarasa

12 April 15 April 7 April 5 March 4 April

5 March

Sampling date

Cicemet Cisarua Cianghangsa Ciptarasa Ciptarasa

Ciptarasa

Sampling location

Stalk of most Ketan types is similar to Cere character,

Hard stalk, which makes the stalk the same height as the shoulder, ordered in rows, straight and smooth. In general it represents the easiest type to cut. Jambu and Angsana also fall in this category.

Stalk of Cere in general is tender but pliable, therefore the cutting movement must involve pulling. Grain of Gelas is easily shed. Stalk of Kiara is lower than shoulder height which makes harvesting tarahal (easily tire). Stalk of Markoti is soft, easily damaged by wind.

Hard stalk, which makes harvesting easier. Stalk ordered in rows, straight and smooth, but higher than shoulder height

Notes

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+ + + + + + + + + + + + +

+

+ + + +

Present in huma

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21 Terong Bodas 22 Ketan Cikur

Bangban Beureum Geulis Beureum Karang Gadog Maringgeuy Jamudin Raja Dénok Gajah Panjang Gajah Bairah Leuir Loyor Pacing Cere Batu Cere Beureum Cere Gelas Cere Kiara Cere Layung Cere Markoti Cere Sunli

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Landrace name

Present in sawah

Table 3.2. Landraces collected in the Kasepuhan area in 1999 (italics indicate an ancient landrace; bold indicates names not listed in Table 3.1)

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Ketan Mujair Ketan Ranté Ketan Alean Ketan Ruyung Terong Beureum

Jambu Leuir Badigal DT Pelita Angsana Tampeuy Koneng Tampeuy Perak

29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Gebang Peteuy Hideung + Sisit Naga Resik Bandung Rogol Kewal Bodas Kewal Beureum Maliwarna + + + + + +

+

Legok

11 April 11 April 12 April

Cisarua Cisarua Cibadak Cicemet Ciptarasa Cikaret Cicemet Cikaret 16 April

13 April

4 April 13 April

5 March 8 April

Ciptarasa Cisarua

8 April 11 April 12 April 13 April 15 April 16 April 13 April 13 April 11 April 2 April

11 April 13 April 11 April

Most Tampeuy in general have stalk higher than shoulder height, tarahal (easy getting tired) when harvesting.

tender but pliable which needs to be pulled.

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41 Tampeuy Hideung Séro

+ +

Cisarua Cisarua Cibadak Cikaret Cisarua Legok Cikaret Cikaret Cisarua Ciptarasa

Cisarua Cicemet Cisarua Cicemet

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+ + + + + + + + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + +

Ketan Nangka Ketan Lepo Ketan Beureum Ketan Bogor

25 26 27 28

24 Ketan Ulam

+ + +

23 Ketan Hideung

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Pamakayan and his willingness to answer questions. The original record kept by the Pamakayan, extending over several pages, and equivalent to that owned by Sesepuh Girang, contains only the names, not the characteristics. Further, as rice affinity influences a particular person’s knowledge, it thus follows that the knowledge concerning a particular landrace may well only be shared by persons living in a given household. Different persons have particular predilections as to the respective categories of rice. Such idiosyncratic interest has an impact upon those more general categories that become established, as well as indicating the limitations of personal knowledge. Mang Aa, for example, has an affinity for red landraces, and so consequently might be expected to show more interest in, and have more experience and knowledge of, these landraces. The technical process by which individuals identify what landraces they are dealing with has been described in terms of cognitive models of distinctive features (see, for example, Conklin 1977) but seldom in terms of actual ethnographic situations. To illustrate how the process of identification works for the Kasepuhan, I provide here descriptions of particular occasions where identifications were made (Figure 3.3 gives a diagram of parts of the rice plant in Kasepuhan terms). It is clear that the process is synaesthetic (relying on the combined and interacting senses of smell, taste, sight and touch), is always contextual and is often socially interactive. One day Mang Kokon and I worked together in collecting specimens of different rice landraces. In accordance with what we had agreed during a conversation the previous morning with some people concerning the harvest situation, we decided to visit Cisarua village at an elevation of approximately 700 metres above sea level. On the way, Mang Kokon discovered a plot that, he suspected, had not previously been sampled. We approached the rice bundles hanging on the bamboo rack. The following description of what we found is extracted from my field notes: Mang Kokon takes the siki paré (seed/grain), and inspects it for size: gedé (big), sedengan (slightly smaller), leutik (small); length: manjang (long), sedengan (slightly shorter), pondok (short); and shape: buleud (roundish), lonyod (oval), gendut (thick), gépéng (flat). He examines the cangkang paré (skin) colour to establish whether it is hideung (blackish), beureum (redish), bodas (whiteish). He looks to see whether it is buluan (hairy) or not. Then he peels the cangkang paré (skin), wipes the kulumud béas to examine whether its texture is lemes (refined), kasar (rough), ipis (thin) or kandel (thick). He peels the kulumud béas from which he can determine the colour of the béas kernel in order to see whether it is bureuk (opaque/dull) or hérang (translucent). Mang Kokon breaks the béas kernel between his thumb and index finger, and from the fracture line is able to discern whether it is getas and thus muruhpuy (hard but easily shattered) or liat (pliable), that is uduh (soft) but cepel (dextrinous/sticky); he puts it on his tongue to taste, crushes it with his teeth and feels the grain in order to establish whether it is ngeusi (heavy), gambos (light), amis (sweet), kesed (starchy) or rangu (chalky), and whether it is hard

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Figure 3.3. Kasepuhan terms for parts of the rice plant to chew or not. He then looks at the gagang paré (stalk), paying attention to the warna (colour), kandel-ipisna (thickness), hipu-teuasna (softness), ngiring (pliability), and as to whether the surface is leucir/mangkilat (waxy) or not. Finally, Mang Kokon announces that ‘this is Gajah Panjang’. He then asks nearby farmers working these respective fields whether the rice they are harvesting is Gajah Panjang. He looks satisfied when their answers support his judgement. It is not necessary for him to look at the jarami (main stem), buku jarami (nodes) and daun (leaf) of the tangkal paré (rice plant), which remain in the field.

On another occasion we were looking for different landraces in Cicemet at about 1,100 metres above sea level. In one field we got involved in a lively conversation with some men and women as they were harvesting, about the identity of a particular landrace. They examined the rice grains in a similar way to that reported for Mang Kokon above. The women were quieter than the men, but contributed by giving their opinion based on their work and experience during rice pounding, as to how each type of grain requires different effort.7

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104 | Rini Soemarwoto After discussing the matter for a while the women found that they were unable to agree on what landraces they had. They then proceeded to examine the jangkung-béké (height) of the palay (panicle), and jarami (main stem) by counting the buku jarami (nodes), measuring the length of the buku (internodes), looking at the colour of the nodes, the colour and smell of the boros paré (young leaf sheath), and the colour and character (e.g. pliability) of the panicle and main stem. On the basis of these respective details they agreed that it must be classified as big in size, and that it belongs to an ancient variety because there was a trace of mipit ritual activity, and that it gave an impression of attractiveness. Whilst the local people of Cicemet insisted it had one name, Raja Dénok, Mang Kokon insisted that it had another. Mang Kokon believed it to be Gajah Panjang, while a third party, from Cianghangsa, said that it was Gajah Bairah. According to Mang Kokon the difference is in the main stem. The Gajah Bairah should be greenish while the Gajah Panjang is whitish. These three names, however, include the connotation of ‘big’, where raja means king and gajah is elephant, and also reflected an attractive or sexy bodily impression, dénok, whilst the term bairah is a condition that is considered to promote feelings of arousal. Panjang, which means long in this case, is used in a similar sense to the term lenjang, referring to that which is both slim and beautifully full. Although at the end of the day no name was agreed upon, everybody still looked happy when they left, leaving the differences between them unresolved. This was not considered to be a matter of any particular significance.

Not unimportant in the Kasepuhan process of identification is the use of the étém (finger knife). By cutting rice plants individually Kasepuhan are able to feel, to see and to discriminate between and closely discern the character of every single seed and panicle. It was with attention to such detail that during the 1999 harvest five men from Ciptarasa got very excited when they found, in Cisarua, a landrace with characteristics they had never seen before. The panicle of this suspected new landrace, according to them, resembled a ranté chain, but was otherwise very similar to the landrace labelled Sisit Naga, ’dragon scale’, though not obviously belonging to either. The new rice specimen was carried to the Pamakayan (agricultural ritual specialist) to be identified, stored and given a provisional name. Generally the name selected will indicate its form, colour, taste and relationship to an existing rice landrace (e.g. Ketan Beureum: red ketan), other plants (e.g. Ceré Kalapa, Ceré being the group of existing landraces and kalapa, coconut), animals (e.g. banteng: wild buffalo), the state of an animal (e.g., Gajah Bairah), the state of a human (e.g. Raja Dénok), fruits (jambu, guava). It may also indicate the site where it was discovered (e.g. Ceré Sunli, which is an acronym formed from sapalih lisung, and thus meaning ‘Ceré found on the side of a rice morter’). Or a label may be derived from the name of the person who brought a new landrace from outside (e.g. Ceré Ahali, ‘Ahali’ being the name of a person). During the ponggokan (a two-week prohibition period for work on the soil) following the 1999 discovery of the Ranté landrace, this specimen was carried by the Pamakayan to Sesepuh Girang to receive a blessing

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from him. He handed over the specimen to Sesepuh Girang in the presence of some other elders. The Sesepuh Girang inspected the specimen, examining the stalks and the seeds, and turned it over. Several elders also volunteered their opinion on the matter. Sesepuh Girang asked no questions and made no comments. After a while he nodded his head several times as a sign that he agreed with what was being said, before explicitly giving his approval that the rice specimen be officially recognized as a new landrace. The provisional name, Ranté Hideung (black chain), was then proposed to Sesepuh Girang by the Pamakayan. There was no further discussion as to the new name: he agreed. It was then the responsibility of the Pamakayan to add the name of the new landrace to the existing written record. The existence of this new strain of rice was not announced publicly, but through the rituals of pilgrimage and the thanksgiving, which follow the ponggokan, many people became aware of the existence of this new landrace. What is significant about this account is the way in which new landraces are given symbolic validation through the official naming by Sesepuh Girang.

Management of Internally and Externally Induced Risk As mentioned above, Kasepuhan attempt to organize their agricultural activities so that they are undertaken in unison. Kasepuhan farmers describe planting and harvesting seasons as those moments in the agricultural calendar when their labour is concentrated in certain places for short periods of time. At such moments, they have to race against both calendrical time and the weather. They must, therefore, work efficiently and rapidly. Working together on one plot, and then moving to another, is considered more efficient than working individually on several plots simultaneously. Working in a pleasant atmosphere full of chat and joking makes them less tired and enables them to work more quickly. This is considered an important advantage of kepakan. The flexible working regime allows them to move from one rice panicle to another in accordance with the patterns of ripening. Again, the use of the finger knife enables them to select those rice panicles that are mature enough to be cut. So, while waiting for their own rice that is less mature, individuals are in a position to help others, and when the time to harvest their own plot arrives they will be helped by others. There will be no labour wastage. It is also said that having kepakan ensures the security of a household’s rice supply by reducing dependence on their own land. Kasepuhan say ‘tetempoan lain jang kahareup’, ‘we have another source to look into for the future’. It also presents an opportunity for a household to plant landraces that are not specifically aligned with their own household affinity. This they describe as ngilu ka batur, ‘joining another affinity’. This also applies to derepan,

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Figure 3.4. Matuh–batur relationship between Mang Kokon, Mang Harna and Mang Aa

which provides an opportunity to own a landrace that originally a person has no interest in or does not have an affinity for, or when his kepakan has failed. Figure 3.4 shows how three individual households, those of Mang Kokon, Mang Harna and Mang Aa, chose to align with others. Mang Kokon and Mang Harna share an affinity for white rice while Mang Aa works with red. Mang Kokon aligned himself with Mang Aa in a reciprocal relationship through which each of them were able to obtain rice which they did not otherwise have access to; Mang Kokon obtains red while Mang Aa obtains white. An alignment between Mang Harna and Mang Kokon emerged as both of them wanted to secure white rice. Other kepakan in each of the plots of Mang Kokon, Mang Aa and Mang Harna were aligned to other batur beyond these three households. From the pattern above we can see that each colour categorization of landraces is kept under one single separated plot. It is understandable also that, since affinity is defined by single households through kin lines, in order to obtain a wider but not similar range of rice landraces, individual households seek matuh-batur from beyond the realms of kin relations if necessary. In the example above, Mang Kokon has, strictly speaking, a kin relation with Mang Harna, but not with Mang Aa.

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Conclusion: the Social Character of Rice Landrace Selection Kasepuhan decision-making processes and their management of uncertainty, as these are reflected in rice landrace selection, are typified by sentiments and practices of sharing and exchanging risk. This has an impact in terms of our understanding of Kasepuhan notions of morality, and with regard to matters of production and the diversity of rice. Many studies in Indonesia have discussed the shift from symmetrical and reciprocal forms of labour exchange to more asymmetrical and exploitational relations (e.g. Wertheim 1964; Jay 1969; Kikuchi et al. 1980; Collier 1981). For example, Kikuchi et al. and Collier regard the Javanese pre-harvesting labour arrangement, what they call ngepak-ngedok and ceblokan (where the labourer owns a particular part of the plot), as significant in that the sense of sharing and mutual help among the farmers is reduced to a minimum. In contrast, at a time when ngepak-ngedok is disappearing, as suggested by Collier, and when bawon has become more prevalent, as argued by Kikuchi et al., a more open labour arrangement has developed, in which each harvester has an equal chance to work and obtain the yield at the harvesting stage. Kasepuhan ethnography clearly shows that there is no homogeneous pattern in their community. Kasepuhan cannot be adequately described in fixed and general terms. Whilst there are rules that can be applied to the whole community, there is also significant variation. Each individual (and individual household) can and does make their own way in terms of individually cost-effective conduct while aware of the general rules, as in the case of rice affinity. The organization of kepakan allows individual households to manage both internally and externally induced risks. Kasepuhan do measure and anticipate possible risk collectively, but also make allowances and choices to deal with the course of alam individually. The Kasepuhan case highlights the differences between the idea of mastery over nature, in which humans feel that they have the power to control nature, reducing or even eliminating the risks if possible through the application of advanced technology; and those communities who ‘surrender’ to the rules of nature. In the first, the solutions are a-social (that is, they are assumed to be independent of social norms and practices), while in the second the solutions are social, embedded in a particular shared morality and distributed through particular social relations. Kasepuhan understand the risks posed by particular ecological conditions and calculate the probability of failure on the basis of social relations. The sharing of risk is achieved through crop and household diversity, and is cosmologically legitimated through an understanding that alam is neither static nor capricious, but proceeds cyclically in accordance with sajarah. Kasepuhan accept the flow of alam; but alam is tolerant as long as it is within its sajarah.

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From the perspective of Nash and Ehrenfeld (1997), it might be argue that Kasepuhan practice is an example par exellence of the operation of environmental management by ‘self-regulation’, which is now being increasingly superseded by the ‘command and control’ system. Kasepuhan crop diversity and fallowing practices are not the result of any ‘command’ by the Sesepuh Girang, and neither is the non-use of pesticides. Rather the decisions emerge through mutual consultation and understanding of more general custom. Future planting strategies are said to be the result of ancestral messages, but the senior-rank elders as well as village elders and ordinary members are freely able to influence these strategies between them. Kasepuhan agricultural decision-making, therefore, contrasts with Indonesian state policy under the New Order rules, where environmental management was theoretically based on a central command-and-control principle. Kasepuhan planting strategies in individual fields, the matuh-batur arrangement, kepakan and dumpingan, can all be said to buffer against an expected risk, while derepan delays and spreads unexpected risk. Kasepuhan thus manage their farming through locating rice plants in diverse areas, increasing the flexibility, continuity and mobility of the worker, spreading the responsibility of decisionmaking amongst several households, and distributing rice landraces more widely between households, within and between kin relations. This sharing and exchanging of resources as a means of reducing risk is perhaps close to what Scott (1976: 15–26) calls, borrowing from Roumasset, a ‘safety first’ principle, whereby people minimize the probability of disaster rather than seeking to maximize their returns (see also Wharton 1971; Ortiz 1973).

Notes 1. The ‘green revolution’ globally has raised overall levels of production, but unequal distribution of purchasing power has meant that the increase in food production does not necessarily result in food security (Rosset et al. 2000). Unequal access to agricultural and other subsidized government credits, and changing technologies of cultivation for weeding, harvesting and processing have cut the costs for the larger farmers but reduced employment access and income opportunities for workers. Harvest failures have become more frequent, resulting from the vulnerability of new varieties to climatic deviations and pests, which seriously affects the income of small farmers. All these things, as well as increasing landlessness and an acceleration of the agricultural land purchased by wealthy villagers, are among the consequences of the intensification of rice production in Java since the 1970s (see, for example, White 1979; Manning 1988). 2. Implementation of this top-down model often resulted in conflict. Thus, farmers living in Loro village, south-central Java, refused to eliminate the use of the finger knife (Stoler 1977), while farmers in the village of Ciasem Baru on the north coast of West Java, along with adoption of the HYVs, like the

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3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

Kasepuhan, remained interested in planting and experimenting with traditional varieties and methods (Winarto 1997). The word landrace here (following Iskandar and Ellen 1999) is used to refer to a locally defined category and is distinct from the taxonomic or agronomic concept of variety. Dayak shifting cultivators in Apau Ping village, east Kalimantan, call these personal attributes kepribadian (Setyawati 1996: 12). The sawah farmers in Ciasem Baru on the north coast of west Java call them padi yang ngejodoh, ‘what is suited to your own personality’ (Winarto 1997: 2). Although these writers recognize the decisive role of farmer personal attributes, there is no further explanation as to how these preferences are worked out in any practical sense. Share-cropping is known elsewhere in Java, although the amount of share and the arrangement for labouring show considerable variation (see, for example, Collier 1981; Iskandar 1998). The use of growth rate as a strategy to achieve a uniform harvest is also practised among the Kantu of West Kalimantan (Dove 1993). In contrast to the unison strategy, Tai-Lue villagers in northern Thailand deliberately plant varieties of rice that mature at different rates to benefit the planting and harvesting timescales of individual household with different labour availability (Moerman 1968). The following is a description of rice pounding from my field notes: Six women take several rice panicles from the bundle and place them in a pounding mortar. They pound the panicles to shed the grains and while doing this some of them examine, select and remove the already grainless panicles from the mortar. As they continue to pound they peel the cangkang paré (skin) from the grains. They scoop the béas (skinned grains) and huut (the loosened skin), then place them in a nyiru, a round woven mat made from bamboo. Then they napikeun (winnow), swing, shake and toss the mat. The huut is blown away while the béas falls back on the mat. They select and throw away the remains of the huut from the mat by hand. They collect and put the béas on the boboko (a bowl made of woven rattan), and bring these to each of their houses ready for cooking. At another time they nyosoh, put back, the béas into the pounding mortar, pound it to peel the kulumud béas (the outer layer) and to break the mataholang (the end top of the béas). Using their hands they scoop the mixture (of the bakatul [the name for the processed kulumud béas], the beunyeur [the name for the processed mataholang], the béas, and the remains of huut), put it on the mat and winnow to leave the béas on the mat while the dedek (the mixture of huut, bakatul and beunyeur) is blown away. They sort the dedek from the béas by hand.

References Brush, S.B. 1992. ‘Ethnoecology, Biodiversity, and Modernization in Andean Potato Agriculture’, Journal of Ethnobiology 12(2): 161–85. Budi, S. 1997. ’Variasi Jenis Padi Kasepuhan’, unpublished first degree dissertation, Padjadjaran University. Cederroth, S. and I. Gerdin, I. 1986. ‘Cultivating Poverty: the Case of the Green Revolution in Lombok’, in I. Nørlund, S. Cederroth and I. Gerdin (eds), Rice Societies: Asian Problems and Prospects. London: Curzon Press, pp. 124–50.

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110 | Rini Soemarwoto Collier, W.L. 1981. ‘Agricultural Evolution in Java’, in G.E. Hansen (ed.), Agricultural and Rural Development in Indonesia. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 147–76. Conklin, H.C. 1977 [1955]. ‘The Relation of Hanunóo Culture to the Plant World’, Ph.D. thesis, Yale University. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms Inc. No. 67-4119. Dove, M.R. 1993. ‘The Responses of Dayak and Bearded Pig to Mast-Fruiting in Kalimantan: an Analysis of Nature-Culture Analogies’, in C.M. Hladik, A. Hladik, O.F. Linares, H. Pagezy, A. Semple and M. Hadley (eds), Tropical Forests, People and Food: Biocultural Interactions and Applications to Development. Paris: UNESCO Carnforth, Lancs.: The Parthenon Publishing Group, pp. 113–26. Hansen, G.E., 1978. ‘Bureaucratic Linkages and Policy-making in Indonesia: BIMAS Revisited’, in K.D. Jackson and L.W. Pye (eds), Political Power and Communication in Indonesia. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 322–42. Iskandar, J. 1998. ‘Swidden Cultivation as a Form of Cultural Identity: the Baduy Case’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Kent. Iskandar, J. and R. Ellen. 1999. ‘In situ Conservation of Rice Landraces Among the Baduy of West Java’, Journal of Ethnobiology 19(1): 97–125. Jay, R.R. 1969. Javanese Villagers: Social Relations in Rural Modjokuto. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kikuchi, M., A. Hafid, C. Saleh, S. Hartoyo and Y. Hayami. 1980. ‘Class Differentiation, Labor Employment, and Income Distribution in a West Java Village’, The Developing Economies 18(1): 45–64. Lansing, J.S. 1991. Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Manning, C. 1988. The Green Revolution, Employment, and Economic Change in Rural Java: A Reassessment of Trends under the New Order. Pasir Panjang: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Moerman, M. 1968. Agricultural Change and Peasant Choice in a Thai Village. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nash, J. and J. Ehrenfeld. 1997. ‘Codes of Environmental Practice: Assessing Their Potential as a Tool for Change’, Annual Review of Energy and Environment 22: 487–535. Ortiz, S.R. 1973. Uncertainties in Peasant Farming: a Colombian Case. London School of Economics Monograph on Social Anthropology No. 46. London: Athlone Press. Palmer, I. 1976. The New Rice in Indonesia. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Rosset, P., J. Collins and F.M. Lappe. 2000. Lessons from the Green Revolution. Retreived 2 March 2003 from the FoodFirst, Institute for Food and Development Policy website www.foodfirst.org Scott, J.C. 1976. The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. Setyawati, I. 1996. ‘Environmental Variability, IK and the Use of Rice Varieties’. Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor 4(2): 11–13. Stoler, A.L. 1977. ‘Rice Harvesting in Kali Loro: a Study of Class and Labor Relations in Rural Java’, American Ethnologist 4(4): 678–98. Wertheim, W.F. 1964. East-West Parallels: Sociological Approaches to Modern Asia. The Hague: W. van Hoeve. Wharton, C. 1971. ‘Risk, Uncertainty, and the Subsistence Farmer: Technological Innovation and Resistance to Change in the Context of Survival’, in G. Dalton

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Kasepuhan Rice Landrace Diversity | 111 (ed.), Studies in Economic Anthropology. Anthropological Studies No. 7. Washington DC: American Anthropological Association, pp. 151–78. White, B. 1979. ‘Political Aspects of Poverty, Income Distribution and Their Measurement: Some Examples from Rural Java’, Development and Change 10(1): 91–114. Winarto, Y. 1997. ‘Maintaining Seed Diversity During the Green Revolution’. Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor 5(3): 2–6.

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CHAPTER

4

Responses to Environmental Stress in the Baduy Swidden System, South Banten, Java Johan Iskandar

Introduction Recent socio-economic and environmental events, including the 1997 El Niño and the 2002 drought, have placed new stresses on the swidden system of the Baduy, a cultural enclave in upland west Java. In this chapter I wish to consider two facets of Baduy experience in apprehending and managing these events and their consequences. The first is how their calendar, seasonal indicators and variation in the harvesting times for sacred swiddens (huma serang) are used to determine the date of the new agricultural year, so as to maintain the viability of the traditional swidden practice in the face of irregular subsistence stress. The second concerns local responses to these same problems, in the form of combinations of traditional and innovatory strategies. One of these strategies is discussed in Chapter 3, that associated with the planting of Paraserianthes falcataria, and another, the maintenance of rice landrace diversity, has been published separately (Iskandar and Ellen 1999). Here I shall be concerned with agrobiodiversity more generally, with the use of market strategies and with a general comparison of the Baduy experience of these events with that of the majority of, mainly lowland, farmers on the island of Java cultivating rice in wet sawah, and who have been the main recipients of the Indonesian version of the‘green revolution’. For a long time the forest around Mt Kendeng has been independently managed by the Baduy (Figure 4.1). The forest has been mainly used for swidden farming (ngahuma), the practice of which is considered to be a ritual obligation, and which has come to be seen as central to the distinc-

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Figure 4.1. Map of Baduy area: Kanekes, subdistrict of Leuwidamar, Lebak district, Banten province, Java

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tive cultural identity of the Baduy. Various pressures, including government policy, demography and rapid socio-economic and land-use change, have affected Baduy swidden farming. During the Dutch colonial period and since Indonesian independence, swidden farming has been a prohibited practice in most of Java, considered as destructive of both soil and forest (see Kools 1935) and portrayed through various negative images. The swidden farming communities are commonly described as ‘backward’ (masyarakat terbelakang), ‘isolated’ (masyarakat terasing), ‘animistic’ (animisme), ‘illiterate’ (buta huruf or tuna aksara), ‘low-income’ (miskin), ‘nomadic and scattered’ (masyarakat berpindah-pindah dan terpencar-pencar) and ‘forest encroachers’ (perambah hutan) (see Dove, 1985; Persoon 1994). Unlike swidden farming, the irrigated paddy (sawah) farming practised by most ordinary Sundanese in west Java has long been encouraged by the government, as it has been considered to provide greater benefits, not only in terms of food security but also because of the ease of collecting land tax. Green revolution policies pursued in Java since the late 1960s exacerbated this message, which, combined with population growth, has dramatically increased the area devoted to sawah. Conversely, the area devoted to swidden farming in south Banten has declined over the same period as it has been converted to sawah. Market penetration has also resulted in the conversion of swidden fields into monocultural commercial gardens, planted – for example – with rubber, cloves, and coffee. During the last decade this has been accompanied by population increase and intensive rural development programmes, including improvement of roads and the introduction of village electricity and telephone in the neigbourhood of the Baduy area. These in turn have encouraged tourism and lifestyle changes. Despite these changes and the additional impact of the Indonesian economic crisis in 1997/98 running parallel with environmental stresses, the Baduy swidden system has been maintained, and overall production levels have not been seriously affected. This is partly because existing Baduy planting and management strategies are ‘risk-averse’ (e.g. non-reliance on irrigation, low-maintenance management and high landrace and species diversity), but also because the Baduy have developed some appropriate new economic strategies, including mixing upland rice with non-rice crops and diversifying into off-farm cash-raising activities.

Background The Baduy community today1 can be divided into two groups; ‘Inner Baduy’ and ‘Outer Baduy’, with a total population of about 7,331 persons (2003), inhabiting about fifty hamlets. Inner and Outer Baduy hamlets together constitute the administrative unit (desa) of Kanekes, covering

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about 5,101.85 ha (or 50 square kilometres), and consisting of about 7,331 people in 1,865 households in 2003. There are no other groups living in Kanekes except the Baduy. However, the Baduy are surrounded by hamlets of non-Baduy people. These are usually called by Baduy, Urang Landeuh (lowland people), Urang Islam (Islamic people) or Urang Are or Ngare (‘outer’ or ‘valley’ people). In their daily lives, the Baduy have tried to keep their original culture as pure as possible based on their perceptions of what their ancestors (karuhun) demand, seeking to live in harmony with their environment, the forest. To this end Baduy life is regulated by many prohibitions, such as on planting rice in wet rice fields (sawah), growing monocultural commercial crops (teak, rubber, clove and coffee), digging wells and poisoning wild animals and fish, and so on. These environmental values and prohibitions are enshrined in traditional laws (pikukuh) expressed as follows:2 Gunung teu meunang di lebur, Lebak teu meunang dirusak, Larangan teu meunang dirempak, Buyut teu meunang dirobah, Lojor teu meunang dipotong, Pondok teu meunang disambung, Nu lain kudu dilainkeun, Nu ulah kudu diulahkeun, Nu enya kudu dienyakeun,

The hill should not be destroyed, The valley should not be damaged Restrictions should not be violated, Taboos should not be changed, What is long should not be shortened, What is short should not be lengthened, What is other must be considered other, What is forbidden must be forbidden, What is right must be considered right

The Baduy Agricultural Calendar and the Prediction of Environmental Perturbations For the Baduy, the annual obligation to perform the rituals of kawalu and ngalaksa is an integral part of the practice of swidden farming, which thus unites agriculture and religion. Each year after harvesting, swidden rice must be offered to the ancestors for life to continue. Moreover, central to their subsistence practice is a belief in the rice goddess, Pohaci Sanghyang Asri or Nyi Pohaci (in Javanese, Dewi Sri). It is she who is seen as providing rice for daily consumption (Danasasmita and Djatisunda 1986: 78). The Baduy rice-farming cycle is fixed annually with reference to an agricultural calendar that integrates farming and ritual activities. The first day of the new year (tindak tahun) is determined using calculations based on a wooden device called a kolenyer, and using environmental indicators such as the position of the stars and sun and the flowering and fruiting of several plant species. The final decision on both the tindak tahun and ricefarming cycle is usually made by one of the Inner Baduy religious leaders, Puun Cikeusik. The kolenyer is used to locate auspicious times and directions, based on a calendar divided into cycles of one day (poe), one month (bulan), one year (tahun) and eight years (windu). One day is

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usually divided into five parts: isuk-isuk (5.00–9.00), tengah naek (9.00–12.00), tangange (12.00–13.00), lingsir (13.00–14.00) and burit (14.00–16.00); while the auspicious directions for arriving and leaving from a certain area are divided into eight: north (kaler), south (kidul), west (barat), east (wetan), southeast (timur-kidul), southwest (barat daya), northwest (barat kaler) and northeast (kaler wetan). In addition, three main auspicious times (naptu) are recognized by Baduy: day naptu (naptu poe), date naptu (naptu tanggal) and name naptu (naptu ngaran). Using these coordinates a naptu calculation is made determining the most auspicious times and directions for departure and arrival possible. Of the astronomical indicators, the belt of Orion (bentang kidang) and the Pleiades (bentang kerti, kartika or gumarang) are the most important. The first appearance of bentang kidang and bentang kartika on the eastern horizon signifies the beginning of the annual farming year in an absolute way: though the stars may be invisible, the astronomical cycles are unvarying. The bentang kartika usually appears two weeks earlier than bentang kidang, when the sun is in the northern hemisphere. According to the Baduy, at that time, the soil is ‘cold’ (tiis). Conversely, when bentang kidang disappears over the western horizon and for approximately two months cannot be seen, it is inappropriate to plant rice, because the soil is too ‘hot’ (panas) and insect pests (kungkang) inhabit the ‘present world’, buana tengah.3 The position of the bentang kidang, in particular, is significant for deciding when to commence clearing, felling, burning and planting rice. These various positions of bentang kidang are reflected in the following verses: Tanggal kidang turun kujang Kidang ngarangsang kudu ngahuru Kidang nyuhun atawa condong ka barat kudu ngaseuk Kidang marem turun kungkang, Ulah melak pare

When kidang first appears, a chopping knife should be used When kidang appears in a position similar to that of the sun at 8.00–10.00 a.m, vegetation should be burned When kidang appears overhead or sideways to the west, rice should be planted When kidang disappears, insect pests will appear, and rice planting should stop

Of the biological indicators, the flowering and fruiting of the following species are used to decide the beginning of the farming year: • Kanyere (Bridelia monoica), jampang kidang (Centhoteca lappacea) and jampang kerti (Centhoteca sp.), the flowering and fruiting of which usually synchronize with the appearance of bentang kidang. • Kanyere (B. monoica), the ripening of the fruit of which usually synchronizes with the appearance of gumarang or the dry season.

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• Gaharu (Gonystyllus macrophyllus), the flowering of which usually synchronizes with the beginning of the dry season. However, the most important factor determining tindak tahun is the harvesting time of the huma serang, the sacred ‘swidden’, the default scheduling of which is three months before tindak tahun, when the kawalu ritual must be performed (Figure 4.2).

Figure 4.2. Baduy agricultural calendar and associated ritual activities Source: Iskandar (1998: 274)

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To perform this ritual new rice from the huma serang must be used. The new rice is also used for other rituals too, namely ngalaksa and seba in the month following kawalu. Therefore, if there is a delay in harvesting rice from the huma serang, the kawalu and seba will also be delayed, as will the next tindak tahun, as happened in the farming years of 1994/95 and 1997/98. In normal circumstances, huma serang rice must be harvested during Kasa (January–February). However, because in 1994 there had been a drought, the huma serang rice was harvested during Katiga (March–April). As a result, the first kawalu was performed during Katiga (March–April) instead of Kasa (January–February), the second kawalu during Sapar (April–May) instead of Karo (February–March) and the third kawalu during Kalima instead of Katiga. In addition, tindak tahun was fixed for Kanem (June–July) instead of Sapar (April–May). But in every month and in each year this calendar is usually adjusted by a ritual specialist (namely Puun Cikeusik), who resynchronizes the calendar with the rotation of the bentang kidang and with the flowering and fruiting season of particular species. In other words, the harvesting time of the huma serang is used as the standard by which both tindak tahun and the start of the annual Baduy rice-farming cycle are determined. Each phase of the swidden cycle is linked to rainfall conditions. For example, the selection of huma masyarakat (those fields belonging to separate Inner and Outer Baduy households), the cutting of undergrowth, the felling and pruning of trees, the drying and burning of debris and the reburning of debris are all usually undertaken in the dry season, namely between Kapitu (July–August) and Kasalapan (September–October), while rice planting occurs at the beginning of the wet season in Kasalapan and harvesting rice at the beginning of dry season in Katiga (March–April) (Figure 4.2). Burning and reburning in particular are critical and must be done quickly and always within the dry season, otherwise the burn will be incomplete, with a consequent decrease in nutrient availability and rice yields. Two seasons are normally recognized by Baduy: the rainy season (usum hujan) and the dry season (usum halodo). The first generally runs from November to April, the southwest monsoon bringing heavy rains, while the second runs from May to October, the southeast monsoon bringing drier weather. Baduy also terminologically recognize three abnormal periods of drought, of increasing severity, which indicate a significant departure from the usual oscillation between wet and dry: manalung (approximately five months without rainfall), parepong (approximately seven months without rainfall) and maragasana (approximately nine months without rainfall). In addition to the annual cycle of precipitation and variations within it, Baduy also recognize a cycle of eight named years, which is called windu. The windu consist of Alip, Ehe, Jimawal, Je, Dal, Be, Wawu and Jimakir. Each named year in the cycle is said to exem-

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plify special characteristics in relation to climate and the planting of appropriate crops. For example, Jimawal is predicted to be accompanied by heavy rain and strong winds. Rice and other crops do not grow well in Jimawal. Conversely, Dal is predicted as having a long dry season, favouring good harvests of perennial fruit crops but poor rice harvests. We might well speculate what relationship this ideal cycle has for the actual microclimatic patterns and differential crop yields in each year, and what relationship a ‘fixed’ cycle of eight years might have with the variable but average seven-year duration of the El Niño southern oscillation.

Baduy Rice Production Since the late 1960s most villages in Java have adopted modern farming technology for irrigated rice (sawah) cultivation as part of the ‘green revolution’. Various farming inputs, such as irrigation, cash loans, fertilizers and pesticides, have been provided by the government (Tjondronegoro, 1990: 3–14; Soemardjan and Breazeale, 1993). However, all of this has been rejected by the Baduy. As a result, while rice production in most Sundanese rural communities has been much influenced by government initiatives and the market economy, Baduy rice cultivation techniques and yields have remained more-or-less unaltered. As we have seen, for Baduy, the planting of rice is bound by a strong set of ritually enforced rules as to what is acceptable and is a part of their annual religious obligation to perform kawalu and ngalaksa. These rituals are conducted annually after the harvest, as an expression of gratitude to their ancestors for continuing to provide for the conditions of life. Each year, after the harvest, the rice bundles are ceremonially carried to the settlement. At the hamlet, rice bundles are selected. Six seed rice bundles of good quality, from different landraces, are separated for planting the following year. In addition, thirty bundles are selected for use in various rituals, such as ngadiukeun pare, the ritual associated with placing rice in the barn. This requires several bundles of rice: the ‘rice mother’, the ‘rice couple’ and ‘the companion’. The ritual for tasting new rice, in comparison, requires just one or two bundles, ngalaksa one or two bundles and kawalu one or two bundles. In addition, some rice bundles are pounded and cooked for the consumption of household members and relatives when they engage in collective swidden farming activities, particularly cutting undergrowth, planting rice, first weeding and harvesting rice. The rest of the new rice bundles are normally stored in the rice barn, and only occasionally pounded for ordinary home consumption, as when there is insufficient money to buy sawah rice from local warung (small shops). These features of rice production, exchange and consumption are illustrated in Figure 4.3.

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Figure 4.3. Flow chart showing use of swidden rice for various rituals, while non-rice crops are used for trading to acquire household income

Therefore, as long as there is enough money, Baduy usually consume sawah rice on a daily basis, while the swidden rice bundles are normally kept in the barns for between ten and ninety years, periodically depleted for ritual use, and the remainder ultimately inherited by children on the death of a parent, when the stock is divided equally irrespective of sex,

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after first deducting two-thirds to cover the requirements of the death ritual. In contrast to sawah rice, swidden rice is sacred and can be neither bought nor sold.

Responses to Environmental Stress in Lowland Javanese and Baduy Rice Farming Over the last decade Indonesian rice production in irrigated fields, in particular using HYVs and other green revolution inputs, has been subjected to several periods of severe water shortage, in part due to abnormal climatic conditions, but possibly aggravated by local geophysical and ecological factors. For example, in 1997 a drought was reported as due to the El Niño, while five years later, in 2002, we have reports of a second severe shortage. The Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture (quoted by Sasongko in Republika, 1997) have calculated that the first El Niño-related drought reduced annual national production of dry unhulled rice to 49 million tons, a decrease of 4 per cent compared with the previous year, which yielded 51 million tons. Up to September 1997 the total area of sawah farmland affected by the drought was 301,459 hectares, including 33,638 hectares where the harvest could not be completed (puso). In west Java, as in many other parts of Indonesia (Silitonga, quoted by Kompas, 1997), sawah became dry and the soil surface cracked, leading to rice harvest failure and a scarcity of drinking water. At the time of the second drought period, five years later, in 2002, Kompas (2002a) reports that: a lot of rain-fed rice fields have suffered, belonging to farmers in the Bandung district of west Java who have resisted the drought with their whole heart. They have had problems in obtaining water during the dry season and claim that they do not know how to farm the annual non-rice crops. As a result of the dry conditions, their rice fields were abandoned. Similarly, wet rice field farmers from Buleleng and Karangasem in the Jembrana district of Bali are predicted to suffer an even more serious drought compared with that of other districts because of El Niño phenomena.

In addition to west Java and Bali, irrigated rice farming in central Java was also seriously affected by the drought (Kompas 2002b). Many districts in central Java were subject to drought at the beginning of 2002. By May 1,124 hectares, at the very least, had not been harvested (in other words, was puso). Nearer the peak of the dry season, in September, it was estimated that the area threatened with puso would increase to 5,000 hectares. On the basis of these reports we can conclude that many farmers in Java and Bali were unable to cope with the 1997 and 2002 droughts because they had become over-dependent on the large quantities of water

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demanded by modern irrigation systems, and were therefore particularly susceptible to abnormal climatic conditions. A traditional local strategy that farmers had developed for coping with drought was to restrict rice planting to the wet season (musim hujan, musim ngijih or musim rendeng), normally between November and March, and to use irrigated plots in the dry season (musim halodo or mausim katiga), between May and October, for crops with low water demands (palawija), such as sweet potato, maize and taro. In some cases, although the water supply was insufficient to feed irrigated rice fields, sufficient water for annual non-rice crops could be obtained by digging wells. To avoid harvest failure, some farmers even left rice fields unplanted altogether during the dry season (in fallow: digamblungkeun), subsidizing household incomes instead by growing perennial crops in mixed home gardens or by engaging in off-farm activities, such as trading and manufacturing and the selling of unskilled labour. With the growing impact of green revolution technologies since the late 1960s, irrigated rice-farming practices have dramatically changed, particularly following the introduction of high-yielding, early-maturing (100day) rice varieties from IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) located at Los Baños in the Philippines. Almost all farmers now plant and harvest rice continuously, usually three times a year, in irrigated paddy fields (sawah irigasi). The production of annual non-rice crops by these same farmers is now neglected, resulting in a dramatic deficit of water for irrigation, even during climatically ‘normal’ years (see Lansing 1991). As supported by the results of research conducted by DGIS (1982) and as promoted by O. Soemarwoto (1988: 69), if the sawah in Java were planted with rice and palawija, in sequences of ‘rice–rice–palawija’ or ‘rice–palawija– palawija’, all watersheds in Java, except the Berantas of east Java, would yield a water supply surplus under normal climatic conditions. However, if the sawah were planted with a ‘rice–rice–rice’ cropping pattern, all watersheds, except the Citanduy of west Java, would be in water deficit under normal climatic conditions. Indeed, if the sawah were affected by abnormal climatic conditions, such as drought, a water deficit and rice harvest failure would be inevitable. The puso experienced for most sawah paddy in Java during the 1997 El Niño and the 2002 drought are good examples of this.

Baduy Responses to Drought Unlike irrigated rice farming, the swidden farming traditionally practised by the Baduy was only slightly affected by the dry periods under discussion. Consistently reliable informants from both Inner and Outer Baduy with whom I have discussed the matter insist that the dry periods in 1997

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and 2002 did not seriously influence aggregate crop yields. Although swidden rice (pare huma) did not harvest well, non-rice crops, such as fruits, vegetables and industrial crops farmed in swidden fallow (reuma) and in hamlet forests (leuweung lembur), were not seriously affected. Perennial fruit trees even tended to increase their yields in the year following the dry periods, because of the sunshine to which they were exposed at a critical period. As a result, any failure in the swidden rice (pare huma) yield was compensated by the success in harvesting perennial crops, such as fruits. In other words, the high diversity of perennial crops mixed with rice in Baduy swidden fields and farmed in other anthropogenic land types has contributed towards the avoidance of droughtinduced harvest failure. Baduy say that the most serious droughts in their recent history occurred in the 1960s rather than in 1997 and 2002. At that time many people did not have any new rice for performing traditional rituals or for seed to plant in the following year. It was as a deliberate response to this experience that they developed new strategies to cope with dry periods, which extended to economic diversification into petty trading activities and hiring their labour for various off-farm occupations. However, there were also new strategies for meeting the specific requirements of ritual and rice cultivation. For example, some Baduy whose harvest failed during these periods were still able to participate in kawalu4 and ngalaksa5 rituals by joining with other households who had succeeded in harvesting rice and who therefore had the wherewithal to perform the rituals. Those who had been ‘adopted’ for this purpose pledged to the host households that they would instead contribute pake basa (just words) to the puun (ritual leader) in the kawalu and to the jaro dangka (a higher ritual official) for use in the ngalaksa ritual. In addition, more effort was made to obtain seed rice for the year following a dry period. The most common means of achieving this was to borrow seed rice from relatives and neighbours, either in the same hamlet or in different related hamlets in Desa Kanekes. If they could not obtain seed rice from other Baduy, they would even borrow swidden seed rice from non-Baduy households living in the vicinity. In the past, they had borrowed the seed rice from households in Cibeo, within Inner Baduy and from non-Baduy in Cibaliung. These areas were recognized as tiis (cold), indicating that many of their swidden fields had not been seriously affected by the drought. Households borrowing seed rice would be expected to return to the donor households seed rice of the same amount borrowed after the next successful rice harvest. The rice returned, however, did not necessarily have to be derived from the same landraces. What was returned depended on what the lenders wanted.

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Non-rice Crops and Marketing Strategies Used to Compensate for Rice Shortages Crops other than rice are not considered by Baduy to be sacred and their produce may be sold. Swidden fields (huma) are normally planted not only with rice, but also with a wide variety of other cultigens. My own data indicate seventy-nine separate species (domesticated and semi-domesticated) recorded in Inner and Outer Baduy swiddens, providing, variously, starchy foods (taro, cassava, sweet potato, maize, yams), vegetables (cucumber, eggplant, wing bean, pigeon pea), spices (chilli pepper, lemon grass), fruits (banana, durian, mango), traditional medicines (ginger, turmeric), commercial crops (sugar palm, pepper) and ritual plants (betel pepper, Areca palm). In addition, perennial non-rice crops, such as fruit trees and those supplying firewood and building and manufacturing materials, are grown in other ecological zones, including mature fallow forests (reuma) and hamlet shelter forests (dukuh lembur) (Figure 4.4). Some cash crops, including clove, coffee and pepper, are recent introductions to the Baduy area, and their planting is still formally prohibited. Despite this, over the last two decades, both clove and coffee have been farmed by Outer Baduy in contravention of traditional prohibitions. An exception to these recent introductions is Paraserianthes (Albizia) falcataria, discussed more fully in Chapter 5 (Figure 4.5; see also Iskandar and Ellen 2000).

Figure 4.4. The traditional house of Outer Baduy surrounded by hamlet shelter forests (dukuh lembur), swidden fields (huma), fallowed land (reuma) and protected mature forests on the top of the hills

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Figure 4.5. Woman cutting dried rice stalks and weeding after harvesting rice. To improve soil fertility and to obtain wood, swiddens and fallowed land are planted with the leguminous tree albizzia (Paraserianthes falcataria)

The productivity of non-rice and non-swidden crops indicates the important role which these have played in Baduy agriculture in recent years, both fulfilling daily subsistence needs and serving as a source of cash. I have calculated from my own Outer Baduy data the productivity of the landholdings of one household for the year 1985/86 (comprising approximately 2.3 ha). When measured in monetary terms, by adding the value of what is sold to what is consumed, just 34 per cent is assigned to rice, while the rest is assigned to non-rice crops, 5 per cent from swidden (huma), 56 per cent from fallow (reuma) and 5 per cent from the coffee garden (kebon kopi) (Table 4.1). Over the last few decades Baduy have been increasingly involved in petty trade, exchanging (ojol), for sawah rice, salt, salt fish and cooking oil, various non-rice agricultural products with neighbouring non-Baduy people, such as firewood, pepper, coffee, clove, petai (locust beans), Paraserianthes (Albizia), banana, durian, palm sugar and coconut (Table 4.2). During the last two decades, due to improving village roads and growth in public transportation to neighbouring non-Baduy villages, trading activity undertaken by Baduy has risen dramatically. Indeed, some Outer Baduy have even become involved as middlemen, collecting non-rice products, with the aid of assistants, and transporting produce in rented vehicles to the district capital, Rangkasbitung. Where rice harvests

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126 | Johan Iskandar Table 4.1. Comparative productivity of swidden (huma), fallowed land (reuma) and coffee garden (kebon kopi) belonging to one key Outer Baduy informant, 1985/86 Land-use types

Produce sold Household (rupiah) consumption (rupiah)

Swidden (0.6 ha) Rice* Non-rice crops Fallowed land I (0.8 ha) Non-rice crops Fallowed land II (0.8 ha) Non-rice crops Coffee garden (0.1 ha) Non-rice/coffee Total

Total (rupiah)

Percentage of total income from agriculture

– 6,300

168,000 22,700

168,000 29,000

33.61 5.80

6,700

82,050

88,050

17.62

27,000

162,750

189,750

37.96

–

25,000

25,000

5.00

39,300 (7.86%)

460,500 (92.14%)

499,800 (100.00%)

100.00

* There is a Baduy prohibition on the selling of swidden rice. Price of the hulled sawah rice (beras) Rp 200 a litre. Source: Iskandar (1998).

have declined due to drought, trade in non-rice crops has correspondingly intensified. The customary trading of non-rice crops has been complemented by mixing various non-rice crops with rice, as part of a traditional agroforestry system. Such a system not only provides the Baduy with staple food, fruits, vegetables, industrial crops, firewood, building materials and handicrafts, but also provides ecological functions, such as soil quality maintenance, erosion control, gene-pool conservation and protection of animal habitat. In addition, Baduy have also engaged in various off-farm labouring activities, such as portering produce from Baduy hamlets to the road head, weeding gardens in neigbouring villages, harvesting sawah rice and building houses (Table 4.3).

Discussion and Conclusion The El Niño of 1997 and the 2002 drought had a serious impact on agricultural systems in Indonesia. But as noted by Sunderlin et al. (2000), most farmers in outer Indonesia who cultivated annual crops were more seriously affected by both the national economic crisis and the 1997 El Niño, when compared with those farming perennial mixed crops. Consequently, plantings of annual monocultural crops, such as rice and bananas, were reduced, while plantings of perennial crops, such as rubber, cacao, pepper, coffee, cinnamon and oil palm, increased, in large part

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Responses to Environmental Stress in the Baduy Swidden System | 127 Table 4.2. Various non-rice crop products commonly traded by Baduy, 2003/4 Non-rice plant products Market value (rupiah)

Notes

Kadu, durian (Durio zibethinus)

Fruit commonly sold to village middlemen before rice harvest

5,000 per fruit 1,500,000–2,000,000 per tree

Cau, banana (Musa 400–500 per fruit paradisiaca), galek or 4,000–5,000 per bunch tanduk varieties 20,000–25,000 per tree to non-Baduy middlemen

Bananas harvested and bought by village middlemen; carried and sold

Cau, banana (Musa paradisiaca), other varieties

500 per bunch 5,000 per tree

Bananas harvested and bought by village middlemen; carried and sold to non-Baduy middlemen

Peuteuy, petai (Parkia speciosa)

500 per pod 50,000 per papan or ten pods 100,000–200,000 per tree

Pods are commonly sold to village middlemen before rice harvest; carried and sold to non-Baduy middlemen

Gula kawung, aren sugar 2,000–2,500 per portion Each sugar portion is (Arenga pinnata) 200,000–250,000 per wrapped in dry banana or month salak leaves and sold to village middlemen Rinu, pepper (Piper cubeba)

20,000–25,000 per kg dry seeds 200,000–250,000 per tree

Seeds are dried and sold to village middlemen or district markets

Alabsiah, albizzia 10,000 per tree (Paraserianthes falcataria) 500,000–1,000,000 per plot

After 4–5 years growth trees are cut and sold to village middlemen

Kalapa, coconut (Cocos nucifera)

200 per fruit 10,000 per tree

Fruits are harvested and sold to village middlemen

Cengkeh, clove (Syzigium aromaticum)

27,000 per kg dry flower bud 270,000 per tree

Buds are dried and sold to village middlemen

Note: Hulled rice = Rp 2,100/litre; and 1 UK pound = Rp.15,600. Source: Iskandar, field notes (2004).

because they were drought-resistant and commanded high export prices. However, these two factors in themselves were not always sufficient to explain farmer choices. Thus, although the price of rubber latex was considered to be low compared with that of other commercial perennial crops, rubber trees were widely planted during the national economic crisis and the El Niño of 1997 because these provided other benefits for farmers in addition to household cash generation. For example, the knowledge

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128 | Johan Iskandar Table 4.3. Various off-farm activities undertaken by Baduy, particularly Outer Baduy, to obtain cash income Off-farm activity

Wage (rupiah)

Notes

Carrying albizzia logs from swidden plots to river

10,000 per day per person, with meals and cigarettes 1,500 per log, with meals and cigarettes

Undertaken by males, timbers are normally carried from swiddens to Ciujung River and floated downriver to non-Baduy area

Carrying durian from Baduy villages to car park at Ciboleger, in non-Baduy area

200 per fruit, with meals and cigarettes

Undertaken by males

Carrying petai pods from 50–100 per 10 pods, with Baduy villages to car meals and cigarettes park at Ciboleger, in non-Baduy area

Undertaken by males

Carrying prepared Arenga sugar from Baduy villages to car park at Ciboleger, in non-Baduy area

3,500 per 100 portions, Undertaken by males with meals and cigarettes

Carrying items purchased 200 per kg, with meals by Outer Baduy traders and cigarettes with small shops in villages

Undertaken by males

Weeding gardens

10,000 per day per Undertaken by males and person, without meals females at same rate and cigarettes 6,500 per day per person, with meals and cigarettes

Harvesting rice in non-Baduy area

6,500 per day per person, Undertaken by males and with meals and cigarettes females 1 bundle for each 4 bundles of harvested rice (local varieties) 1 kg for 5 kg of harvested rice (new varieties)

Building labour

15,000 per day per person, Undertaken by males who with meals and cigarettes have house construction expertise

Note: Hulled rice = Rp 2,100/litre; and 1 UK pound = Rp 15,600. Source: Iskandar field notes (2004).

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required for cultivation was simple, it commanded low inputs, could be harvested slowly throughout the year (no rushed and heavy seasonal labour requirements) and could be easily marketed, despite the lower price. In addition, many farmers in outer Indonesia had begun, or planned, to diversify into mixed perennial crops, as these were seen to provide more security than monocultural crops, which were sensitive to market price fluctuations (see Pelzer 1978; Dove 1983). As with rice harvests in other parts of Indonesia, padi sawah in Java was massively affected by puso, as a result of the dry periods in 1997 and 2002. Indeed, most sawah was seriously damaged by the drought, and many farmers failed to harvest. The impact of the green revolution and the New Order food production policy had led to what now looked like the ‘overintensification’ of sawah, placing an intolerable burden on the infrastructure to supply sufficient water for irrigation purposes. For example, in the recent past, before the impact of rice intensification, farmers had often been able to avoid the worst effects of drought and pest infestation by alternating rice planting with the planting of non-rice crops (palawija). As a result, the requirement for water was low compared with that needed for the continuous and intensive planting of rice alone. Moreover, pests could usually be contained more easily as their populations tended to decrease after the rice harvest with the dramatic reduction in their food supply and the destruction of their habitat, as rice was replaced with other crops. At the same time, the autonomy that farmers had previously had to manage water at the local level, which permitted flexibility and fine-tuning, had been removed through governmental interventions linked to the intensification policy. Local irrigation infrastructures which had previously been independently managed by local participatory associations of water users, such as the subak of Bali (Lansing 1991) and mitra cai in west Java, were now controlled predominantly by state irrigation workers (juru irigasi). By the time the national economic crisis, the El Niño of 1997 and the 2002 drought were impacting on the lives of Javanese farmers, their scope for responding flexibly had been much diminished, while they had become very dependent on government subsidies and initiatives. As a result of the intensification policy, production costs had risen dramatically, such as those incurred in buying the necessary chemical fertilizers and pesticides, while the price of hulled rice declined as a result of government price control at a national level. Thus, the succession of crises eliminated many of the development benefits the original policy was intended to bring, while the majority of farmers also incurred high debts in order to repay the cost of those inputs. Compared with the situation in the Javanese sawah areas, Baduy swidden farming was not seriously influenced by the national economic crisis, the El Niño of 1997 or the 2002 drought, mainly because they had strongly

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rejected green revolution technologies, and relied entirely on local resources independent of government agricultural extension services. In recent years they have been able to be more dynamic and proactive in responding to subsistence stress, and have been selective in their involvement with the market economy, such as through petty trading in non-rice crops. So, while cultural prohibition prevents them selling swidden rice (pare huma), making certain kinds of purchases and engaging in some other market-oriented subsistence practices, they do trade various other non-rice crops. Thus, durian, pepper, palm sugar, banana, petai, coffee and clove have all, at various times, been intercropped with rice in their swiddens (huma) or in swidden fallow (reuma) as part of a traditional agroforestry system. When rice production declines as a result of ecological stress induced by low rainfall or pest outbreaks, non-rice crops serve as a subsistence buffer, by providing commodities that can, for example, be exchanged for rice. Similarly, if the price of a particular cash crop, say cloves, decreases sharply, there are generally other crops that can be harvested and sold. Thus, by planting swidden rice for performing various traditional rituals, and through diversifying their non-rice trading options by growing a variety of mainly tree crops in swidden and other anthropogenic lands, Baduy have been able to maintain the integrity of their swidden system, which is such a central part of their cultural identity.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to the Organizing Committee of the Ninth International Congress of Ethnobiology, which, through a grant from the Wenner–Gren Foundation, made the presentation of the paper on which this chapter is based possible. The data I discuss are mainly derived from a thesis written under the supervision of Roy Ellen in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kent at Canterbury, and funded by a grant from the Environmental Study Centre (ESC) Development Project of the Republic of Indonesia. I acknowledge this support with gratitude, and would like to thank Professor Ellen for his comments and suggestions on various drafts of this chapter.

Notes 1. See also Lombard 1983: 266–67; Danasasmita and Djatisunda 1986: 3; Bakels 1993: 349). 2. Source: Danasasamita and Djatisunda (1986: 25, 80); Garna (1987: 276–77); Kartawinata et al. (1995: 96); and Iskandar field notes (1995/96). See also Pleyte (1909: 503–4); Bakels and Boevink (1988:138). 3. According to Baduy cosmology, the world can be divided into three parts:

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Responses to Environmental Stress in the Baduy Swidden System | 131 buana tengah (the present world), buana handap (the world where the human body is buried after death), and buana luhur (the hereafter). 4. Kawalu derives from walu meaning bali, balik, kabali or kembali (come back). This ritual is undertaken after harvesting rice and when other rice has been carried back to the hamlet and placed in the rice barn (leuit). 5. Ngalaksa is also called seren tahun (annual offering) ritual. For this ritual, every household must take seven rice stalks from the pungpuhunan, the most sacred place in the swidden plot, and use sacred rice to make laksa (noodles made from rice flour), which is then offered to the ancestors as an expression of Baduy gratitude.

References Bakels, J. 1993. ‘The Symbolism of Adat Clothing, on the Efficacy of Colours, Patterns and Plants’, in M.L. Nabholz, R. Barnes and D.J.S. Fox (eds), Weaving Patterns of Life: Indonesian Textile Symposium 1991. Basle: Museum of Ethnography, pp. 347–267. Bakels, J. and W. Boevink. 1988. De Baduy van West Java. Werkdocumenten 2. Amsterdam: CASA. Danasasmita, S. and A. Djatisunda. 1986. Kehidupan Masyarakat Kanekes. Bandung: Bagian Proyek Penelitian dan Pengkajian Kebudayaan Sunda (Sundanologi), Direktur Jendral Kebudayaan. DGIS (Directorate General of Irrigation Systems). 1982. Preliminary Assessment of the Need for and the Possibility of Integrated Water Resources Development on Java. Jakarta: Departemen Pekerjaan Umum. Dove, M.R. 1983. ‘Theories of Swidden Agriculture, and the Political Economy of Ignorance’, Agroforestry Systems 1: 85–99. ___. 1985. ‘The Agroecological Mythology of the Javanese and Political Economy of Indonesia’, Indonesia (39): 1–36. Garna, J. 1987. ‘Tangtu Telu Jaro Tujuh: Kajian Struktural Masyarakat Baduy di Banten Selatan Jawa Barat Indonesia’, Ph.D. thesis. Bangi: University Kebangsaan Malaysia. Iskandar, J. 1998. ‘Swidden Cultivation as a Form of Cultural Identity: the Baduy Case’, Ph.D. thesis. University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. Iskandar, J. and R.F. Ellen. 1999. ‘In-situ Conservation of Rice Landraces among the Baduy, West Java’, Journal of Ethnobiology 19(1): 97–125. Iskandar, J. and R.F. Ellen. 2000. ‘The Contribution of Paraserianthes (Albizia) falcatara to Sustainable Swidden Management Practices among the Baduy of West Java’, Human Ecology 28(1): 1–17. Kartawinata, A.M., M. Muhsin, M. Syukur and J. Fargan. 1995. Laporan Akhir Studi Kehidupan Sosial Budaya Masyarakat Baduy di Propinsi Daerah Tingkat I Jawa Barat. Bandung: Pusat Penelitian Kemasyarakatan dan Kebudayaan Lembaga Penelitian, Universitas Padjadjaran. Kompas. 2002a. ‘Petani Pasrah Hadapi Kekeringan’, Kompas 3 March. Kompas. 2002b. ‘1,124 Hektar Padi Puuso di Jateng’, Kompas 20 June. Kools, J.F. 1935. Hoema’s, Hoemablokken en Boschreserves in de residentie Bantam. Wageningen: H. Veenman and Zonen. Lansing, J.S. 1991. Priests and Programmers in the Engineered Landscape of Bali. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Lombard, D. 1983. ‘Pandangan orang Jawa Terhadap Hutan’, in M. Bonneff (ed.), Citra Masyarakat Indonesia. Jakarta: Penerbit Sinar Harapan, pp. 264–80.

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132 | Johan Iskandar Pelzer, K.J. 1978. ‘Swidden Cultivation in Southeast Asia: Historical and Economic Perspectives’, in P. Kundstadter, E.C. Chapman and S. Sabhasri (eds), Farmers in the Forest: Economic Development and Marginal Agriculture in Northern Thailand. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, for the East-West Center, pp. 271–86. Persoon, G.A. 1994. ‘Vluchten of Veranderen: Processen an Verandering en Ontwikkeling bij Tribale Groepen in Indonesië’, Ph.D. thesis: University of Leiden. Pleyte, C.M. 1909. ‘Artja Domas, het Zieleland der Badoejs’, Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal,- Land- en Volkenkunde 51: 494–527. Sasongko, H.D.H. 1997. ‘Bencana Kekeringan dan Pembangunan Irigasi’, Republika, 25 November. Silitonga, C. 1997. ‘Kemarau, Pangan dan Petani’, Kompas, 2 Desember. Soemardjan, S. and K. Breazeale. 1993. Cultural Change in Rural Indonesia: Impact of Village Development. Surakarta: Sebelas Maret University Press. Soemarwoto, O. 1988. Analisis Dampak Lingkungan. Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press. Sunderlin, W.D., I.A.P. Resosudarmo, E. Rianto and A. Angelsen. 2000. Dampak Krisis Ekonomi Indonesia Terhadap Petani Kecil dan Tutupan Hutan Alam di Luar Jawa. Occasional Paper No. 28 (I). Bogor: CIFOR. Tjondronegoro, S.M.P. 1990. ‘Revolusi Hijau dan Perubahan Sosial di Pedesaan Jawa’, Prisma 2(9): 3–14.

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5

Innovation, ‘Hybrid’ Knowledge and the Conservation of Relict Rainforest in Upland Banten Johan Iskandar and Roy Ellen

Introduction The Baduy, a people of upland Banten (before 2000, part of West Java Province), by reputation and by their own account, have during the late twentieth century resisted a range of innovations in agricultural technology. This chapter describes the particular circumstances in which they eventually and successfully innovated the planting of the leguminous tree Paraserianthes falcataria. We also examine the consequences of this innovation for preserving a viable system of forest-fallow cultivation in an area of relict rainforest.1 We argue that it was not simply the incorporation of this tree and associated synecological knowledge into an existing body of ethnobiological knowledge (and certainly not as a quasi-autonomous module), which demonstrates hybridization, but rather that its successful accommodation rested on an existing local generic knowledge of the ecology of soil revitalization through nitrogenfixing plants. Thus, the case demonstrates not merely hybridisation through the addition of new knowledge, but rather the generation of new knowledge through a synthesis of what was already known and what was new. That the introduction was ecologically and economically advantageous depended not merely on acceptance of the new, but interpretation and evaluation of the potential of the new in the context of existing ethno-ecological knowledge.2

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Figure 5.1. Map of forest distribution in Banten, Bogor and Sukabumi (west Java), showing location of the Baduy reserve and surrounding forest. Based on Directorate of Geology map produced in Bandung 1944; modified using Landsat 1976 and 1978

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The Baduy Java has little surviving rainforest, most having disappeared over a period of some thousands of years with the advance of irrigated rice cultivation. This process accelerated in the late colonial period with population growth and the extractive demands of a colonial economy. Today there are only a few areas of relict rainforest surviving, mostly in the uplands of southwest Java. One area is occupied by the Baduy (Figure 5.1), who, for various historical reasons, have reached a unique accommodation, not only with the Indonesian state, but with the forest over which they have control and which they utilize. On the one hand, Baduy strive to maintain their cultural identity by practising forest-fallow (swidden) farming in a way that is as uncontaminated as possible by outside influence. On the other hand, to maintain this traditional way of life they have tolerated, even encouraged, the planting and trading of a new cash crop, Paraserianthes (Albizia) falcataria trees (locally kalabise, albasiah or jeungjing), which they mix with upland rice. In other words, the market economy has been used as an instrument to prevent a greater perceived threat: long-term infrastructural resource depletion. The Baduy are a group of about 7,331 (2003) ethnic Sundanese who live in a relatively isolated area around Kendeng Mountain in the province of Banten. They can be divided into two groups: ‘Inner Baduy’ and ‘Outer Baduy’. For Baduy, the planting of upland rice is considered to be one of the main obligations of their religion, as is the practice of swidden or forest-fallow (huma) farming. The agricultural year is punctuated by ritual, which maintains and reinforces Baduy links with their ancestors and with the land. Conversely, the planting of rice in irrigated rice fields, most cash crops and the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are prohibited. In recent years, however, Baduy have begun to plant Paraserianthes in their swidden plots (huma) and in fallowed land. When the fallow is reopened in order to plant upland rice, the mature trees are felled and the young trees pruned. The timber so harvested is sold to traders in Outer Baduy or in neighbouring non-Baduy areas, while the branches are used for firewood, and the remaining biomass is left in the swiddens to fertilize the soil. The cash income derived from selling timber has permitted Outer Baduy to rent land, hire wage labourers, buy food for agricultural rituals and buy lowland rice and fish for everyday consumption, all of which in turn permit the continued practice of traditional swidden cultivation, despite depletion of available forested land. Rice produced through swidden farming is not sold, since it is considered sacred, but is used mainly for ritual and home consumption. Rice is usually stored in a traditional rice barn (leuit), sometimes for as long as fifty to ninety years (Iskandar and Ellen 1999). By introducing Paraserianthes and trading in timber and in non-rice crops, such as the sugar of Arenga pinnata, Baduy maintain the

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sustainability of a form of swidden farming which they consider as their main ritual obligation, and the practice of which is crucial to their identity as Baduy.

The Introduction of Paraserianthes falcataria Paraserianthes was first planted by the Baduy in 1985. When the seedlings were first offered by the government agricultural extension service they were rejected because many Baduy thought that by planting them they would be ceding rights in trees, even the land on which they were planted, to the government. However, after observing the crop in government demonstration plots and on the agricultural land of neighbouring non-Baduy villages, the Baduy gradually accepted Paraserianthes. One of the main reasons for eventual acceptance was the observation that the crop could be integrated into existing farming practices. By planting Paraserianthes, traditional agricultural practices were not irretrievably disturbed, but rather were improved. Moreover, the species was fast-growing, nitrogen-fixing, easily farmed, provided for various household needs (such as firewood and building materials) and yielded a cash income. The similarities with existing crops that combined some or all of these features, including Pithecelobium jiringa, Vigna sinensis, Cajanus cajan and the closely related Paraserianthes procera (all of which are also intercropped with rice), were observed and their common soil revitalization properties understood. Local autecological knowledge of this group of plants provided a model for understanding the advantages planting P. falcataria. Traditionally, Baduy planted rice seed together with two kinds of bean, C. cajan and V. sinensis. Because of their different root structures, rice is not negatively influenced by the presence of these beans but benefits from their ability to fix free nitrogen in the air, and so to improve soil fertility. The introduction of Paraserianthes follows the same model, rice seed being planted with seed of Paraserianthes, although sometimes the latter is planted also in between rows of rice. Paraserianthes seed is collected from mature trees on other fallowed land. These trees are sometimes growing spontaneously; this occurs when the undergrowth of fallowed land has been cut and burned, and seed is dispersed from neighbouring areas already containing mature trees. By opening up the field, through cutting and burning the vegetation, these dormant seeds are encouraged to start growing. Baduy liken Paraserianthes seed to that of the touch-sensitive species Mimosa pudica. The casings are normally hard but, when subject to heat, the dormant seeds break open and begin to grow actively. The same effect is achieved through adding moisture so, before planting, Baduy soak the seed in warm water for about five minutes to break their dormancy. The warm water is then replaced by cold water, several times. The

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seeds are mixed with rice and sown in a hole in the soil surface of the swidden. After the rice harvest, young Paraserianthes trees continue to grow in secondary forest fallow. After several years of fallow, soil fertility has improved and accelerated through the nitrogen fixation and the provision of other nutrients from Paraserianthes biomass, largely dead leaves and branches. Because chemical fertilizers are prohibited, nutrient input to fallowed land is dependent entirely on compost and nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Soil analysis confirms that fertility improves gradually, through nitrogen fixation and mobilization of phosphorus, when the land is fallowed for three to four years using Paraserianthes. Thus, after more than three years fallow land is ready to be planted with rice again. At the same time, the trunks of Paraserianthes trees are large enough to be cut as timber for sale and home use, while the branches can be used for firewood and the leaves and twigs recycled as compost. Alternatively, debris is burned to produce immediate nutrient inputs. Thus, Baduy obtain both cash income and swiddens that are ready for reuse after a minimal fallow period. Unlike Paraserianthes, previous introduction of cash crops, such as clove, rubber and coffee, were rejected by the Baduy. When intensively planted in Baduy swiddens, these crops (particularly clove) interfere with the pattern of rotation upon which the sustainability of the system depends, since there is a reluctance to destroy productive crops in order to replant upland rice. In addition, it was noted that the planting of most commercial crops and the resulting cash income only encourage further consumption of outside commodities prohibited by their traditional law (pikukuh). Also, the only purpose of growing cloves is to sell them. If the market price of clove drops – or, even worse, collapses completely – it may produce little or no income and nothing that can be used for home consumption.

Discussion and Conclusions To summarize, traditional Baduy sacred law prohibits the use of modern external inputs, such as chemical fertilizers, in their swidden farming. Ordinarily, the consequence of this in a situation of acute pressure on the forest would be a decrease in fallow length and an inevitable depletion of soil fertility. The Baduy (particularly Outer Baduy) employ several strategies to alleviate this problem, one of which is the introduction of P. falcataria. By alternating this commercially valuable, perennial leguminous tree with rice, soil fertility is maintained at a level that permits continuation of the swidden agriculture that is considered by the Baduy to be central to their cultural identity. Using P. falcataria in this way to manage fallow

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reduces the need to further deplete protected mature forest, and there is evidence that it also materially improves the socio-economic position of the population despite a continued increase in demographic pressure. What is striking about this case study is that there should be so much resistance to crop innovation in the first place. In some populations, absence of transmission is simply a matter of opportunity, in others a lack of necessity, in others still the non-existence of essential preconditions (as when the effective use of certain plant remedies is prevented by unsuitable local ecological conditions). In some instances, however, local customary rules deliberately operate to prevent knowledge dissipating out of a social group. We can observe this, for example, in Nuaulu clan-specific plant medicinal and other esoteric knowledge on the eastern Indonesian island of Seram (Ellen 1998b), or, rather differently and in a thoroughly contemporary global context, through legislation and concordats on the protection of intellectual property (Posey 2000). But elsewhere, as in the Baduy case, social rules may do the opposite: prevent local people from acquiring new (outside) knowledge. This is contrary to the situation to be found amongst most farmers in developing areas, who tend to welcome initial innovation and who are prepared to experiment with any new germ plasm that comes their way. This we might describe as the default position. Certainly this is the case for the Nuaulu (see, for example, Ellen 1978, 2000), who are in other important respects very similar to the Baduy (being animist swidden cultivators in a rainforest area that has long been on the periphery of a regional trading system). Moreover, if we examine the range of crops that Inner and Outer Baduy do plant, it is evident that these include many that were introduced into the area between 1500 and 1960 (Iskandar 1998). They are mostly the same New World crops and cultivars that have been introduced and spread to other parts of Indonesia over the same time span: maize, potato, sweet potato, manioc, various aroids, beans, tomatoes, squashes and Capsicum. One can only conclude from all this that at some point in the recent past Baduy began to become less tolerant and more critical of germ plasm emanating from outside their own cultural boundaries, perhaps at the same time that they were closing themselves off from and resisting other aspects of external colonial and postcolonial governmental control. Above, we noted the critical reception given to clove, rubber and coffee on the basis of a screening for their agro-ecological and social effects, and it should also be noted that most Baduy have rejected HYV rice (Iskandar and Ellen 1999), Piper nigrum (pepper, lada) and other commercial timber species (kai kontrak), such as Switenia mahogany (mahoni), Tectona grandis (teak, jati) and Maesopsis eminii (sobsi).3 We suggest that there is a link between the emergence of a particularly conservative form of traditional authority in response to perceived threats to Baduy land and other resources, a kind of resistensi against first Dutch colonial plantations and

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afterwards the agricultural and forestry extension programmes of the Indonesian government; no less than a classic ‘weapon of the weak’ (Scott 1985). But this tendency to reject new crops for political and for cosmological reasons (as threats to the integrity of a particular agro-ritual system), has also been accompanied by a rational evaluation of the individual crops in terms of the effects they have on maintaining the local agro-ecological system in a preferred condition. Having noted the exceptional character of the prohibition on the transfer of plant germ plasm, and how in the Baduy case we need to understand this as part of a particular historical process involving power relations between insiders and outsiders, we need now to turn to the dynamics of what is happening when new knowledge successfully transfers and combines with what people already know. One fundamental conceptual issue in the anthropological theory of culture, which the subject of the acquisition and transmission of ethnobiological knowledge inevitably raises and allows us to address, is just how we can confidently identify something we describe as ‘indigenous’, or draw boundaries around particular bodies of knowledge, when ideas and practices so readily and so frequently move between human populations, changing and recombining as they go (Ellen and Harris 2000: 2–3). If we accept the objective permeability of knowledge boundaries as a default position, then to suggest that knowledge ‘hybridizes’ is either to assert the obvious or to be accused of naively employing a metaphor from plant breeding that is inappropriate when speaking of human cultural practices and ideas. Yet the parallel between the recombination of fragments of knowledge and genetic recombination is a singularly powerful one, even without recourse to the language of memes. The notion of hybridization also echoes earlier anthropological discourses (diffusionist and molecular) on the processes by which knowledge traits are distributed, which are now criticized as reifying culture as so many strings of traits or ‘things’, rather than as a dynamic web of relationships. But, whatever problems of conceptualization the notion of hybridization involves (see also Wilk 1996), this chapter demonstrates that, when local (indigenous) and outside knowledge meet, the process may generate workable solutions to sustainability problems. In the case discussed, traditional knowledge of the advantages of planting nitrogen-fixing plants with upland rice has been extended to Paraserianthes. However, it is important to note that the innovation and its apparently successful outcome were achieved only after initial resistance, and then after a period during which the local population could consider the advantages and disadvantages of the introduction and make the crucial decisions for themselves. At a general level, the data illustrate how knowledge hybridization can be interpreted as a synthesis of pre-existing, locally understood general principles and emergent and acquired knowledge of

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the specific attributes of an introduced species, rather than mechanically as a modular addition. The case lends support to the view (e.g. Walker et al. 1999) that much agro-ecological knowledge consists of generic understandings of processes (Ellen 1998a) that cut across local cultural differences, rather than being inescapably embedded in local cultural specificities. Whether such knowledge constitutes ‘science’ or not in the narrow sense of the methodological purists and professional gatekeepers (see, for example, Wolpert 1992; Ellen and Harris 2000: esp. 25–28; see also Sillitoe 1998; Cleveland 2000: 371–72) is really beside the point; it is vital knowledge that neither scientists, those directly involved in advising on the conditions for effective integrated development, nor local people themselves can afford to ignore.

Acknowledgements The data on which this chapter draws were assembled during fieldwork conducted by Iskandar and funded by the ESCDI (Environmental Studies Centre for Development in Indonesia) project, administered by Dalhousie University, Canada, for the Indonesian government (see also Iskandar and Ellen 2000, and Iskandar 1998). An earlier version of the present chapter was presented to the British Association for the Advancement of Science at its meeting in Sheffield, UK, in September 1999. We would like to thank the Head of the Department of Biology, the Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and the Rector of Padjadjaran University, Bandung, for leave of absence that enabled Iskandar to undertake fieldwork and pursue postgraduate studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury (UKC). Ellen would like to acknowledge the support of ESRC grant R000 236082 for work on ‘Deforestation and forest knowledge in south central Seram, eastern Indonesia’, which made possible a short field visit to the Baduy, and the EC DG-8-funded programme entitled ‘Les Peuples des forêts tropicales’, of which UKC was a consortium partner. Ian Wallace, Librarian and Head of the Information Center of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) at Los Baños, Philippines, kindly provided assistance for Ellen for a literature search conducted in September 1998.

Notes 1. It might also be noted that the same rules and institutions that have been challenged by the introduction of P. falcataria have also prevented the introduction of HYV rice and conserved a large number of local landraces (Iskandar and Ellen 1999). On the distribution and destruction of rainforest in contemporary Java, see Collins 1990; Whitten, Soeriaatmadja and Ariff 1997: 328.

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Innovation, ‘Hybrid’ Knowledge and Conservation of Relict Rainforest | 141 2. A similar argument with respect to the successful introduction of Hevea rubber in Malaysia is advanced by Dove (2000). 3. However, economic necessity and perception of new opportunities have led to the planting of some coffee and clove by some Outer Baduy, as well as some Switenia and Maesopsis. Piper rindu (rinu) is substituted for P. nigrum by Inner and Outer Baduy alike, who sell it for cash.

References Cleveland, D.A. 2000. ‘Globalization and Anthropology: Expanding the Options’, Human Organization 59(3): 370–74. Collins, M. (ed.). 1990. The Last Rainforests. London: Mitchell Beazley. Dove, M. 2000. ‘The Life-cycle of Indigenous Knowledge, and the Case of Natural Rubber Production’, in R. Ellen, P. Parkes, and A. Bicker (eds), Indigenous Environmental Knowledge and its Transformations: Critical Anthropological Perspectives. Studies in Environmental Anthropology 5. Amsterdam: Harwood, pp. 213–51. Ellen, R.F. 1978. Nuaulu Settlement and Ecology: the Environmental Relations of an Eastern Indonesian Community. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde, 83. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ___. 1998a. ‘Indigenous Knowledge of the Rainforest: Perception, Extraction and Conservation’, in B. Maloney (ed.). Destruction and Development of the Tropical Rainforest. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 87–99. ___. 1998b. ‘The Inedible and the Uneatable: Totemic and Other Restrictions on the Use of Biological Species among the Nuaulu’, in S. Pannell and F. von BendaBeckman (eds), Old World Places, New World Problems: Exploring Issues of Resource Management in Eastern Indonesia. Canberra: Australian National University, pp. 243–66. ___. 2000. ‘Nuaulu Ethnobotanical Database’. Access through ESRC Final Report on Project R000 236082, ‘Deforestation and Forest Knowledge in South Central Seram, Eastern Indonesia’. Located at http://www.essex.ac.uk/qualidata Ellen, R.F. and H. Harris. 2000. ‘Introduction’, in R. Ellen, P. Parkes and A. Bicker (eds), Indigenous Environmental Knowledge and its Transformations: Critical Anthropological Perspectives. Studies in Environmental Anthropology 5. Amsterdam: Harwood, pp. 1–33. Iskandar, J. 1998. ‘Swidden Cultivation as a Form of Cultural Identity: the Baduy Case’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis. University of Kent at Canterbury. Iskandar, J. and R.F. Ellen. 1999. ‘In situ Conservation of Rice Landraces among the Baduy of West Java’, Journal of Ethnobiology 19(1): 97–125. Iskandar, J. and R.F. Ellen. 2000. ‘The Contribution of Paraserianthes (Albizia) falcataria to Sustainable Swidden Management among the Baduy of West Java’, Human Ecology 28(1): 1–17. Posey, D.A. 2000. ‘Ethnobiology and Ethnoecology in the Context of National Laws and International Agreements Affecting Indigenous and Local Knowledge, Traditional Resources and Intellectual Property Rights’, in R. Ellen, P. Parkes and A. Bicker (eds), Indigenous Environmental Knowledge and its Transformations: Critical Anthropological Perspectives. Studies in Environmental Anthropology 5. Amsterdam: Harwood, pp. 35–54. Scott, J.C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak, Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.

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142 | Johan Iskandar and Roy Ellen Sillitoe, P. 1998. ‘The Development of Indigenous Knowledge: a New Applied Anthropology’, Current Anthropology 39: 223–52. Walker, D.H., P.J. Thorne, F.L. Sinclair, B. Thapa, C.D. Wood and D.B. Subba. 1999. ‘A Systems Approach to Comparing Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge: Consistency and Discriminatory Power of Indigenous and Laboratory Assessment of the Nutritive Value of Treee Fodder’, Agricultural Systems 62: 87–103. Whitten, A., R.E. Soeriaatmadja and S.A. Afiff. 1997. The Ecology of Java and Bali. The Ecology of Indonesia Series 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilk, R.R. 1996. ‘Sustainable Development: Practical, Ethical, and Social Issues in Technology Transfer’, in K. Ishizuka and S. Hasajima (eds), Traditional Technology for Environmental, Conservation and Sustainable Development in the Asia-Pacific Region. Tsukuba, Japan: University of Tsukuba, pp. 206–18. Wolpert, L. 1992. The Unnatural Nature of Science. London: Faber.

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CHAPTER 6

A Comparison of Traditional and Innovative Subsistence Strategies on Buano during Periods of Socioenvironmental Stress, 1980–2003 Hermien L. Soselisa

Introduction Agricultural and other forms of subsistence modernization typically seek to raise productivity through strategies that assume certain conditions of ecological and social stability. Where such stability is long-term and where the process of modernization leads to increased yields, dependable income and a perceived rise in the standard of living, there is a often assumed to be a corresponding narrowing of the underlying traditional knowledge base. Knowledge that in the past ensured some kind of buffer against uncertainty is increasingly perceived as redundant in the context of modernization. However, knowledge loss of this kind can create major problems where ecological and social disruption follows a long period of stability and of measurable improvement. In contrast, where traditional knowledge is still extant or recoverable, such strategies may become an important part of how people respond to periodic shortfall in production and to natural disasters, until a degree of normality has been re-established. Alternatively, in such situations, people may actively seek new coping mechanisms, which build upon traditional knowledge and blend it with introduced knowledge in innovative ways. This chapter examines these ideas in relation to the inhabitants of Buano, a small island in the eastern Indonesian province of Maluku, which in recent years has been subject to environmental stress, population displacement and subsistence dislocation following social and political unrest in the region. Local people have responded to these

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circumstances by using a combination of traditional and new strategies. The chapter also examines the environmental consequences of rapid social and political change that these events entailed and of the local resource management strategies that have been employed. The data that I discuss arise from fieldwork conducted in the area on various occasions between 1998 and 2003.

Background Buano is a relatively small island, located off the western end of Seram (Figure 6.1), the largest island in the eastern Indonesian province of Maluku (the Moluccas).1 Physiographically, the island is hilly with rapid surface drainage and a very low groundwater supply. The population is distributed between two main indigenous settlements of people historically speaking an Ambon-Timor language of west Seram (Collins 1984: 94–95). Both these settlements are located on the southeastern coast of the island, while some groups of immigrant Butonese (originating from southeast Sulawesi) occupy hamlets scattered along the coast from the northwest to the southern part of the island. The two main settlements, Buano Utara and Buano Selatan, are situated very close to each other (Figure 6.2), and it is the relationship between these that I shall focus upon in this chapter. Buano Utara is the larger of the two settlements, with a population of 4,400 people in 1997. The people of this village are Muslim, have a strong sense of identity based on the retention of the local language, and appear to have retained customary practices more strongly than the people in the neighbouring settlement. Although the two settlements are of roughly equal territorial extent, Buano Selatan had a population of only some 440 people in 1997, and its people have a strong association with the Ambonese Malay language and Christianity. This pattern of retention of local languages and cultural practices in Muslim settlements and their erosion and replacement by generic Ambonese norms in Christian settlements is a widespread feature of historic patterns of change in the central Moluccas (Collins 1980, 1983). Before the seventeenth century, what are now the two indigenous settlements of Buano formed a single community. The earliest known settlement was inland, in an elevated location, and later moved to the coast. It is likely that Islam was introduced during the sixteenth century, as the population became connected to the sultanates of north Maluku, such as Ternate. The settlement divided following the introduction of Christianity by the Dutch during the mid-seventeenth century, as reported in Dutch East India Company (VOC) documents.2 Although religious affiliation led to differences in local customs, economic relations and patterns of resource extraction and management over time, the underlying plant

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Figure 6.1. Maluku and adjacent parts of Indonesia

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Figure 6.2. Buano, part of western Seram and Ambon Island

ecology and subsistence base of the two settlements is similar. Both rely on timber-producing forest, short-term food crops, long-term cash crops, sago (Metroxylon sagu) swamp, and patches of a savannah grassland in which Imperata cylindrica is dominant, dispersed with Melaleuca cajuputi trees. The staple diet of both villages is the same: sago, cassava, banana, taro and yam; and both populations engage in agriculture, forestry, carpentry, fishing and some work outside the island. Garden activity remains the main source of food for household consumption and is the principal source of income. Indeed, although the last fifty years have seen changes in the cropping patterns of Buano gardens, and the introduction of some new techniques, it would be difficult to describe any of this as ‘agricultural modernization’ in the sense discussed by Ellen in his Introduction to this book, or by Soemarwoto for the Kasepuhan (Chapter 3) or by Platten for Minahasa (Chapter 7). Buano is relatively distant from administrative and economic centres, and small island communities generally raise important questions con-

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cerning isolation, community capacity to reproduce effectively, both socially and economically, and also with respect to the movement of people, ideas and products, and of exchange and interdependence (see, for example, Soselisa 1995; Ellen 2003: 50–53). These characteristics underlie the importance of developing self-reliant local coping strategies for managing resources when faced with the breakdown of relations with the outside world, and for maintaining wide social networks of exchange. For example, local resource extraction in large parts of central Maluku is customarily regulated through sasi, a system that provides protection from the over-harvesting of certain plants and animals at certain periods (see, for example, Kissya 1993; von Benda-Beckmann, von Benda-Beckmann and Brouwer 1995). Sasi in Buano is applied to coconut groves and to the collection of trepang, sea cucumber. The inhabitants of Buano are also part of a traditional sago exchange system, in this case maano, in which labour is offered in exchange for a share of the harvest (see, for example, Bartels 1977; Huliselan and Norimarna 1982; Ellen 2003: 295, note 2). Maano may operate either between villages or within a village. Despite its reliance on traditional local spheres of economic production and exchange, Buano has long been involved in regional and long-distance trade (see, for example, Ellen 1987, 2003). Contact with peoples from outside the Moluccas can be traced back to the sixteenth century, when the Hoamoal peninsula of west Seram (located to the east and in sight of Buano) was a major clove-producing and trading centre (see, for example, Keuning 1973; Leirissa 1973). In the process of Dutch East India Company attempts to control the area effectively, clove groves on Hoamoal were extirpated, and production was concentrated in the islands of Ambon-Lease (Ellen 1979: 66). At that time, Buano was in the Hoamoal sphere of clove production. Nowadays, Buano is less significant in terms of Moluccan clove production. Local people attribute the contemporary lack of clove groves on the island to soil and weather conditions, which they say are too dry and hot for planting cloves. However, changes in local production and exchange patterns on Buano are as likely caused by a combination of political, economic and social forces as by environmental problems alone. For most of the twentieth century, Buano gardens have produced, for example, banana and cassava, for local and inter-island trade, as well as for home consumption. Until deforestation made this difficult, the local population also had a reputation as boatbuilders and timber workers, supplying the central Moluccas more generally. Many Buano labourers worked outside the island, as far away as Halmahera and Papua. As boat operators, from the early years of the twentieth century, Buano men sailed to many places in the Moluccas and beyond, including Nusa Tenggara and Java. Besides timber, cargoes included copra and various foodstuffs. Some of the commodities in which they traded were gathered from places other than Buano.

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Pig Predation and Gardening The interdependence and complementarities displayed in the division of ecological labour between the two main settlements of Buano is well illustrated in relation to the cultural and ecological role of pigs. When it comes to matters of garden maintenance, residents of both settlements agree that wild pigs are the most destructive predator of their short-term food crops. Control of wild pig populations is a real practical problem in the central Moluccas and the religious division between Muslims and Christians (and, in some cases, animists) means that pigs are not only a source of tension, but also a basis for cooperation. The Nuaulu in south Seram are an example of a people who are non-Muslim (Ellen 1996: 622) living in an area that is demographically predominantly Muslim. This gives the Nuaulu little competition for hunting and obtaining game. In Buano wild pigs are a serious environmental problem that is faced equally by those for whom touching or eating of pigs is forbidden on religious grounds (Muslims), and by those who have a taste for the meat of the animal (Christians). This has resulted in different control strategies used by Muslim and Christian cultivators, but also in an opportunity for effective practical cooperation between villages of different faiths. The problems associated with wild pigs on Buano were overcome through complementary arrangements between the two villages. Thus, if a pig was trapped in a garden belonging to a Muslim from Buano Utara, because it was forbidden for him to touch the pig, the owner would call a Christian in Buano Selatan to take the pig from the trap. The Christian would willingly help, of course, as he would reduce the costs of hunting and obtain valued meat.3 Wild pig have increased in numbers on Buano along with the increase in the human population, and with the opening up of more gardens over the last ten to fifteen years. The threat of wild pig damage has led to much thought and time being given to how to build good fences and set traps (noose traps, stake traps and spear traps) or use other strategies to control the animals. Some Buano Selatan farmers choose to plant particular crops that according to them are not preferred by wild pigs, such as banana. Fencing for the Christian banana gardens is not, therefore, considered necessary. As was noted above, bananas have been an important marketable product for Christians, who sell them to the more populous neighbouring Muslim village. By setting traps close to and inside gardens, the inhabitants of Buano Selatan simultaneously control pig predation and obtain meat (see Linares 1976; Dwyer 1990). In contrast to Buano Selatan, cultivators in Buano Utara face more difficulties in dealing with wild pigs, derived from religious constraints (taboos on eating or handling the animal). They must build strong fences, more durable than those that the neighbouring Christians need to build, which leads to higher fencing costs. The high cost of fencing, in turn, encourages

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them to use land more intensively, with shorter fallow periods and more permanent gardens. But, although the Muslims build stronger and more expensive fences than their Christian neighbours, Buano Utara people claim that more pigs invade their gardens than in Buano Selatan precisely because the neighbouring villagers are pig eaters. Even for a banana garden and for gardens located close to the beach and the settlement, they need to construct strong fences since wild pigs prefer all of their short-term starchy food crops. To avoid the cost of making fences, or at least to lessen the threat of pig predation, the residents of Buano Utara have chosen other strategies, including placing their gardens close to those of Buano Selatan in the hope that since there are fewer pigs in the Christian garden, their own gardens will not need expensive and strong fences (other than the bamboo structures that most Buano Selatan people have). Because of the high cost of fencing, some younger nuclear families have decided not to open new gardens at all in recent years, but to rely instead only on their parents’ gardens. Besides not wanting to make fences, they are also tempted to engage in other occupations beyond agriculture, either on or outside the island. Far more Buano Utara men are engaged in timber working and boatbuilding for cash than men from Buano Selatan. They also have larger net groups for catching fish for the market, and engage in Melaleuca oil extraction. As a result of their involvement in non-agricultural work, especially in timber working and boatbuilding, it is likely that their impact on forest through over-extraction of timber is relatively greater. This Buano example shows how ecological patterns (pig demography and predation on gardens, as well as human predation on pigs) are the outcome of cultural practices (the Muslim taboo on pork and the Christian preference for it). The difference in ideology, based largely on different religious affiliations, has impacted on the agricultural system. The contrasting strategies employed by Buano Selatan and Buano Utara cultivators confronted with the wild pig problem described well illustrates how the livelihoods and ecologies of the two settlements have diverged historically, even though they share essentially the same environment. It shows how different cosmological schemes are associated with different strategies, and how those strategies work out in practical relations with the environment and the neighbouring community to produce different forms of livelihood that are also closely articulated with each other and mutually reinforcing.

Ecological Uncertainty, 1980–2003 As in other parts of the Moluccas, Buano experiences two monsoonal seasons a year: the west season from November to April, when the west wind blows with interludes of northerly winds in the daytime; and the east sea-

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son from May to October, when the east wind blows, with interludes of southerly winds in the daytime. During the west monsoon there is much rain in Buano, while the east monsoon is dry. Between these two seasons there is a transitional period, which occurs between April and May and between September and October. The strongest winds come from the southwest and northwest. Some plants grow best in particular seasons. For example, maize is cultivated in the wet west season and is harvested in the early east season, or cultivated in September and harvested before the end of December. Gardening activity – the scheduling of slashing, burning and planting – depends, therefore, upon the season, and crops can fail because of unpredicted weather patterns. For as long as local people can remember, Buano has experienced drought years, the most recent of which they recall as being 1972, 1982, 1987, 1992, 1997/98, and 2002/3. Some of these drought years correspond to what has been experienced globally as the El Niño southern oscillation.4 These droughts – El Niño-induced or not – have caused Buano wells to almost dry up and have been linked to epidemics of waterborne disease, one of the main symptoms of which has been chronic diarrhoea. Garden plants and trees have also died due to insufficient water, and the poor cassava harvest after the long drought in 1997, in particular, disturbed the schedule of gardening activities and the food supply. It affected planning for future production and sent confusing messages about the timing of seasonal changes. Thus, in 1998 many farmers were late in clearing bush for gardens, since they thought that the dry season would continue. They did not anticipate that the subsequent rain would come so soon. Gardens had to be prepared in a hurry and the timing and conditions were not good for burning. Consequently, they were also late with their harvests. This disruption to seasonal plans was immediately followed by Christmas and New Year celebrations in Buano Selatan, and the fasting month of Ramadan and Idul Fitri in Buano Utara. Planting at an unsuitable time can also result in harvest failure or shortfalls in yields. For example, the best time to plant rice is regarded as being around November/December. Rice planted in January/February will, it is said, be ‘eaten by laor’. A long dry season, resulting in a delay in planting maize will also lead to infestation by laor. The laor, in this context, is a plant pest, a tiny stem borer (mai-mai) that eats into the inflorescence or cob.5 But laor is also a kind of sea-worm (Eunice viridis) harvested annually as food in many Moluccan villages. The laor season in the central Moluccas is around March. People notice that the times that the laor emerge onto the beaches and when they can be harvested in large numbers, usually correspond to periods of arboricultural and agricultural failure. For example, kanari (Canarium vulgare and Canarium indicum) nuts gathered at this time are usually inedible, either rotten or with no interior flesh. To explain this failure, people usually say laor makang, ‘[they have

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been] eaten by laor’. This common local explanation is based on people’s experience of the close temporal association of the two events, one in the sea and the other on the land, which suggests a connection. The scientific explanation for the appearance of these polychaete sea-worms is that this is an annual period of mass spawning stimulated by the lunar cycle, which occurs around March on the edge of certain coral reefs (see, for example, Monk, de Fretes and Reksodiharjo-Lilley 1997: 583). The effects of changes in seasonal patterns on subsistence agricultural activity are evident to most Buano farmers. They observe that the seasons and the accompanying weather patterns have become irregular and are no longer predictable, and that this uncertainty has become especially apparent in recent years. The experience of poor harvests drives people to look for alternatives to meet their subsistence needs, which include increased reliance on traditional networks of food supply and through crop substitution.

Responses to Dry Periods The people of Buano have several strategies they employ to counter agricultural failure during dry periods. The sago palm (M. sagu), upon which the people of Buano have historically relied for starch, is a robust resource, but despite a tolerance of dry land in this typically swampland palm, there is evidence that water shortage decreases the amount and quality of the starch, and, since copious amounts of water are essential to its processing, the drying up of streams may prevent its harvesting.6 Moreover, although sago has been the main form of starch consumed (and preferred) by the people of Buano for as long as they can remember, there are few sago swamp areas on the island today, and some of these are located far away from the settlements, and are anyway insufficient to supply the requirements of all the inhabitants, especially with population growth. So, when local starch supplies decreased following the poor harvests produced by the dry periods of the 1980s and 1990s, Buano people looked for starch supplies from outside the island to feed their increased population. The main external source of sago flour has traditionally been Seram, especially the Hoamoal peninsula. Since Dutch times, people have gone to the Hoamoal peninsula of Seram to extract sago flour from palm stands, especially to the domains of Assaude, Tatinang and Waisala, which are located along the coast facing Buano. However, when the population of Assaude and surrounding areas increased, from the 1950s onwards, sago availability declined because of the increased number of local consumers. However, Buano is still dependent for its supply of sago flour on this area today. Usually, sago flour is transported by canoe for sale in Buano, or people go to Seram

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to purchase it. One old man commented to me in 1998 that if there had been no sago in Seram, the people of Buano might have died of hunger when the long dry spell of 1997 caused severe crop failure on the island. As supplies of sago became increasingly unreliable during the 1970s the local population turned to cassava (Manihot esculenta). Many cassava gardens were opened during the period from the late 1970s to the 1980s, when this crop started to predominate in Buano gardens and the starchy tuber became a regular part of local diets. This increased importance of cassava was influenced not only by the declining availability of sago locally, but also by the declining amount of sago on the regional market. The spatial extent of sago swamps and groves in certain parts of western Seram, such as around Assaude, and from where Buano traditionally obtained sago, was also in decline. In 1998, during the national economic crisis, the price of sago flour rose steeply in the subdistrict administrative centre of Piru, reflecting an inability of supply to match demand. Despite the cultural significance of sago and its tolerance of pests such as wild pigs, cassava offered various advantages, especially during the extended dry periods. Although sago palms might require relatively little management compared with garden crops and occupied swampland and wet coastal areas not favoured by other food plants, cassava is even more flexible and able to tolerate a wider range of tropical soil conditions, including low fertility soils, while still producing a satisfactory yield (see, for example, Cock 1984; Balagopalan et al. 1988). This makes the tuber suitable for areas that have experienced soil degradation and it is a drought-tolerant crop suited to the periodic dry conditions experienced in Buano in recent years. Besides, it does not need much space to grow, being eminently suited to the size of short-term food gardens, usually around 0.25–0.5 ha, typical of the central Moluccas more generally. These reasons make cassava a dependable and secure food crop, as demonstrated during the national economic and environmental crises between 1997 and the present. Cassava also offers advantages in terms of its flexible labour requirements. The planting and harvesting of cassava can be done by females as well as males. In contrast, extracting sago in the Moluccas is mostly men’s work, although in some places women are involved in the last stage of kneading, washing and filtering the pith to extract the sago flour. Therefore, as a staple, cassava is eminently suitable for households without male members and reduces dependency on male kin. This is important to a community such as Buano, where many males are very often absent working outside the island.7 Local farmers consider the technique for planting cassava to be very easy since it merely involves planting cuttings taken from the woody part of the stem. The growth period of cassava is also much shorter than that of sago, making cassava harvests more frequent. The products have a dual purpose, being a source of

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income as well as for household consumption. Buano Selatan farmers mostly sell their harvests to Buano Utara, which has the larger population. The cultural shift from sago to cassava can be seen by the use of one cassava product: sagu kasbi. As a main dish, the tuber is baked like sago, hence sagu kasbi (lit. ‘sago from cassava’, or baked cassava biscuits). In this biscuit form, it can be kept for several months as long as it is properly sun dried, replicating the properties of dried sago biscuits (sagu lempeng). Baked cassava biscuits are, therefore, a direct substitute for baked sago biscuits, both in form and function, and facilitate the shift from sago to cassava in certain areas. Other tubers (Colocasia esculenta, Ipomaea batatas, Dioscorea spp.) are not processed in this way, although, in the raw form, can be stored or kept longer than cassava. This may be one of the factors why these older local starches are still important in Moluccan diets. Not only have Buano farmers responded to dry periods by moving from sago to cassava, they have also diversified in terms of the varieties of cassava which they grow. Both sweet (kasbi lombo, ‘soft cassava’, or kasbi rabus, ‘boiled cassava’) and bitter cassava (kasbi gepe, ‘squeezed cassava’, or kasbi paru, ‘grated cassava’) landraces are cultivated in Buano gardens. On the basis of physical appearance and the length of planting, Buano people recognize at least two types within each category. In Buano, bitter cassava is also called kasbi obi, on account of its attributed introduction from Obi, an island some ten nautical miles to the north. Bitter cassava can only be processed into sagu kasbi after detoxification by squeezing or pressing. This food-processing technology is a significant strategy for coping with dry periods and providing a market surplus. In the past, bitter cassava was not commonly cultivated in the central Moluccas.8 Landraces of bitter cassava also have other advantages over the more common sweet cassava types: the mature tubers are larger and the harvesting period is longer. Sweet cassava tuber flesh generally declines if the harvest is delayed. As dry periods and ecological uncertainty increase we may witness a shift in the balance of reliance on sweet and bitter cassava.

Impact of Communal Unrest on Buano, 1999–2003 In January 1999, unrest and violence broke out in Ambon, the provincial capital of Maluku province, and soon spread throughout the region. Between 1999 and 2003 thousands of people lost their lives, houses, villages and other property, including public infrastructure. The conflict was ostensibly between the Muslim and Christian communities, though the violence was in particular instances the result of a complex network of political, social, religious, economic and cultural factors at the local and national – and even international – levels, as well as at the regional level (see, for example, Brouwer and Soselisa 1999; Chauvel 1999; Lokollo 1999;

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Pattiselanno 1999; Tomagola 1999, 2000; Aditjondro 2000; Bartels 2000; ICG 2002). The conflict reinforced the sectarian boundaries between Moluccan communities along religious lines, either Muslim or Christian, even though this oversimplified the pattern of loyalties and identities in particular places. Religious identity forced people to live in separate localities and to maintain strict physical boundaries that could not be traversed as easily as in the past. The institutions of law and order and customary norms and patterns of association were severely disrupted, and entire villages and their resources destroyed. The result was – in the space of just a few years – locational rearrangement and dislocation of the social and physical landscape on a scale not seen for at least 300 to 400 years. The people of Buano were caught up directly in the conflict when a group from Buano Utara attacked the Christian village of Alang Asaude on mainland Seram on 3 December 1999 (Media Indonesia, 5 December 1999). Then, early on the Sunday morning of 16 January 2000, apparently motivated only by religious hostility, villagers from Buano Utara attacked Buano Selatan, destroying houses and burning the church (Suara Maluku, 18 January 2000). The attack caused the death of several Buano Utara people and destroyed most of the Buano Selatan settlement, except the Kampung Baru area, an extension to the village, built more recently to accommodate a growing population. The people of Buano Selatan retreated to, and defended, Kampung Baru, while others, especially women and children, hid in the gardens and the forest. The attack was brought to a halt when an army detachment arrived from Seram. After the attack, the people of Buano Selatan stayed in Kampung Baru with a detachment of army personnel guarding the settlement. The conflict between these two neighbouring villages caused the breakdown of relationships between Buano Utara and Buano Selatan, and the prolonged conflict impacted on inter-village relationships and local strategies for subsistence management and resource use, including production and exchange networks. These two villages, which shared the same cultural origins, were now voluntarily separated on the basis of religious affiliation, and had to rapidly improvise new independent resource management practices where previously there existed complementary subsistence activities. Until January 2000 the two villages, despite sharing a similar environment, had developed different, but interdependent, livelihoods, complementary ways of utilizing and extracting environmental resources. Problems with wild pigs for the gardens and the population pressure resulted in strategic choices that show interdependent and exchange systems between them. The Buano Selatan garden harvests, for example, were in demand in the neighbouring village, while schools of fish caught using the Buano Utara large-net techniques were marketed to Buano Selatan people.

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The breakdown of relationships between these two neighbouring villages led to the collapse of their integrated resource management practices. For example, wild pig invasions of Muslim gardens increased, and extended to gardens close by to the villages When an animal was caught in a trap, there was no choice other than to pull it from the garden and throw it as far away as possible. Supplies of surplus pig meat for Buano Selatan residents were no longer possible. One Buano Utara informant said that the economic life there became harder after the breakdown of relationships between the two villages. Wild pigs roamed about and rooted up gardens, resulting in harvests so poor that there was insufficient food being produced to feed the population. Moreover, villagers could not buy produce from neighbouring Christian gardens as they had done previously and some had to buy rice from outside. Neither did Buano Utara residents receive any aid from government or other nongovernment organizations, because they were seen by the local government as the perpetrators and not the victims of the attack that led to communal dislocation. In contrast, the Buano Selatan residents, who were recognized as the victims of an attack, received rice through government aid. Because of the attack on their village, they were forced to move from their original village site. They had to build new houses and leave their gardens behind, which were mostly close to the previous main settlement and close to the border with Buano Utara. Consequently, these gardens were abandoned and overrun by wild pigs, and potential income from them was lost. They also lost their major market source, especially in the neighbouring village. They had to open new gardens close to their new settlement, mostly smaller than before, to provide for everyday household consumption. However, some were producing a surplus for the market, which brought in cash in order to purchase primary foodstuffs and goods they could not produce themselves. Since they could not sell their products to Buano Utara during the conflict, Buano Selatan farmers had to develop other networks, such as those connecting themselves with Pohon Batu, a place in mainland Seram where there is a pearl factory that employs some Buano Selatan people, and where most of the workers are Christian. During the high-tension period of the conflict, the inhabitants of Buano Selatan were connected to the outside world through a speedboat service owned by the factory that carried them to Pohon Batu, and from where they were able to travel to mainland Seram to sell produce and buy necessities. Two or three times they were visited by Muslim retailers from Pulau Osi (a small island near mainland Seram facing Buano) brave enough to do trade with Christians from Buano Selatan. The Pulau Osi people brought kerosene, sugar, rice, soap and also clothing to the village in exchange for bananas and cassava. Buano Selatan Christians, isolated from the Muslims on the island during the unrest, were left with limited choices in terms of routes

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out of the island or in terms of connections with the outside world they could use to augment their subsistence activities. Transportation was difficult: it was scarce, the boats had hitherto been owned by people from Buano Utara, and it was considered dangerous to use small boats (with no army or police protection) which had to pass close by Muslim areas. The conflict led to environmental neglect and new unmanaged patterns of vegetation growth. Sago palms, for example, flowered and fruited unharvested, when it had previously been usual to fell the palm before fruiting to ensure a maximum yield of usable pith. During the conflict, residents of Buano Selatan were unable to harvest sago groves located within some parts of their traditional territory (such as in Huaroa) as these were occupied by immigrant Butonese, who were Muslim. Some groves that had been guarded by Butonese friends nevertheless went to waste as the flour could not be extracted before fruiting. Because of the tense relations between members of the villages, people from Buano Utara could not even ask sago owners to allow them to extract the palms using the traditional maano arrangement. Thus, polarized religious allegiances overrode long-standing customary law. Another problem that emerged as a consequence of the conflict was that feral cattle as well as wild pigs began to predate upon garden crops. Before the conflict Buano Utara people raised many cows, none of which were penned and which were allowed to wander at will. During the conflict, some cattle owners were unable to control their livestock, and some of the animals remained and multiplied outside the settlement area, in the garden areas and in the forest causing much destruction of food crops. Indeed, some people commented that cattle were worse than pigs, as pigs at least did not eat immature maize, which for cattle is just like any other grass forage crop. As conflict between the Muslims and Christians of Buano began to subside yet another problem emerged. This was the 2002/3 drought. At about this time residents from the two villages were beginning to rebuild their relationships. Several Buano Utara people approached residents in Buano Selatan asking to buy garden produce as they had done previously. But by this time the drought had taken hold and few gardens were yielding surpluses that could be exchanged. The drought had led to late planting, and consequently poor harvests; banana stems lacked sufficient water to be turbid and remain erect, and so drooped or broke. The combined effects of drought and civil disturbance on food production in turn affected levels of pig predation, which, according to Buano Selatan inhabitants, fell. As some villagers put it, while the cows became wild, the wild pigs become tame. The ecological shift that the conditions had brought about – from a managed environment with high densities of root crops to an unmanaged environment with more forage grasses – favoured bovines over pigs. Indeed, the people of Buano Selatan even began to bring back

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to the settlement wild pigs caught in the forest, to be tamed and penned. In December 2003, there were six men raising wild pigs in the village, one of which had already produced four piglets. Prior to the conflict, Christian, Buano Selatan villagers did not raise domesticated pigs, out of respect for their Muslim neighbours and because the need for pig meat could be provided by hunting wild pig. The raising of wild pigs in the village may be seen as a short-term strategy to obtain protein, but at the same time reflects their disconnection with the sensibilities of their Muslim neighbours.

Short-term Coping Strategies Resulting from Communal Conflict Communal conflict in Buano resulted in population displacement, the inaccessibility of land and a breakdown of local exchange relations, including particularly a collapse in the symbiotic relations established between neighbouring Muslims and Christians. The combined impact of these problems forced people back on to short-term strategies that, despite long-term disadvantages, could at least secure them a livelihood for the immediate future. Some of these coping mechanisms were new, while others involved a reversion to, or modification of, pre-existing practices. The periodic shortfall in starch production because of the combined effects of the civil unrest and drought was overcome by government rice subsidies allocated to victims of the unrest. They had no choice in this respect as there was little indigenous starch (sago, banana, taro, sweet potato, yam or even cassava) to be had. Rice (brought from outside) became increasingly available in village kiosks, though most inhabitants saw this as a short-term strategy for the duration of the unrest. As the conflict cooled down and the rains started to reappear, so people were ready to cultivate their cassava, banana and other tubers, and some even extracted sago. Although Buano people also cultivate rice, their local rice is not one of the main starches of the island, and involves the planting of dry ‘upland’ landraces rather than the high-yield varieties that have constituted the bulk of recent food aid. Cassava and banana, on the other hand, are both seen as appropriate for household consumption and as a source of income. In order to obtain cash to purchase other daily necessities or to pay school expenses during the conflict, people from Buano Selatan made use of alternative exchange networks within the region that previously had only been employed at a lower intensity. They welcomed Butonese retailers from Pulau Osi who had previously visited Buano. Others went to Piru, the subdistrict town, to sell foodstuff, such as fish, travelling in groups and paying army personnel to guard them on the trip.

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Connections outside the island for daily needs were also provided by the activation of more distant kinship networks, well illustrating the point made by Bloch (1973) as to how wider kinship networks, often dormant for long periods when people can rely on normal short-term relations of production and exchange, can be adaptively crucial in long-term acute crises. The presence of Buano Selatan labourers in the pearl factory at Pohon Batu also helped to connect village people with markets outside the island. The communal unrest in Buano had other more distant knock-on effects. Some local people fled Buano altogether, going to other places, such as Obi to the north, and then, when Obi also experienced unrest, others fled to north Sulawesi. In north Sulawesi (Minahasa) men were able to use their expertise as house builders or could engage in other occupations. Indeed, one major consequence of the unrest was a housing shortage, due to destruction and population displacement. In response to this, the government instituted a house-building programme for those displaced. A few Buano Selatan men took this opportunity to move to Piru to work as house builders in order to obtain cash. As in other cases, the incentive for this kind of short-term strategy is to obtain cash to cover heavy educational expenses, such as those connected with children who are at school in the provincial capital of Ambon. The seeking out of new market opportunities was a widespread response to the immediate shortages created by the unrest. While some of these, such as wage labouring, could yield income within a matter of weeks or months, other strategies involved a more considered response to the long-term market situation, and investment in new knowledge and infrastructure. One such strategy chosen by Buano Selatan inhabitants was the extraction of oil (minyak kayu putih) from M. cajuputi trees for marketing outside the island.9 Although the process of Melaleuca oil distillation had been introduced to Buano around 1990 and both village domains had Melaleuca trees within their territories, only the people of Buano Utara had adopted this technique, and they engaged in seasonal Melaleuca oil production by 1994 (Figure 6.3). Buano Selatan people had previously shown no interest. The communal conflict altered the situation dramatically. By 2003 some Buano Selatan families were already engaged in Melaleuca extraction,10 with eight kettles (stills) for oil distillation being operated by seven groups, some consisting of household members, others formed by persons linked through other kin ties or through friendship. There were a number of reasons for adopting a strategy that in the past had been rejected. The first was the need for cash. The local price of Melaleuca oil in 2003 ranged from Rp 60,000 to Rp 90,000 a kilogram, which, when compared with the sale prices of other commodities that were potentially available to them, was high. The second was the 2002/3 drought.

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Figure 6.3. Still used in the processing of Melaleuca oil, Buano Utara

Melaleuca could be harvested during the dry period, the trees were not obviously damaged by short-term lack of rainfall, and the harvesting could be conducted during the period when residents were waiting for the rains to begin and open new gardens. Indeed, Melaleuca oil production can be undertaken twice a year without becoming unsustainable, and still provide sufficient time for gardening inputs. Thus, given the seasonal demands of other activities, it is a strategy that can be well combined with other commitments without too much competition. However, not all Buano Selatan inhabitants were able to extract oil from their own trees since not all clans or families had trees on their land, while the building of a still required capital.11 By 2003 active conflict was much reduced, and members of both villages began attempts to reconstruct their pre-existing patterns of mutually beneficial economic cooperation. Indeed, some of the Buano Selatan Melaleuca stills were the result of joint investment between people from Buano Selatan and Buano Utara. Two Buano Utara people provided woks (metal pans) for oil processing and wages to pay leaf-pickers from four Buano Selatan groups. Oil production very much depends on leaf supply, and these were more plentiful on Buano Selatan trees because they had not previously been harvested for oil. The arrangement is that Buano Selatan producers pay back Buano Utara investment by supplying oil. Usually the agreement between owners of capital and the producers involves payment of half of the harvest; half the oil produced is paid for

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the investment, and half goes to the producers to allow them to obtain cash for their own seasonal work. Even though Melaleuca extraction may lead people to neglect their subsistence activities focused on food gardens, it is a strategy that can be justified given the situation, especially during dry periods when the garden activities are reduced. Moreover, economic cooperation that builds upon and encourages reconciliation between members of the two neighbouring villages in Buano is important in the long-term reconstruction of their integrated resource management practices.

Conclusion For the Moluccas, with its long history of population movement, involvement in the international spice trade from an early period, transformation under Dutch colonial influence, cultural integration into the colonial state through religious conversion and uneasy incorporation into the postindependence Indonesian state, the concept of ‘traditional’ when applied to society, culture, knowledge or practice is problematic. And, although an island such as Buano is relatively isolated from the main administrative and market centres, it is inextricably dependent on a wider sphere of economic exchange (including the cash economy) and networks of crosscutting social, cultural and religious allegiances. For these reasons, solutions to acute problems of survival posed by environmental perturbations and civil unrest are always going to consist of ‘hybridized knowledge’, a combination of the traditional and the new (see Iskandar and Ellen, this volume, Chapter 5). Rather than demonstrating how modern subsistence problems arising from socioecological stress can be solved by resorting to some aggregated body of traditional knowledge that has evolved over time to serendipitously provide for all eventualities, this chapter has highlighted the collapse of local practices and strategies as a result of socioenvironmental stress. For example, population dislocation and the breakdown of old environmental management practices led to a reversion to patterns of non-anthropogenic vegetation growth, with traditionally important local staples such as the Metroxylon sagu going unharvested. The unrest also caused the breakdown of local community relations that underpinned a ‘traditional’ integrated resource management strategy for securing local livelihoods. What I have tried to outline in this discussion is how local people have responded to the socio-environmental problems they faced by choosing different subsistence strategies. Population pressure and the money economy are the main factors that worsen the problems. In such problem situations, local people are generally aware that their existing traditional strategies cannot in themselves work to overcome the crisis, so they are

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compelled to look for alternative strategies, whether short-term or longterm. Buano people have experienced periods where problems impacted on their subsistence activities, either in the form of seasonal uncertainty or in the form of violent unrest. Dry periods occur regularly or irregularly, but they always occur, and by these repeat experiences local people have learned to integrate cassava, and particular landraces of cassava, into their local agricultural system because these crops are more tolerant of dry soil and weather than some of their other previous sources of starch. And they know that particular cultivars, planted at the wrong time, will fail because of pest infestation. Although cassava helps them during the dry periods, they have still maintained a broadly polycultural agricultural strategy with a number of alternative starchy crops, which in their experience provides more security economically and ecologically, and more resistance to pests and disease than a mono-crop system (see, for example, Soselisa 2002), as well as supplying a more varied diet. And even though, in particular, cassava has been replacing sago, local people still obtain sago using their traditional network of exchange. Finally, the social unrest between 1999 and 2003 caused the breakdown of existing integrated resource management practices between neighbours, practices that had developed over some hundreds of years, such as the management of wild pigs or the maano–sago exchange system. This situation of acute crisis required rapid decisions about appropriate shortterm food-getting strategies, which included activating alternative networks of exchange. In such situations, it is often the case that markets – where available – provide for adaptive strategies that can be both quick and flexible, in contrast to long-term subsistence change. The move to the harvesting of Melaleuca oil is a good example of this strategy working effectively. The initiative combines the availability of a local resource, the hybridization of existing and innovative technical and ecological knowledge and outside market demand. Moreover, in this case it has also provided an opportunity to re-establish economic cooperation between two neighbouring but estranged villages. This reconciliatory move may in turn demonstrate the importance of reconnection and reconstruction of relationships between the two communities more generally.

Notes 1. Between 1945 and 2000 the Indonesian province of Maluku (the Moluccas) comprised all island groups between Sulawesi in the west, Irian Jaya (Papua) in the east, and Timor and Nusa Tenggara Timur to the south. Following administrative dislocation in 1999/2000, two separate provinces were formed: Maluku Utara (the north Moluccas) and Maluku, which now comprised Seram and its surrounding islands, Buru, Aru, Kei, Tanimbar and the southwestern islands, with its capital in Ambon.

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162 | Hermien L. Soselisa 2. See VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) section of the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague: letter, dated 1 February 1669 (VOC 1271, fol.171r): Sergeant Adriaan van den Pavort aan Anthony Hurdt, Manipa 1 februari 1669. 3. The same problem with wild pigs was faced by Muslim villagers on the Leihitu peninsula of Ambon Island when Christians fled the area following communal unrest. A man from Manuala beach in Kaitetu village commented that every night many wild pigs visited the Muslim villages, and even attacked people. In his theological opinion, the allowing and prohibiting of pig consumption among different people is one of God’s creations for balancing the ecosystem: when people violate these rules, disaster follows (Kompas, 19 March 2002). 4. The El Niño southern oscillation was recorded in 1972/73, 1982/83, 1991/92 and 1997/98 (Greenpeace Niño Report 1998). In Indonesia, the 1982/83 El Niño caused drought with 340 deaths, while the 1991/92 drought caused reduction of annual income through crop loss and wage loss for Kalimantan forestry. The 1997 El Niño caused forest fires over an estimated 300,000 hectares in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi. The toxic smog from the fires spread over 2,000 miles of southeast Asia, affecting six countries and about 70 million people (Greenpeace Niño Report 1998). 5. Some farmers try to avoid ‘laor’ attacks on maize by cutting the cobs as soon as flowering has occurred. Another analogical link between ‘laor’ of the land and laor of the sea is the way these organisms work to harm human subjects. Thus, it is said that someone with even a small flesh wound should be careful when they enter the sea to harvest the worms, because the worms, like the maize pest, can enter into the wound by boring, causing further damage. 6. The inadequacy of sago harvests under environmental stress is also linked to the reproductive biology and growth habit of the palm. Metroxylon sagu grows in clusters consisting of stipes of various degrees of maturation, but any one cluster can only provide two mature harvestable stipes or trunks every three years (Louhenapessy 1998, after Flach 1983). During the dry periods, it is possible that sago shortage is exacerbated by underproduction of the palm. The insufficiency of fresh water for processing sago pith in a palm-growing site is also a problem, as this requires either transporting the palm log in a canoe to another place that has enough water, or carrying water to the palm-growing site itself. 7. However, people usually open more than one garden, in which they plant a variety of starchy tubers in addition to cassava: yams of different species, taro, sweet potato and other cultivars. As garden site clearing or opening is done by males, households with no adult male members are usually helped by male members from their kin groups. 8. In the central Moluccas, it is the Butonese who often prefer to cultivate bitter cassava for food, and also the people of the Kei islands to the southeast, where the biscuits so made are called embal. In bitter cassava, high levels of the cyanogenic glycosides are distributed throughout the tuber (Onwueme 1978: 109). 9. Buano people do not know whether they produced Melaleuca oil in the past. However, the essential oil produced from Melaleuca was reported as early as 1855 on Buru and west Seram (Ellen 1997: 179, from van der Crab 1862 and Schmid 1914). Van Fraassen (1997:404) states that the Dutch controller of West Seram in his report of 1935 mentions the earlier commercial production of Melaleuca oil, from trees grown in the villages of Hoamoal, Manipa and Buano. However, when the price dropped, people stopped production except for

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Comparison and Innovative Subsistence Strategies on Buano | 163 family use. Another report from a Dutch resident in 1915 (Jobse 1997: 387) states that the oil from West Seram was sent to Ambon and from there on to the European market. As an endemic plant, it seems likely that kayu putih oil was produced locally for medicinal purposes before the arrival of the Dutch at the beginning of the seventeenth century. 10. The traditional method of distilling kayu putih oil involves a hydro-diffusion process, where the oil is dissolved in boiling water and then separated off. A large wooden kettle (pot) with a wooden lid is used as a container to boil the leaves. The kettle sits in an iron wok, set over a wood fire to boil the water. The steam from the boiling leaves is transferred through an aluminium or tin pipe, contained within another cylinder (made from wood or an old drum) and filled with cool water to serve as a condenser. The distillate then drips into a jerry can where the lighter oil separates from the heavier water through gravity. 11. Melaleuca savannah is probably a result of repeated burning or deforestation on poor tropical soils (e.g. Paijmans 1976; Brinkman and Xuan 1991; Monk, de Fretes and Reksodiharjo-Lilley 1997). Therefore, the Melaleuca stands of Buano are likely the outcome of human clearing of original forest.

References Aditjondro, G.J. 2000. ‘Guns, Pamphlets and Handie-talkies: How the Military Exploited Local Ethno-religious Tensions in Maluku to Preserve their Political and Economic Privileges’. Paper presented to the Conference on Conflicts and Violence in Indonesia, Berlin, 3–5 July. Paper distributed through http:// www.geocities.com/ambon67/noframe/gja2110y2k1.htm Balagopalan, C., G. Padmaja, S.K. Nanda and S.N. Moorthy. 1988. Cassava in Food, Feed, and Industry. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press. Bartels, D. 1977. ‘Guarding the Invisible Mountain: Intervillage Alliances, Religious Syncretism and Ethnic Identity among Ambonese Christians and Moslems in the Moluccas’, Ph.D. thesis. Cornell University. ___. 2000. ‘Your God is No Longer Mine: Moslem-Christian Fratricide in the Central Moluccas (Indonesia) after a Half-millennium of Tolerant Co-existence and Ethnic Unity’ [1]. Paper distributed through http://www.geocities.com/ ambon67. Bloch, M. 1973. ‘The Long Term and the Short Term: the Economic and Political Significance of the Morality of Kinship’, in J. Goody (ed.), The Character of Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 75–87. Brinkman, W.J. and V.-T. Xuan. 1991. ‘Melaleuca Leucadendron, a Useful and Versatile Tree for Acid Sulphate Soils and Some Other Poor Environments’, International Tree Crops Journal 6: 261–74. Brouwer, A. and H. Soselisa. 1999. ‘Contested Order: Adat, Youth, Violence, and Reconciliation’. Paper presented at the 5th International Maluku Research Conference, Darwin, 14–16 July. Chauvel, R. 1999. ‘Ambon’s Second Tragedy: History, Ethnicity and Religionî’. Paper presented at the 5th International Maluku Research Conference, Darwin, 14–16 July. Cock, J.H. 1984. ‘The Agronomic Potential of Cassava for the Upland Areas of Tropical Asia’, in Cassava in Asia, its Potential and Research Development Needs, Proceedings of a Regional Workshop held in Bangkok, Thailand, 5–8 June 1984. Bangkok: Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT), pp. 203–212.

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164 | Hermien L. Soselisa Collins, J.T. 1980. Ambonese Malay and Creolization Theory. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. ___. 1983. The Historical Relationships of the Languages of Central Maluku, Indonesia. Pacific Linguistics D-47. Canberra, Australian National University. ___. 1984. ‘Linguistic Research in Maluku: a Report on Recent Fieldwork’, Oceanic Linguistics 21(1–2): 73–146. Dwyer, P.D. 1990. The Pigs that Ate the Garden: a Human Ecology from Papua New Guinea. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Ellen, R.F. 1979. ‘Sago Subsistence and the Trade in Spices: a Provisional Model of Ecological Succession and Imbalance in Moluccan History’, in P. Burnham and R.F. Ellen (eds), Social and Ecological Systems. ASA Monographs in Social Anthropology 18. London: Academic Press, pp. 43–74. ___. 1987. ‘Environmental Perturbation, Inter-island Trade, and the Relocation of Production along the Banda arc; or Why Central Places Remain Central’, in T. Suzuki and R. Ohtsuka (eds), Human Ecology of Health and Survival in Asia and the South Pacific. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, pp. 35–61. ___. 1996. ‘Individual Strategy and Cultural Regulation in Nuaulu hunting’, in R. Ellen and K. Fukui (eds), Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture and Domestication. Oxford, Washington, DC: Berg, pp. 597–635. ___ 1997. ‘The Human Consequences of Deforestation in the Moluccas’, in D.V. Joiris and D. de Laveleye (eds), Les Peuples des forêts tropicales: Systemes traditionnels et développement rural en Afrique Equatoriale, grande Amazonie et Asie du sud-est. Special Issue of Civilisations 44(1–2). Brussels: Institut de Sociologie de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles, pp. 176–93. ___. 2003. On the Edge of the Banda Zone: Past and Present in the Social Organization of a Moluccan Trading Network. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Flach, M. 1983. The Sago Palm. FAO Plant Production and Protection Paper 47. AGPC/MISC/80. Rome: FAO. Greenpeace Niño Report. 1998. ‘Troubled Waters: El Niño and Climate Change’. http://www.greenpeace.org/~climatÖs/ninoreport.html#Troubled_Waters Huliselan, M.J. and A.J.S. Norimarna. 1982. ‘Negeri Rumah Tiga Dulu, Kini, dan Kemudian (Satu Studi tentang Perobahan Sosial)’. Unpublished report. Ambon: Universitas Pattimura. ICG (International Crisis Group). 2002. Indonesia: the Search for Peace in Maluku. Asia Report No. 31, 8 February. Jakarta, Brussels: ICG. Jobse, P. 1997. Bronnen Betreffende de Midden-Molukken 1900–1942, Vol. 1. The Hague: Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis. Keuning, J. 1973. Sejarah Ambon Sampai Pada Akhir Abad ke-17. Jakarta: Bhratara. Kissya, E. 1993. Sasi Aman Haru-Ukui: Tradisi Kelola Sumberdaya Alam Lestari di Haruku. Jakarta: Yayasan Sejati. Kompas, 19 March 2002. ‘Sunyi Sepi Pantai Manuala’. http://www.kompas.com/ kompas-cetak/0203/19/UTAMA/suny01.htm Leirissa, R.Z. 1973. ‘Kebijaksanaan VOC untuk Mendapatkan Monopoli Perdagangan Cengkeh di Maluku Tengah antara Tahun 1615 dan 1652’, in Bunga Rampai Sejarah Maluku (1). Jakarta: Pusat Dokumentasi Ilmiah Nasional, LIPI, pp. 84–115. Linares, O. 1976. ‘Garden Hunting in the American Tropics’, Human Ecology 4: 331–49. Lokollo, J.E. 1999. ‘Kerusuhan di Maluku: Beberapa Masalah dan Kaitannya Dengan Ketahanan Nasionalî’, Antropologi Indonesia 58: 88–93. Louhenapessy, J.E. 1998. ‘Sagu di Maluku (Harapan dan Tantangan dalam Pembangunan)’. Paper presented at the Seminar Berkala Pusat Studi Maluku

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Comparison and Innovative Subsistence Strategies on Buano | 165 Unpatti, Ambon, 4 April. Media Indonesia, 5 December 1999. ‘Maluku Terus Bergejolak, 41 Orang Tewasí’. http://www.mediaindo.co.id/detail_minggu.asp?id=1999120500102833 Monk, K.A, Y. de Fretes and G. Reksodiharjo-Lilley (eds). 1997. The Ecology of Nusa Tenggara and Maluku. Singapore: Periplus Editions. Onwueme, I.C. 1978. The Tropical Tuber Crops: Yams, Cassava, Sweet Potato, and Cocoyams. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. Paijmans, K. (ed.). 1976. New Guinea Vegetation. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Pattiselanno, J.T.F. 1999. ‘Tradisi Uli, Pela dan Gandong pada Masyarakat Seram, Ambon dan Uliase’, Antropologi Indonesia 58: 58–70. Schmid, H.C. 1914. ‘Over Kajoepoetih-olie’, Teysmannia 25: 33–40. Soselisa, H.L. 1995. ‘A Place of Fish: Subsistence and Production for the Market in Garogos Island, Maluku, Indonesia’, thesis submitted for the degree of MA. Darwin: Northern Territory University. ___. 2002. ‘Memories and Fragments: Resource Management in Central Maluku, Eastern Indonesia’, thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. Darwin: Northern Territory University. Suara Maluku, 18 January 2000. ‘Rusuh di Buano, gereja dibakar, 8 orang lukaluka’, 1. Tomagola, T.A. 1999. ‘Ambon Terbakar’, Tempo, 26 January–1 February. Tomagola, T.A. 2000. ‘The Bleeding of Halmahera of North Moluccas’. Paper presented at the Workshop on Political Violence in Asia, Oslo, 5–7 June. Van der Crab, P. 1862. De Moluksche Eilanden; Reis van Z.E. den Gouverneur-Generaal Ch.F. Pahud door den Molukschen Archipel. Batavia: Lange. Van Fraassen, C.F. 1997. Bronnen Betreffende de Midden-Molukken 1900–1942, Vol. 3. The Hague: Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis. Von Benda-Beckmann, F., K von Benda-Beckmann and A. Brouwer. 1995. ‘Changing Indigenous Environmental Law in the Central Maluku: Communal Regulation and Privatization of Sasi’, Ekonesia 2: 1–38.

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CHAPTER

7

A Tradition of Change in Minahasan Agricultural Strategies, North Sulawesi Simon Platten

This chapter focuses on the manner in which cultural continuity and the social risk that this may entail are integrated into contemporary agricultural practice. Steward (1955) famously argued that subsistence activities were causal to aspects of cultural identity and social structure, though later systemic models (e.g. Rappaport 1968) have tended to downplay unicausality and emphasize the plurality of variables with varying influence in the system as a whole. Here I shall try to show how choices within this kind of dynamic system seem to adjust agricultural practices to fit local perceptions of cultural identity and social organization. The research described here focuses on planting patterns in the Minahasan highlands of north Sulawesi. The contemporary agricultural pattern in the field site studied is of intensive vegetable cultivation, particularly of carrots, complemented by a seasonal focus on the harvesting of clove to supplement income during the drier part of the year. It has become clear that, in this context, contemporary market-oriented agriculture is not dictated by market forces alone but is also influenced by ‘cultural strategies’. These strategies provide an element of continuity in a Minahasan practice, a practice that appears at first glance to be a radical departure from a ‘traditional’ agricultural system. We now understand that so-called ‘traditional’ agricultural systems encourage considerable experimentation, including the introduction and assimilation of new domesticates, cultivars and techniques (Richards 1986; Dove 1988; Iskandar and Ellen 2000; Cleveland and Soleri 2002). Indeed, looking at Conklin’s (1957) classic account of Hanunóo agriculture, 38 per cent of the mostly widely cultivated crop types had been

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introduced since the seventeenth century. In other words ‘traditional’ systems display considerable fluidity. This experimentation and fluidity are oriented towards maximizing productivity and diversity for a particular set of ecological conditions. Typically, within swidden subsistence agriculture at least, this has been directed towards minimizing the potential for total crop failure, whilst maintaining a constant and varied range of consumable resources, often with a minimum of labour investment and land area under cultivation. Importantly, cultivation of this kind is not limited to food production, and individual cultivars characteristically have a number of overlapping, technological, medicinal and ritual uses central to cultural practice (Geertz 1963; Conklin 1969; Beckerman 1983; Boster 1983; Hames 1983; Dove 1985, 1999) – in ethnobotanical jargon they are ‘multi-purpose’ species (Bates 1985: 257). I intend to demonstrate that the pool of cultivars available for cultivation is manipulated with the express intention of maintaining local identity, as much as minimizing agro-economic crises. The linkage between subsistence and cultural identity becomes particularly important when we consider the contemporary local and state conceptions of the development process, i.e. to maintain cultural identity and knowledge whilst simultaneously ‘improving’ the local mode of subsistence so that it becomes profitable and sustainable in market terms. State and international development ideologies have encouraged local people to interact to a greater extent with the global economy and have promoted modification of agricultural methods and cultivars towards this end, essentially through introducing new cultivars and technology (Dove 1988). This in turn leads to changes in methods of cultivation, subsistence and associated knowledge. Active manipulation of ‘new’ cultivars influences not only the dynamic of agro-ecological knowledge, but also cultural practice and questions of social identity. Minimization of risk, in this context, therefore, not only should be considered in terms of ecological or environmental factors, but also encompasses other sources of risk that might affect a farmer’s income. If factors associated with particular cultivars engender elements that might be defined as divisive or socially risky, these factors should also be incorporated into any understanding of a cultivator’s planting patterns and agricultural management. The converse is also true, as particular cultivars, through the care and attention they necessarily require during their cycle of growth, may provide opportunities to promote social cohesion rather than division.

Rurukan Agriculture The field research I report upon here was conducted between 2000 and 2002,1 and focused on the planting patterns of farmers from Rurukan, an

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upland village in Minahasa, north Sulawesi. North Sulawesi has a population of over five million people, and Minahasa, in the extreme northeast of the northern arm of Sulawesi, is the most densely populated region (Figure 7.1). The Minahasan upland plateau is regarded as the cultural heartland of the Minahasan people, and populations in the uplands differ linguistically from many of those that have become established in coastal areas (Merrifield and Salea 1996). Below the market town of Tomohon, at an elevation of 800 m, is the plateau with Lake Tondano as its focal feature. At the northern end of the lake lies the Minahasan capital of the same name. Tondano is currently a centre of wet rice cultivation and freshwater aquaculture of ikan mas (Cyprinus carpio). However, agricultural practices and waste disposal in upland areas and around the water sources of the lake are believed to be resulting in rapid sedimentation. Whilst waste disposal issues are those that are receiving most attention from NGOs and joint governmental programmes, such as Natural Resources Management

Figure 7.1. Map of the Minahasa peninsula, north Sulawesi. The main wholesale market for market gardening produce is in Tomohon; much of the produce supplies the population centres of Manado and Tondano

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Figure 7.2. Aerial photograph of Rurukan, north Sulawesi, 10 July 2002.

(NRM), agricultural practices have also been blamed for the increased sedimentation of the lake and periodic droughts recently experienced in the hills. The higher areas in the Tomohon subdistrict, and Rurukan in particular, have become a zone of intensive market gardening since the 1980s. Vegetables are grown for both the wholesale and the household markets in Tomohon, and supply areas as far away as Irian and east Kalimantan. In response, local NGOs, such as Yayasan Nurani and Yayasan Masarang, have attempted to encourage increased tree planting (of timber species such as chempaka, Michalea champaca, or sugar palms, Arenga pinnata). Prior to local NGO involvement, commercial ventures encouraged the cultivation of crops such as vanilla (Vanilla planifolia), which, coincidentally, would have been less environmentally damaging. However, this has met with limited success in many areas. It is these upland areas, those that concentrate on market gardening, which I shall focus upon in this chapter. At the present time the fields around the village of Rurukan (Figure 7.2) are commonly planted with a variety of crops: these include carrots (Daucus carota), maize (Zea mays), bunching onions (Allium fistulosum), and various species of Brassica (Brassica chinesis, Brassica pekinensis, Brassica oleracea). Plot surveys carried out across the whole range of village fields give an indication of the most commonly cultivated crops. This range is illustrated in Figure 7.3, where we can see that, of the total area

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Figure 7.3. Dominant crop types across the cultivated areas of Rurukan fields, as identified from plot surveys carried out between May and August 2002

covered with raised beds within the plots surveyed, carrots account for 38 per cent, Brassica 20 per cent, fallow or recently harvested ‘empty’ ground 19 per cent, maize 9 per cent, prepared raised beds 9 per cent and bunching onions 5 per cent. Carrots, in particular, have become the village specialization and are the cultivar with which the local population choose to identify themselves. For example, at the annual Minahasan Protestant Church male voice choir competition, the Rurukan choir leader introduced his choir to the audience and other entries from throughout Minahasa saying: ‘We are from Rurukan, where we grow carrots, the best carrots in all of Minahasa, so if you want carrots it’s better you come to us.’ However, carrots are not exclusively grown in Rurukan, and Rurukan fields are not exclusively planted with carrots. As we can see from the figures, there are three other main crop types, maize, bunching onions and leaf vegetables (varieties of Brassica) that are planted in addition to carrots. A number of other cultivars also appear in the fields in lesser quantities, with an average of fifteen different landraces and a range of six to thirty-three landraces in the plots surveyed. Of all these possible cultivars, carrots alone are included in the local church harvest festival, receiving pride of place on a table before the pulpit. The singular importance ascribed to carrots also resonates in the story of the first carrot seed bought to Rurukan, which has striking structural similarities with that of the Minahasan origin myth of rice. Rurukan is relatively wealthy in comparison with other parts of Minahasa. The village produce is sold mostly in the wholesale and local markets of nearby Tomohon. Occasionally trucks will take carrots directly from the village to the harbour in Manado where they are loaded into containers for transit to Irian or east Kalimantan. During the dry season, when it is not possible to cultivate carrots without irrigation, local people rely on the clove harvest, which coincides with this period, to supplement and generally boost household income.

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Figure 7.4. View of Linopadi, looking towards the peak of Mahawu, Minahasa, and showing the terrace-like appearance of the raised vegetable beds on inclines

This pattern of market gardening is a relatively new one. The raised beds and terrace-like landscape that can be seen in Figure 7.4, and which characterize this form of agriculture, were adopted as recently as the 1980s. The first – and, as I shall argue, mistaken – impression is that this marks a radical departure from a more ‘traditional’ pre-existing system of cultivation, signalled by intensive land use and market orientation. However, to put this development into context, we must now look briefly at the agricultural history of the Tomohon district.

Minahasan Environmental History Early Europeans (mainly Spanish and Portuguese) visiting Minahasa in the sixteenth century viewed the region primarily as a place to provision ships engaged in the spice trade. Minahasa was at this time renowned for the availability of rice and timber. The Spanish and Portuguese are also associated with the introduction of maize (Wigboldus 1987: 79–83). This New World cultivar, which allowed the expansion of settlement into other upland areas of Indonesia, created a similar agricultural revolution on the Minahasan plateau, though under somewhat different conditions. In other parts of Indonesia, maize became part of an identifiable complex, also involving tobacco and livestock, that enabled farmers to compete

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commercially and derive a stable living from upland agriculture (Boomgaard 1999). In Minahasa, however, maize enabled the local population to offset the demands made on its staple rice crops through taxation, which had increased after the Dutch East India Company gained a foothold in Minahasa in 1679. Maize allowed a significant proportion (up to 30 per cent) of the rice harvest to enter European hands without too detrimental an effect on local food resources. Maize became even more important with Dutch introduction, and compulsory cultivation, of coffee in the Minahasan uplands between 1822 and 1899. The compulsory cultivation of coffee had very high labour demands. As a result compulsory cultivation intruded heavily upon social activities, and the upland population often did not have sufficient time available for their own subsistence cultivation. This significantly reduced the amount of time available for fulfilling other social obligations and, perhaps more importantly, limited the time households had to engage in their own agricultural production (Limadharma 1987: 48; Schouten 1998: 59). The latter, as a result of the compulsory cultivation of coffee, had already been pushed on to less productive land. Maize was a particularly suitable crop under these conditions, being remarkably flexible and very productive even on low-quality and steeply inclined land. It is likely that local practices of reciprocal labour, called mapalus,2 became particularly important for managing this cultivation whilst also maintaining corvée labour obligations during this period of enforced coffee cultivation between 1822 and 1899. The combination of these two factors – maize and indigenous labour institutions – made the burden of compulsory cultivation imposed by the Dutch more tolerable. Thus, whilst there was an emerging Minahasan aristocracy during this period (Schouten 1998: 75–104), the upland cultivators were also acting within a system similar to that of the ‘shared poverty’ in Java described by Geertz (1963: 97) Two crops, therefore, dominated agricultural practice in the Minahasan uplands during much of the nineteenth century: maize and coffee. Maize provided for local subsistence; coffee was cultivated as a cash crop for external sale (though with little benefit locally from the profit). This established a pattern of agriculture defined by two spheres of exchange that would echo in upland Minahasan agriculture down to the present. Compulsory cultivation ended in 1899, and the artificially low prices that were paid to cultivators were lifted in the hope that this would motivate farmers to produce coffee in greater volume in the uplands. In the event, the opposite happened. The labour demands of coffee cultivation overly intruded on other social obligations and activities, and the degree of local resentment against coffee cultivation was such that production fell dramatically. In its place a new cash crop gradually emerged, and importantly this was one that supplied an Indonesian rather than an

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international group of consumers, albeit one external to the Minahasan region. The impact of the kretek (clove cigarette) industry grew rapidly throughout the Indonesian archipelago from the 1880s (Hanusz 2000), and the ecological conditions of the Minahasan uplands proved ideal for quality clove production. The cash crop production focus in the Minahasan uplands, therefore, shifted dramatically away from coffee and towards clove during the twentieth century. Maize, however, continued to be a staple crop and dominated subsistence agriculture, particularly in the hills above Tondano around the Tomohon subdistrict village of Rurukan.

Rurukan History The village of Rurukan has a distinctive history when set against the general background of political and agricultural change described in the preceding section. Rurukan was given official village status in 1848 when workers from neighbouring Paslaten moved to the area to tend coffee plantations that had been opened above the village at the behest of the Dutch colonial government. After rapidly moving away from coffee cultivation at the turn of the twentieth century, Rurukan gained a reputation for cultivating maize and citrus fruits and for manufacturing palm sugar.3 However, perhaps the most notable influence upon the current agricultural system came from the stationing of a detachment of around thirty soldiers in the village during the Japanese occupation. In 1942 Japan occupied the north Sulawesi peninsula. Minahasa remained under Japanese control for three and a half years and was still under occupation at the time of the Indonesian declaration of independence on 17 August 1945. The period 1942–45 changed the entire pattern of agriculture in Rurukan. Japanese occupation brought with it new obligations of enforced cultivation. In the lowlands and mid-altitude ranges this took the form of labour on cotton plantations (Lolang 1999: 88), while in the highlands the focus was more on vegetable cultivation to supply the Japanese. Rurukan became a centre of vegetable production. Japanese soldiers stationed there both took advantage of Rurukan’s strategic position in the mountains4 and supervised the intensive cultivation of vegetables. Whilst the latter were primarily vegetable cultivars that already existed in the Minahasan plant resources pool, there were also a number of new cultivars introduced at this time. Some of these retain reference to the Japanese origins in their vernacular names, such as ketimun jepang (lit. Japanese cucumber, chayote, Sechium edule) and kentang jepang (lit. Japanese potato, Solanum tuberosum). After the end of the Japanese occupation, the focus on vegetable growing in the Rurukan region declined, the predominant cropping pattern returning to maize, citrus fruit and sugar palm products. However,

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perhaps more significant than the introduction of new cultivars was a change in the appearance of the fields. One consequence of intensive vegetable gardening had been to clear a large area near the village, which had previously been occupied by a distinctive local form of agroforesty.5 The intercropping of maize between coffee, sugar palm and citrus fruit trees was replaced with the ordered cultivation of vegetables on relatively open land in accordance with the orders of the Japanese soldiers. Although the raised beds that now characterize this form of agriculture in the region did not begin to be used until the 1980s, intensive market gardening in the region has its roots in this period.

Minahasan Agency Minahasa, and in particular the area now associated with market vegetable production, has undergone significant changes throughout its history, both political and agricultural. This has led commentators such as Lungström-Burghoorn (1981) to suggest that Minahasa has a ‘tradition of change’. Changes in environmental management and the agricultural system, to meet the demands of the population, have reflected turbulent periods in political history. These changes have been either enforced by external powers or have been locally orchestrated.6 From the brief description of events provided in the previous sections it is unclear as to whether Minahasans have acquired this ‘tradition of change’ as proactive social engineers or as the passive victims of circumstance. The degree of passivity among the local population that is implied by the presence of an external power is somewhat lessened if we consider the archival evidence (Henley 2002). Thus, the Iberian presence in Minahasa was largely for trade rather than an equivalent to the direct colonial presence of the Dutch (Wigboldus 1987: 77; Schouten 1998: 39–51) and the general consensus amongst contemporary Minahasans is that the Dutch were invited into the region to work for the benefit of both parties. Only the Japanese occupation represents a phase that many Minahasans agree occurred for reasons completely beyond their control. Throughout the five centuries that their documented history spans, Minahasans have been very adept at staying ‘ahead of the game’, striving constantly for modernization and assimilation of ‘the new’ at all times. This is certainly a view that is shared by many contemporary Minahasans. This process of modernization is fostered by an emphasis within Minahasan culture on the benefits of personal and individual advancement. The success of a person over their peers is encouraged since the successful individual must then share the rewards of their status and accrued amongst those that are close to them. In some ways this process is reminiscent of the feasts of merit that determined status relationships both

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within and between the different Minahasan ethno-linguistic groups prior to Minahasan unification. These are common themes in societies with an egalitarian ethos combined with individualism, typified by the ‘big man’ political system (Strathern 1971; Rosaldo 1980). This form of sharing is included in the ideal of mapalus or reciprocal aid, which also encompasses reciprocal labour groups that come together to work the fields, to prepare for weddings, funerals and other major events. It is this element that resonates in the words of the Minahasan political figure, writer and cultural hero Sam Ratulangi, ‘Si tou timou tumou tou,’ which may be translated as ‘A person lives to give life to others.’ Individual advancement in this context may then be viewed as perfectly good conduct in the service of others, and in the search of this advancement Minahasans voraciously endeavour to absorb the new and the modern.

A Paradox Although not used formally as a term of ethnic reference until the nineteenth century, the origins of the term ‘Minahasa’ – meaning to ‘unite as one’ – date from 1679, when a north Sulawesi delegation was sent to Ternate to seek relations with the Dutch East India Company. At that time the Company was seeking to consolidate its control by formalizing relationships with a number of other political groupings in eastern Indonesia (Supit 1986). The result was an agreement in which the Company promised protection in the form of a small military force to be stationed in Manado, in return for which they received rice, timber, a labour force and recognition of the Company as the ruling power. It is important to note that at the time this was understood by the Company as a means of extending their dominion and of securing provisions for the spice trade. For the Minahasans, the treaty had different connotations and implications (Supit 1986). Contemporary Minahasans often refer to the treaty signed with the Dutch as an example of their openness to ‘Westernization’ and new influences generally. It is seen locally, and in retrospect, as having been an invitation to the Company to come and live in Minahasa and work together as partners for mutual benefit. Although a primary aspect of the invitation was to oust the Iberian presence in Minahasa, after a failed attempt by the Dutch, it was Minahasans themselves that struck the deciding blow against the Spanish (Watuseke 1968; Supit 1986). As Henley (2002: 78–82) asserts, the benefit to Minahasans at this time was primarily the presence of an impartial judiciary that was not involved in local politics and that could end the instability and infighting between the different local Minahasan ethno-linguistic groups. The instability to which Henley refers surfaces regularly throughout the documented history of Minahasa, often on a large scale. Such periodic

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crises are perhaps best understood as a product of an apparent contradiction between different Minahasan cultural values. Minahasans pride themselves on the notions of equality embedded within their culture, and assert the unity of the people at all levels of society. By ‘equality’ here I mean that, although Minahasa is highly stratified and with considerable differences in social mobility (Schouten 1998), the ideal that is often expressed is of supposed equality at birth. Whilst Schouten has demonstrated that over the last three centuries political manoeuvres by colonial powers in the region have legitimized the formation of a Minahasan aristocracy, this egalitarian ideal still resonates within the upland communities. Therefore, whilst individualism is applauded because in its ideal form it leads to the benefit and progression of the group, selfish individualism becomes a destructive element within this system and must be in some way controlled or restrained. This regulation occurs for the most part obliquely rather than through direct confrontation. The use of gossip and rumour as a means of social control has been documented on many occasions and I believe that it is not essential to go into greater detail here. For an overview of the salient points see Stewart and Strathern (2004). However, I feel that it is necessary to emphasize the distinction between recreational gossip and rumour, and that which is circulated with the express aim of defamation. In Minahasa, both fall under the general umbrella term for gossip, karlotta. However, to gossip about someone with the intention of sabotage also falls into another category, that of baku cungkul, literally ‘to cut each other down’. Baku cungkul primarily manifests itself non-violently, through manipulation of networks of gossip and rumour, but also through strategic noncooperation. The intended result is the sabotage of individual plans that are perceived as ‘selfish’. This is in essence a more proactive version of what Richard Lee (1979: 54) describes as ‘insulting the meat’. Karlotta generally may also have the effect of limiting people’s behaviour and encouraging conformity so as not to provide material for gossips. However, becoming the subject of gossip at some point is regarded as inevitable. Although it is unpleasant to be gossiped about, the widespread and essentially random nature of karlotta means that the motivation behind it is generally regarded as impersonal. In comparison, baku cungkul is more calculated and more expressly motivated to alter specific outcomes for the intended recipient, and is something that should definitely be taken notice of. The subjective character of what is perceived as selfish entails that there may be little consensus on occasion as to whether specific examples are of baku cungkul or simply karlotta. The resultant hypersensitivity to the possible nuances of general open conversation is perhaps so familiar that there is no need to discuss the obvious similarities with the tensions concerning accusations of witchcraft7 classically described by Evans-Pritchard (1937).

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Baku cungkul also manifests itself through non-cooperation and direct sabotage. We see examples of this at a macro level throughout Minahasan history, from non-cooperation regarding tribute payments of rice to the sabotage of coffee production under the Dutch, and perhaps the assassination by internal parties of Permesta Brigade leaders during the open rebellion against the government in the early 1960s.8 Karlotta and baku cungkul, therefore, may be viewed as the controlling factors that limit individual advancement to an extent that does not inspire jealousies and is communally beneficial. However, these mechanisms are also open to manipulation in the ever-present competition for status and individual advancement. This creates an apparent paradox: that within Minahasa people claim to be unified as a group advancing towards modernization, while they are also ‘cutting each other down’ and holding one another back. The apparent contradiction that Minahasans are at once united and yet completely fragmented down to an individual level has not yet been explicitly addressed within Minahasan anthropology, but it is fundamental to the decision-making process within Minahasa, and therefore of vital importance to understanding the treatment of risk, particularly in the choice of strategies employed by farmers to maintain stability in their livelihoods. In applying an understanding of these cultural categories to the interpretation of local agricultural management strategies, I have assumed that the choice of particular cultivars reflects a degree of economic rationality that is not purely financially based. The choice of what cultivars to plant is made with regard to maximization of income, but also to minimization of disturbance of other, social relations. These latter include trying to maximize individual advancement whilst balancing a fear of non-cooperation within the community and fear of baku cungkul should one be seen to be too successful and not be seen to be sharing amongst the community at large. Understandably, these choices are also mediated by other constraints, both ecological and financial, such as cash flow, microecology, land availability and ownership, labour availability, and so on. Population expansion and reduced levels of labour out-migration have exerted pressure on agricultural land in Minahasa during the twentieth century, which, coupled with cognatic inheritance, has resulted in increasing land fragmentation (Sondakh 1994: 170). As a result, farmers have shifted their focus from traditional staples such as maize to cultivating crops that have a higher market value and less space requirement. It is accounting for all of these factors that explains both the need for a shift in focus of Rurukan’s agricultural production from the previous emphasis on agroforestry, and the apparently contradictory decision to cultivate carrots on a large scale, rather than to cultivate vanilla, which, in terms of both sustainability and financial gain, might seem to be the more appropriate crop to grow.

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Vanilla (Vanilla planifolia) In the 1980s there was considerable encouragement by commercial enterprises to cultivate vanilla in the Minahasa uplands. As mentioned above, market gardening has been criticized by some local NGOs for the environmental problems it creates, especially tree denudation in higher-elevation fields. This has led to lack of water retention on the peaks, which in turn has led to both erosive flooding and periods of drought in the dry season. Under these conditions vanilla is not so environmentally destructive as other crops. Vanilla is a climbing orchid and requires support such as from a tree up which it can grow. In this way cultivation of vanilla in the uplands is more in keeping with the tradition of agroforestry that existed prior to the Japanese occupation. However, vanilla is not considered an appropriate crop by local people for a number of reasons. To be profitable, vanilla needs to be properly processed. To ensure high levels of vanillin in the pods, the beans must be left to ripen on the plant for a full seven months before harvest. Then they must go through a lengthy process of curing and drying (Straver 1999: 232–33). In Minahasa during 2002, a kilo of cured vanilla beans could fetch Rp 300,000 or £20 wholesale, or Rp 5,000 for a single good-quality pod (there being 70–100 pods of varying quality to a kilo) and a single hectare can produce between 600 and 800 kilos a year. This makes vanilla ostensibly a very attractive crop. According to the North Sulawesi Chamber of Trade and Industry (Kamar dagang dan Industri Indonesia, Sulawesi Utara – KADIN Sulawesi Utara) there are currently 4,000 hectares under vanilla cultivation. However, this cultivation has not been without its problems. The length of time that the beans must remain on the plant in order to fully ripen leaves the plants open to theft or sabotage due to their high level of perceived value. This theft may not be purely financially motivated but also contains an element of jealousy and desire to baku cungkul in order to reduce the huge profits expected by individual vanilla cultivators. To get around this it has become common practice to harvest the beans at anything after three months, in order to minimize the possibility of losing an entire crop due to periodic theft over an extended period of time. This drastically reduces the quality of the vanillin that the beans can produce. This is further exacerbated through a quick drying process over a fire that may be employed to achieve a rapid turnover from harvest to sale by the smallholder. This results in an acrid and smoke-flavoured vanilla of dramatically reduced quality. To avoid this problem, vanilla buyers often buy fresh vanilla pods and slow-cure the beans themselves. Since this is the part of the process in which most of the value is added to the beans,9 benefits for the cultivator are consequently greatly reduced. The cost of setting up a vanilla enterprise that can encompass curing and drying makes it viable only for a few elite individuals with the nec-

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essary capital. It excludes other sections of the community from any share of the profits, other than through working within an existing vanilla concern on a day-wage basis. Whilst security is possible either by employing a guard or by building a high wall or fence, this further exaggerates the perception of selfish profiteering. In this way in the uplands, cultivation of vanilla by smallholders on a scale that could provide household stability is difficult. Where large-scale vanilla cultivation has been most successful it has been in coastal areas and not in the upland communities of the Minahasan heartland. Cultivation of vanilla in this context might be viewed, therefore, as a crop that would turn Rurukan cultivators into something resembling a peasantry, rather than the collection of united individual market-gardening entrepreneurs that it is at present. The existing pattern of upland Minahasan land tenure and smallholding is also incompatible with the cultivation of vanilla. Land that is cultivated by a particular farmer may be either (1) owned outright, (2) on loan from a member of kin, (3) rented or (4) sharecropped. The form of tenure has an impact on how the land is used and, in particular, how much farmers are prepared to invest in a particular field. At the two extremes of what may be viewed as a continuum are (1) land that is owned outright and (2) land that is rented (on a yearly basis). These two extremes differ from each other in terms of perceived long-term security. It was emphasized to me that locally there is no long term security with rented land: ‘Who knows what is going to happen next year? Maybe the landlord will sell it, put the price up or rent it to someone else.’ Under such circumstances, farmers say that they are less likely to plant perennial crops since they might not receive the benefit of their efforts. This relates not only to crops such as vanilla but also to perennial shrubs and herbs along the borders of kebun and to tree crops which provide shade and a seasonal harvest and help to prevent erosion and trap water on the higher inclines. Similarly, it is known locally that chemical fertilizers and continual cultivation can ruin the soil; yet, whilst there remains the possibility of purposefully giving up the tenancy or being forced to move to another plot of land, the impact is less significant for the individual tenant farmer concerned; in essence there is the locally recognized tendency for tenant farmers to have greater interest in getting the most they can out of the land they are renting before they have to move on. Between these two extremes of differing land tenures we have sharecropping and land that is ‘borrowed’ from kin (as distant as second cousin). Sharecropping may take a number of forms, from the owner simply taking a portion of the crop instead of rent, to the owner providing seed and fertilizer whilst the farmer provides the labour, with the profits being shared between both parties. Other sharecropping relationships may be viewed in terms of convenience. For example, landowner X, who lives and works in the city of Manado, has a kebun of clove trees in

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Rurukan, but does not have the time to travel and work his kebun. To make sure that his trees remain cared for and that the kebun does not turn into secondary-growth forest, he allows farmer Y to cultivate whatever he likes between the trees as long as farmer Y keeps the base of the trees free of weeds (as is the customary practice for cultivating clove in Minahasa) and does not harvest any clove himself. A similar relationship may exist with land that has been loaned to a member of kin. This kind of loan is normally part of an extended reciprocal relationship. For example, it is quite common that a father-in-law will lend a portion of land to his son-in-law in addition to the portion of land that is traditionally given at marriage. In other cases, owned land may be at a significant distance from the village base and it may be easier to exchange use of land with a kin member in a similar position. Farmers may also cultivate land that they are due to inherit many years before they legally own it. Vanilla is a perennial crop and has a single harvest per year. Land that is under vanilla cultivation is not likely to be as easily transferable given the large investment of capital that a plantation of vanilla represents. Also, although vanilla requires intensive hand pollination and has a complex drying process, this does not provide comparable employment opportunities to that of market vegetables for the community as a whole.

Carrots It is not merely the case that vanilla, being a perennial, is inappropriate in the Rurukan context, and that carrots are coincidentally the cultivar of choice. Just as the growing regime and technologies required for the processing of vanilla may be seen as divisive, so those for carrots, in contrast, are seen to enhance social cohesion. Despite land fragmentation and the pressures that one might expect this to place on land availability, as one local farmer put it: ‘There is always land available to cultivate if you want to.’ By this he meant that, through sharecropping, renting or borrowing from kin, there is always a way to enter the local agricultural system, and importantly this is not limited to being a daily wage labourer, but at an essentially self-employed level. The common pattern is for the new generation of farmers to move from paid labouring work within mapalus work groups to renting or borrowing their own land to cultivate. Carrots are perfectly suited to this system of cultivation. The price received for a harvest of carrots is relatively low in comparison with a harvest of vanilla, and it is the volume of production arising from up to three harvests a year that creates the financial rewards. The logistics of this require the cooperation of a community of people who occupy specialized

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roles within the system. Not just cultivators, but wholesalers, harvesters, truck drivers and market traders are necessary. Labour required in preparing the ground, digging beds, weeding, harvesting, cleaning and transporting the carrots from the fields means that there are many opportunities for traditional mapalus rotational work parties to move from one person’s field to another. This allows profit-sharing through a diversity of agricultural roles and the cementing of community bonds through physical labour and reliance on other members of the village community. The rotational work groups are composed both of established farmers reciprocally working each other’s land and of younger Rurukan residents engaged in wage labour. Mapalus then becomes a context where the younger generation learn to become farmers; where agriculturalists are reproduced, in terms of both the necessary technical skills and the social roles. Carrots, in particular, are more labour-intensive and less reliant than other cultigens, such as Brassica and other leaf vegetables, on cash inputs to provide fertilizers and pesticides. In fact, use of fertilizers with carrots causes them to grow overly fast and to split, reducing their quality and market price. In this sense carrots represent the most egalitarian of crops in the local ‘toolkit’, since cultivation is open to anybody regardless of financial wealth, where no significant benefits can be derived from extra financial inputs. Success in the cultivation of carrots, therefore, not only conveys to local community members, success as an entrepreneur but is also commensurate with creating strong relationships between the individual and the rest of the community. In doing so it conforms particularly well to the Minahasan self-image that resounds in the words of Ratulangi, ‘Si tou timou tumou tou,’ ‘A person lives to give life to others.’ Maintaining this kind of pattern would prove impossible with vanilla cultivation.

Conclusion The adoption of carrot cultivation in Rurukan initially appears to represent a radical departure from traditional upland Minahasan agriculture. However, although village-wide cultivation of carrots is a recent development, I have argued here that there are some striking elements of continuity. There are two distinct aspects that echo previous times of compulsory coffee cultivation, and maize grown primarily for subsistence. First, there is the seasonal focus on the clove harvest (as a cash crop for the cigarette industry) and vegetable production (particularly carrots) for market and household consumption over the rest of the year. Secondly, vegetable cultivation is also more in keeping with current patterns of land tenure and expenditures of employment, which contribute towards the reproduction of the upland community in accordance with

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cultural ideals. Carrots, in particular, are compatible with the Minahasan cultural ideals of reciprocal aid and community progress. Other cultivars, such as vanilla, are compatible only with more divisive social mechanisms. It must be noted, however, that baku cungkul, whilst inciting animosity, serves to maintain a form of equality amongst peers through the sabotage of self-interest: a very radical instrument – you might think – of moral economy. The shift towards market gardening of carrots in Rurukan has been locally orchestrated and is an example of ‘traditional change’ since it fits seamlessly into the existing system of land tenure and community reproduction. This suggests that, while change may be embraced, the level to which certain aspects are assimilated depends on their cultural appropriateness. This chapter also illustrates the fact that consideration of strategies for coping with periodic agro-economic crises must refer to social aspects of risk as well as more easily quantifiable elements, such as financial gain and ecological conditions.

Notes 1. This fieldwork was carried out with the financial assistance of a joint Economic and Social Research Council/Natural Environment Research Council studentship based at the University of Kent, sponsored by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and Sam Ratulangi University (UNSRAT). 2. Mapalus refers to a Minahasan system of reciprocal aid, of which the more widely known arisan and gotong royang are considered variants. 3. In Rurukan the sugar palm (Arenga pinnata) yields a number of products that can be traded in local markets: saguer (palm wine), cap tikus (lit. ‘rat brand’, distilled liquor from palm wine) and palm sugar (gula merah), made from palm wine by reducing it over a fire. These products still form a major part of the upland agricultural and economic focus in southern Minahasa. Rurukan had a particularly good reputation for the manufacture of palm sugar. Blocks of palm sugar were set in coconut shell moulds that had been carved with the Rurukan name so that the resulting blocks of sugar bore the Rurukan mark. 4. An observation point just above the village provides a view over both the northern and southern coasts of the north Sulawesi peninsula. Rurukan was also a strategic village during the Permesta Rebellion of 1958–61 (Harvey 1977). 5. During the mid-nineteenth century the fields above Rurukan village had been occupied by coffee plantations. The fields alongside the village (in terms of altitude) were areas of mixed coffee and subsistence agriculture. Agroforestry in these areas (in its simplest form) contained coffee, citrus trees (Citrus limonia) and sugar palms (A. pinnata) interplanted with maize. These two field types relate to two different forms of compulsory cultivation of coffee, communal and individual (Limadharma 1987: 48). 6. External imposed factors that have led to environmental change include deforestation following the provision of timber and the cultivation of rice (and subsequently maize) for the Spanish and later the Dutch, coffee for the Dutch and intensive vegetable cultivation for the Japanese. Locally orchestrated

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Tradition of Change in Minahasan Agricultural Strategies | 183 changes include an increase in the cultivation of maize as a response to taxation and enforced cultivation on prime agricultural land, clove to supply the kretek industry and intensive market vegetable cultivation beginning in the 1980s. 7. There is a parallel here with the European witchcraft accusation and its association with the Devil, in that the putative membership of a satanic church (gereja setan) is an occasional subject of gossip. 8. If this is indeed an example of baku cungkul, it is an extreme one. For the most part, it manifests itself at a far more local and interpersonal level, and in cases I have observed it has been non-violent. Where violence does occur, it has left the realm of baku cungkul and become open conflict. 9. A kilo of green vanilla beans in 2002 sold for Rp 40,000. It takes three and a half kilos of green beans (Rp 140,000) to produce one kilo of slow-cured beans (Rp 300,000).

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184 | Simon Platten Iskandar, J. and R.F. Ellen. 2000. ‘The Contribution of Paraserianthes (Albizia) falcataria to Sustainable Swidden Management Practices Aamong the Baduy of West Java’, Human Ecology 28(1):1–17. Lee, R.B. 1979. The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Limadharma, H.K. 1987. ‘Tanam-Paksa Kopi dan Monetisasi Petani Minahasa, 1822–1870’, thesis submitted to Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta. Lolang, H.A. 1999. 3 1/2 Tahun dari Nipon di Minahasa (1942–1945). Manado: Yayasan Bhakti Mapalus Sejahtera. Lungström-Burghoorn, W. 1981. Minahasan Civilisation: a Tradition of Change. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. Merrifield, S. and M. Salea. 1996. North Sulawesi Language Survey. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Rappaport, R.A. 1968. Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Economy of New Guinea People. London: Yale University Press. Richards, P. 1986. Coping with Hunger: Hazard and Experimentation in an African Rice Farming System. London: Allen and Unwin. Rosaldo, R. 1980. Ilongot Headhunting. 1883–1974: a Study in Society and History. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Schouten, M. 1998. Leadership and Social Mobility in a Southeast Asian Society: Minahasa 1677–1983. Leiden: KITLV Press. Sondakh, L. 1994. ‘Employment Patterns and the Role of Off Farm Labour in Rural North Sulawesi’, in H. Buchholdt and U. Mai (eds), Continuity, Change, and Aspirations, Social and Cultural Life in Minahasa, Indonesia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 167–75. Steward, J.H. 1955. Theory of Cultural Change: the Methodology of Multilinear Evolution. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Stewart, P.J. and A. Strathern. 2004. Witchcraft, Sorcery, Rumours and Gossip. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strathern, A.J. 1971. The Rope of Moka: Big-Men and Ceremonial Exchange in Mount Hagen, New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Straver, J.T.G. 1999. ‘Vanilla planifolia’, in C.C. de Guzman and J.S. Siemonsma (eds), Plant Resources of South-East Asia No. 13. Spices. Leiden: Backhuys Publishers, pp. 228–33. Supit, B. 1986. Minahasa: Dari Amanat Watu Pinawetengan Sampai Gelora Minawanua. Jakarta: Sinar Agape Press. Watuseke, F.S. 1968 [1961]. Sejara Minahasa. Bandung: Manado. Wigboldus, J.S. 1987. ‘A History of the Minahasa c. 1615–1680’, Archipel 34: 63–102.

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8

Cycles of Politics and Cycles of Nature Permanent Crisis in the Uplands of Palawan

Dario Novellino

Introduction The characteristics of contemporary Batak swiddens (short fallows, minimal maintenance, low yields, little crop diversity) are often perceived by government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) alike as inherited features of the indigenous farming system. These perceptions are based on misinformation and oversimplifications that have deep historical roots (Thrupp, Hecht and Browder 1997). Indeed, it is difficult to label current Batak swidden practices as ‘customary’ and distinctively ‘indigenous’, as the practices have adjusted over a long time to successive socio-political and environmental changes. Such adjustments and transformations accelerated after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines in 1986, and are currently taking place in the context of a complex political scenario that has arisen since then. As a result, rather than a well-defined Batak farming system that reflects the continuity of a unique cultural heritage, what we have is a multiplicity of opportunistic responses, open-ended processes and coping strategies aimed at ensuring everyday survival. My contention is that particular features of contemporary Batak swiddens have developed as microresponses to government programmes, large-scale demographic pressures, ecological transformations and state policies. The latter, in turn, especially those dealing with forest conservation, have been detrimental to upland communities.

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The way in which the Batak adapt and cope with state demands challenges the popular interpretation emphasizing coercion by the national government vis-à-vis resistance by upland dwellers. Certainly, we can no longer accept the idea that local processes of change are simply microlevel manifestations of national and international processes or the outcomes of top-down development programmes (see Bryant, Rigg and Stott 1993: 105; Alejo 2000). Rather, we must take into account the ‘multiplicity of voices within development, even if some are more powerful than others’ (Grillo 1997: 22; see also Preston 1994; Apthorpe and Gasper 1996). In short, we cannot talk of a ‘grand politic’ or of a ‘hegemonic development discourse’ (see Grillo 1997) shaping local events, without taking into account the fact that people’s micro-responses are pivotal in shaping state programmes and ‘attitudes’, as well as in turning development policy and law into actual practices. This chapter has several related objectives. In the first section, I provide some indication of Batak rice yields and subsistence strategies before the arrival of large numbers of migrants about forty-five years ago. These data are based on verbal accounts that I have recorded from Batak elders. The 1960s were the prelude to a new era of cultural transformations, which continued through the 1970s and led to major farming crises and the loss of both land and landraces. I begin by analysing chronologically a number of events that occurred between 1980 and 2005, and which have led to the collapse of a relatively stable society of foragers and farmers. The changing relations between forest availability, swidden size and fallow periods and the reasons why yields declined per unit of land and labour cannot be understood without seeing the larger picture and assessing the different factors, both external and internal, that have contributed to the transformation of the Batak swidden system into a costly, often unproductive and increasingly ‘risky’ enterprise. In the final section I examine how national and local politics have had (and continue to have) a crucial bearing on everything happening in and around Batak swiddens. As I shall attempt to demonstrate, the ‘cycle of nature’ (the seasonal changes taking place in the environment and people’s cultural means of coping with them) impinges on and is often inseparable from the ‘cycle of politics’ (the recurrent ways in which the state manifests itself through its laws and programmes).

The Batak and the Early Crises The People The Batak are currently found scattered in the north–central portion of Palawan Island in the Philippines.1 Eder (1987) estimates their population to have been about 600–700 individuals in 1900, while his complete cen-

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sus in 1972 located only 272 with two Batak parents and 374 with one Batak parent (1987: 110). My provisional census in 2005 indicates that there are only 155 individuals with two Batak parents, a decline in the Batak ‘core’ population of almost 57 per cent within a period of thirtythree years. At the close of the nineteenth century, approximately twenty to fifty Batak families were associated with each of the nine river valleys that made up their territory (Eder 1987). The present study concerns the Batak community living in the territorial jurisdiction of barangay2 Tanabag in the north–central portion of the island, and now settled in the village of Kalakuasan. The community consists of twenty-eight families and an overall population of 126 members, of which only sixty-eight individuals have two Batak parents. Kalakuasan is located at about five kilometres from the national road connecting the northern municipalities to Puerto Princesa (the provincial capital city). Eder, drawing on historical and early ethnographic accounts (Marche 1883; Miller 1905; Venturello 1907; Warren 1964), believes that, by the end of 1800, Batak had mainly a hunting and gathering economy, integrated with other peripheral activities, and ‘a case can be made that rice may have been acquired by the Batak in the latter part of the nineteenth century’ (Eder 1987: 46).3 Around 1910, during the early period of American control, the government of Palawan asked the Batak to create permanent settlements on the coastal plain. One of them was established near Sumurud (Warren 1964: 30–33) where the Filipino village of San Rafael is presently located (at about fifty-eight kilometres north of Puerto Princesa). In the 1920s the Batak began to participate more extensively in the monetized trade (Warren 1964). The 1930s signal an increase in the number of Cuyonon farmers settling on the main island to farm yearround (Conelly 1983; Eder and Fernandez 1996). Around 1930, Sumurud and other Batak settlements on the coast were declared by the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes, under American administration, to be reserved for the Batak’s exclusive use (see Eder 1987).

1945–1960 During these years, the Tanabag Batak still used lowland areas extensively. The nearby coral reefs and mangroves provided additional sources of protein. According to elders, wild honey was collected and stored for several months to support them during seasonal food shortage. Interviews with Batak elders reveal that, in the past, resin was gathered from tree branches in the high canopy, or collected from the ground (Novellino 1999). The harvesting was carried out sporadically and, according to Batak, resin from the canopy was extracted at long intervals of time (approximately every three to four years). Domestic root crops and upland rice sustained the people during their commercial gathering.

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Thus, in contrast to today, the Batak did not contract huge debs with middlemen and patrons. Batak elders in Tanabag claim that in the 1950s their swiddens were highly productive. Swiddens were cleared from old fallow forest (lumakad) and yields were abundant and often lasted until the following harvesting season. Ubad, a Batak in his seventies, recalls that from twenty salop or ganta (about 50 kg) of good seeds, one could harvest from fifty to seventy cavan, or an equivalent of 2,500 to 3,500 kilograms.4 This entails a fifty to seventy fold increase over the seeds planted. McDermott’s (2000: 367) research amongst the Batak and Tagbanua of Sitio Kayasan indicates that, according to old-timers, typical ‘harvests were forty or more times the volume of seeds’. While these figures must be treated with caution, they clearly suggest that, before the massive entry of migrants in the 1960s, Batak yields might have been sufficiently high to ensure self-sufficiency for several months. Fields from old fallow forest produced few weeds and never developed into scrub and grassland. Interestingly, elders narrate that, in the 1950s, some of the newly arrived migrants had little to plant and, in order to acquire a sufficient amount of rice seeds, joined the Batak during the harvesting. What becomes evident from these accounts is that, by sharing their rice seeds with the newcomers, the Batak ensured the dispersal of traditional landraces. As I shall discuss later, the acquisition of local landraces by Filipino migrants has yielded favourable outcomes for the Batak. Particularly, it has contributed to the maintenance of genetic diversity at a time when the Batak, because of a government resettlement programme, were constrained from engaging in swidden farming. It is only after the Second World War that migration of Filipino settlers into the Batak territory registers a significant increase. No road entered Tanabag until 1956 but, during the 1950s, the Filipino government revoked all the Batak reservation decrees, enabling Filipino migrants to settle on indigenous land (Eder 1987: 61). In these years, there is an intensification of market demands for NTFPs (especially Agathis resin). Under instruction from migrant concessionaries, the Tanabag Batak acquire new tapping techniques.

1960–1980 In the early 1960s, the area of Sumurud was occupied by settlers and this led to major environmental changes. As a result, the Batak retreated into the interior, abandoning their lowland food zones and agricultural improvements. The Batak community of Sumurud split up into two groups. One group settled in Kalakuasan (my field site) and another in nearby Magtibagen. These local groups became geographically closer to the new migrant settlements and thus more isolated from the other Batak groups.

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As barrios and municipalities were established, legal concessions to extract forest resources (Agathis resin and rattan) were given to influential politicians. Unauthorized concessionaires also found their way into the forest business. In 1969, Batak and some Tagbanua communities were transferred by force to a resettlement site, where they were trained in wetrice agricultural techniques and received education, as part of a programme launched by the PANAMIN (a government agency for the welfare of national minorities). The PANAMIN resettlement programme continued through the early 1970s. During the time spent in the resettlement camp, the Batak were constrained from carrying out their traditional subsistence practices. Meanwhile, in their original villages, antique Chinese jars used in the making of rice wine (tabad), as well as old gongs, were stolen by outsiders. Because of this, the tabad ceremony was abandoned. It must be pointed out that, according to the Tanabag Batak, this was their most important post-harvest celebration involving the construction of a communal house, the gathering of relatives from other river valleys, musical accompaniment and specialized ritual knowledge. Most probably, this ceremony was acquired from the Tagbanua, a neighbouring indigenous group and, over the years, it was subject to considerable readjustments and syncretism to fit Batak narratives and pre-existing ritual practices. During their stay at the PANAMIN camp, the community rice granaries were ravaged by pests and local landraces lost. Fortunately, the Batak regained most of them from neighbouring migrants. This episode is recalled by Ubad: ‘When we lost our rice seeds because of the PANAMIN, we regained them from the migrants. The varieties we gave them in the 1950s came back to us in the 1970s. This is how we saved our local rice.’ Interestingly enough, when the Batak talk about the failure of PANAMIN and their reasons for abandoning the resettlement site, they seldom discuss the impact that the project had on their cultural practices. Rather, they claim that the main reason for leaving the site was a reduction of free supplayan (the Batak corruption of the English supply). Because of PANAMIN the Batak were exposed for the first time to a ‘dole-out system’, and, since then, their assessment of government and non-government programmes has been informed by that very first experience of ‘development’. Throughout the late 1970s external demand for NTFPs grew exponentially and, during these years, Eder (1977a, 1977b, 1978) reports that Batak suffered hunger on a more frequent basis and were chronically undernourished. Moreover, the area between the lowland coastal zone and the present Batak settlement of Kalakuasan had become heavily deforested by migrants and logging companies.5 This transformation of the landscape not only produced ‘spatial disorientation’ (Kirsch 2001: 249), but also dislocated memories of the past.

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A Chronology of Modern Crises In this section I provide a chronological assessment of Batak responses to modern crises from the 1980s to the present day. I focus particularly on the period 1996–2005, since these years have had the most dramatic impact on the Batak livelihood and cultural integrity. I first arrived in the Philippines in 1986 and since then have returned to Palawan eleven times, spending about seven years with the local indigenous communities. This has allowed me to witness some of the major crises taking place amongst the Tanabag Batak at first hand, as well as the political changes occurring during the administrations of Aquiño, Ramos and Estrada, up to the current presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Harroyo.

The 1980s: a General Overview In 1983, the murder of Ninoy Aquiño, Marcos’s best-known political opponent, set off a wave of social protest culminating in the so-called ‘People Power Revolution’ of 1986. Nationwide, these years were characterized by a democratic revival leading to the proliferation of NGOs and people’s organizations (POs). More importantly, there was a radical restructuring of the development paradigm and the discourse that accompanied it, reflecting a new humanistic consensus; NGOs were no longer seen as a threat to the elite and bureaucracies, but rather as organizations providing services, especially for the poorest sectors of society (Contreras 2000: 146), and became ‘the missionaries of the new [neoliberal] era’ (Tandon 1996: 182). International funding agencies had already withdrawn their support for NGO political activities (as during the Marcos dictatorship), and focused instead on socio-economic development, environmental protection and poverty alleviation (see Hilhorst 2003). In these years, the Batak became an ideal target for so-called integrated conservation-development projects (ICDPs), being seen as the epitome of a vanishing Filipino culture to be saved from imminent extinction.

The Tanabag Batak in the Early 1980s Until the 1970s, contacts with lowlanders could have been interrupted for periods with no great consequences for the stability of the Tanabag Batak. The early 1980s register, instead, an increasing dependency on lowland Filipino society. In these years the gathering of Agathis resin, rattan and honey (all male activities) acquired a central role in people’s livelihood, and the Batak became increasingly indebted to local middlemen. The participation of male Batak in the market economy had an impact on the complementarity of male and female roles, hitherto characterized by the ability to provide food, childcare responsibility and social recognition. In

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turn, ‘traditional’ female productive activities (tending of swiddens, gathering of wild vegetables, molluscs, fish, etc.) began to lose status when compared with commercial marketing practices, in which only men made decisions (see Eder 1987; Novellino 1999). In order to obtain cash to purchase basic commodities, the Tanabag Batak also worked as labourers in migrants’ swiddens. Demand for wage labour was particularly high at the time when Batak engaged in their own farming activities. As Cadeliña (1985: 6) notes, the Batak ‘have to carefully balance their time budget so that their own swidden fields are not neglected’. In the early 1980s, despite the increasing contacts with outsiders, the Tanabag Batak still enjoyed strong social ties. Between July and October, when wild pig hunting is profitable, the sharing of meat among households is widely practised. All relatives living at a distance of a thirty minutes’ walk receive a share of the hunt (Cadeliña 1985). Reciprocity networks are also activated during farming, through the amounts of food given out and received by household during harvest season. Cadeliña (1985: 78) suggests that, during harvesting time, a significant percentage of household rice yield went to other families, leaving only around 20 to 35 per cent of the total harvest for household consumption in the succeeding months. Taking into account the rice given and received, a household granary can supply enough rice for about two months. A sudden decline of stored rice is experienced around four months after harvest. The integration of traditional foraging and farming practices with commercial gathering, wage labour and other options represent the Batak response to gross caloric decline. This coping strategy has the ultimate effect of improving the absolute amount of food production, in terms of caloric output–input ratio but, on the other hand, it appears to be less efficient than traditional subsistence strategies, which included harvesting from other important food zones such as coral reefs and mangroves (see Cadeliña 1985: 119).

The mid- to late 1980s In 1986 the Batak community was still demonstrating a high degree of social cohesion. They were located in the settlement of Tina, about six hours’ walk from the closest Filipino settlement. In 1987, a logging company reached the upstream settlements of Tina and continued to move further into the interior.6 The ancestral territory of the Tanabag Batak was by then criss-crossed by logging roads. In the locations of Kapuyan, Kapisan and Maniksik the Agathis trees on which Batak depended for the gathering of commercial resin were felled. As a result, the Batak lost most of their extractive reserves closer to the coast, and were forced to harvest resin in the far interior. Energy costs of transporting resin

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to the coast and of transporting exchanged food commodities back to the village increased to an unprecedented level (Novellino 1997, 1999). To cope with this new crisis, the Batak managed to enter into informal agreements with the logging company truck drivers to ensure the transportation of resin, from the hauling point in Tina to the coast. By the late 1980s information and technological transfer between the Batak and the migrants had proceeded in two ways. For instance, Batak had acquired from the latter the techniques for constructing muzzle-loading guns, and explosive devices for catching wild pigs (see McDermott 2000: 114). As a result, the bow-and-arrow complex was replaced entirely. On the other hand, migrants had learned Batak techniques for harvesting resin and wild honey, and, more importantly, had access to the secret paths leading to remote extractive reserves where Agathis trees were still abundant (Novellino 1999, 2003c). Overall, Batak pathways no longer offered a safe retreat into the interior but become the means by which outsiders penetrated the uplands. As the old pathways were being ‘discovered’, Batak continued to open new ones to access untapped forest resources in the more isolated fringes of their territory.

Batak Swiddens in the 1980s The Tanabag Batak farming and mobility patterns that I observed in 1986/87 were similar to those described by Cadeliña in 1981/82. Between January and March, during the dry season, the people camped along the river edges (a practice locally known as da-us). During this period, women devoted much time to hook-and-line fishing, while men set up traps for river eels, and most community members participated in lu’gu practices (stunning fish with the poisonous magarrawa’ vine). At the beginning of March, the people performed the lambay7 ceremony, before moving again to their swidden locations to plant rice until the arrival of the first rain in April. Soil samples taken by Cadeliña (1985: 25) from Batak unfarmed forest in the hilltops, slopes and valleys indicate that, in 1981, Batak swiddens cut from secondary forest were successfully regaining their natural fertility after a period of seven to eighteen years on average. Fields were cultivatated for one year only. Cadeliña’s descriptions confirm my own observation in 1987, according to which Batak rice fields were intercropped with various cultivars, some of which become productive after rice harvest. Colocasia esculenta, Dioscorea spp., cassava (Manihot esculenta) and various cucurbits were planted in the swidden. Colocasia, Dioscorea and kalabasa (Cucurbita maxima), as well as luya (Zingiber officinale), would thrive particularly well at the base of stumps, dead logs and fallen tree branches, where soil has a good moisture content and is rich in ashes. Root crops were either planted after undergrowth clearing, before

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burning the field (a practice locally known as pagara’) or after the burning of the dead vegetation (a technique called padalus). Cassava was planted around the margins of the field and in the swiddens, about twenty days after rice planting. Maize and upland rice were planted almost at the same time, the former maturing in about three months. Poaceae such as Andropogon sorghum and Sorghum vulgare were planted concurrently with rice, forming individual patches across the agricultural field or broken lines around its edges. Setaria italica (Italian millet) was sown at least one week before rice. Beans and squash were harvested in the month of November until March. A few sugar canes (Saccharum officinarum) were planted at the edge of the rice field or around the swidden house. Sweet potatoes were usually planted in the centre of the rice field or, most commonly, were introduced into the swidden after re-clearing it in October. This practice is locally known as dab-dab. It must be pointed out that dabdab is particularly successful in those areas cut from virgin or old fallow forest, which are less susceptible to weeds. Therefore, after planting, sweet potatoes require minimal maintenance. These tubers are also harvested in December, when tree cutting begins, and represent an essential caloric intake when men are busy cutting trees for the next planting season (see Cadeliña 1985: 69). Coconut palms, bananas, fruit trees such as papaya, leguminous plants such as Cajanus cajan, and Capsicum frutescens were also grown in suitable locations inside or around the field, or in the immediate vicinity of the swidden house. In the mid-1980s, a considerable diversity of traditional rice landraces and other crops could be found in people’s swiddens. At that time, about eleven varieties of sweet potatoes, nine of C. esculenta, seven of cassava and of domestic Dioscorea, three types of maize and two types of millet and sorghum could be found in the community. In addition to this, the people still planted at least nine different aromatic plants used by women for personal beautification, most of these belonging to the Lamiaceae family. Cadeliña’s findings indicate that, in the early 1980s, a well-maintained Batak field of about one hectare could produce a yield comparable to that proposed in the green revolution with its high technological input requirements (1985: 125). Cadeliña estimated that, by pooling labour from relatives, a household, on the average, could clear around one-third of a hectare for a swidden plot, and that a one-hectare Batak swidden, under various levels of maintenance, produced around 3,900 kilograms of husked rice. A field with excellent maintenance (weeds completely removed) produced almost 5,000 kilograms, while a moderately maintained one (between 30 to 50 per cent of the field weeded) produced around 4,000 kilograms. A very poorly maintained field (below 30 per cent of the field weeded) made around 2,000 kilograms.8 Also, Cadeliña pointed out that one of the critical factors for a high yield was a careful

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weeding schedule, since the stages of growth of local rice landraces are rather short (between 110 and 120 days). Batak swidden practices in the 1980s were still characterized by an intensive exchange of labour and resources. Cadeliña observed that swiddens were never planted simultaneously and therefore were not harvested at the same time, making reciprocal food sharing pragmatically meaningful. While some households waited for their rice plants to mature, the harvesting households provided those still waiting with a much needed rice supply until their rice had been harvested. ‘Planting at different times seems to constitute a technological response to their anticipated cyclical caloric stress and to the stress they have just been through’ (Cadeliña 1985: 79). In conclusion, Cadeliña (1985: 32) found that ‘under their present swidden system, there is no fear of forest disintegration if outside pressures are kept to the minimum’.

The 1990s: a General Overview The 1990s were the years of government measures for environmental protection and path-breaking legislation to safeguard indigenous rights to land and resources (Novellino 1999, 2000a, 2000b, in press). The notoriety of politicians who were no stranger to logging was now attached to green principles. Environmentalists, policymakers and even many businessmen all claimed to embrace the ‘sustainable development’ paradigm (Bello 2004). Ironically, this is exactly the time when Batak experienced the worse food shortage in living memory, high infant mortality, increasing demographic decline and great uncertainty. When Fidel Ramos took over the presidency in 1992, the new goal of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) was to reforest 600,000 hectares in five years. What, however, is not clear is how much of the target areas consisted of indigenous swiddens under fallow. There were no data on this, mainly because the matter was of no interest to government agencies or to NGOs and, certainly, it was absolutely irrelevant to financing institutions. In the same years, the replacement of shifting cultivation with alternative livelihood practices became one of the cornerstones of DENR community forestry programmes. On 15 January 1993, the DENR enacted Special Order No. 25 for the creation of a task force responsible for identifying, delineating and recognizing ancestral lands and domain claims. Subsequently, the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA) was passed by the Congress of the Philippines (1997) with the primary objective of recognizing, protecting and promoting the rights of indigenous cultural communities.9 In 1998 Estrada was elected president, powerful businessmen, including loggers, supporting his electoral campaign. Once in office, Estrada repaid them by issuing timber licences and contracts. The appointment of

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Antonio Cerilles (a well-known logging tycoon) as DENR secretary led to the freezing of all Community Ancestral Domain Claim (CADC) applications under IPRA, including that submitted by the Tanabag Batak.

The Batak Encounter with the NGOs The early 1990s signalled the first encounter between the Tanabag Batak and Haribon-Palawan, a local NGO. Between 1991 and 1992 the P-BIRD (Palawan-Batak Integrated Rural Development) was implemented in Tanabag. One of the project’s goals was to promote food self-sufficiency by maximizing crop production through the implementation of backyard communal gardening, an irrigation system, pilot wet-rice plots and sloping agricultural techniques. Community members were organized into groups to build contour lines, but not all participants contributed with the same amount of labour. People took part in the project on the condition that they would be compensated with a daily allowance of rice. The Batak complain that rice provisions were insufficient, and that the time invested in terracing did not allow them to accomplish their traditional swidden farming. Furthermore, there was no clear agreement on who would be in charge of the maintenance of the future terraces or how yields would be divided amongst households. At the end, the Batak decided to quit, and the contour lines were never completed.

More Threats to Batak Swiddens In 1994, a ban against shifting cultivation was enforced by the city government of Puerto Princesa (Palawan).10 Soon, the prohibition placed an insupportable burden on the forest. In fact, to compensate for the loss of agricultural products, indigenous peoples were forced to over-extract their own resources (e.g. Agathis tree resin, rattan and honey). While rice yields dropped to an unprecedented level, rice consumption increased. In fact, the Tanabag Batak needed more rice now, to support them during their gathering expeditions for NTFPs. Due to the prohibition, slashing and clearing activities were mainly limited to those areas covered with bushes and wild grasses. As a result, weed growth became vigorous. During the years following the ban, several local landraces of upland rice disappeared. Also the production of root crops decreased dramatically.

ICDPs: Paddy Rice Again In 1994, the Haribon-Palawan made a second attempt to implement an integrated conservation-development project amongst the Tanabag Batak. This was financed through the technical assistance of the World

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Conservation Union (IUCN). In 1995, the Batak were encouraged to develop two hectares of lowland rice. However, according to community members, the soil lacked sufficient water retention, and was inadequate for paddy cultivation. Paddy rice development and improvement of kaingin (swidden agriculture) were not included in the initial project proposal, but were nevertheless implemented. In 1997, the consultant in charge of the technical evaluation wrote: ‘some of these activities (paddy rice development) were not requested by the beneficiaries but were strongly suggested by the project. It is not surprising that the introduction of the two paddy rice plots failed.’ This was also ‘because the technology is not appropriate to the Batak (motor pumps … use of fertilizers and pesticides, use of oxen, etc.)’ (Bech 1997: 13). It is depressing to recognize that the approach of project proponents in the 1990s was not much different from that of PANAMIN during the 1970s. In the Haribon/IUCN Final Project Report, we learn that one of the project’s objectives was to ‘shift from kaingin to sustainable upland agriculture’ and to ‘plant rattan, bamboo, and other native and exotic tree species in and near village settlements and shifting cultivation fallows’ (Haribon-Palawan and IUCN 1996: 23). There are several problems with this approach, which does nothing but rehearse what the DENR had done for years. In fact, the reforestation of indigenous fallow fields forced local communities either to open up more forest land or to clear areas of shrubby bushes and weeds, which will automatically degrade into barren grasslands.

El Niño An El Niño event ravaged Palawan island between March 1998 and December/January 1999, affecting the Batak in a multitude of ways: (1) cassava plants grew in height but produced small tubers or none at all; (2) upland rice production dropped dramatically; (3) wild trees and banana bore little or no fruit; hence also the population of game animals (e.g. boars and monkeys) was affected; and (4) pollen-producing vines and trees did not bear flowers, and honey production collapsed. Because of starvation, Batak body resistance to disease was low, and gastro-enteritis decimated the infant population. While agricultural production continued to decline, the production of Agathis resin increased. I am told that, during El Niño, indigenous gatherers were able to harvest more resin because of dry weather conditions. In fact, resin production decreased during the wet season, when the rain diluted and washed away the exudates from tree trunks. The dry weather also enhanced the collection of rattan canes. According to the Batak, tree trunks and vines were less slippery, and could be climbed more easily to reach the terminal part of the rattan palms.

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La Niña La Niña immediately followed El Niño, and its impact was felt until late April 1999. Together with Agathis resin, rattan gathering also became problematic. Because of rain, the gatherers were unable to dry rattan lengths. The latter were damaged by fungus and thus could not be marketed. Moreover, according to Batak, the flood washed away the most common species of edible river shells and fish, and this had an impact on household diet. During the same period Palawan was hit by windstorms, which damaged cassava and banana plants. The transition from El Niño to La Niña was characterized by the outbreak of intestinal diseases and influenza. Because of the endless rain, the people succeeded in burning only some portions of their swiddens and the planting schedule was delayed for a month. Root crops such as ubi (Dioscorea alata) and amias (C. esculenta) became rotten in the ground. Because of starvation, most of the upland rice fields were harvested prematurely to make tanek. Tanek is a way of processing the unripe newly harvested rice (bagung’ paray). The paray (rice in the husk) is first boiled, placed on a rattan mat, and then dried under the sun. This traditional way of processing immature rice seeds is a way of obtaining immediate relief against hunger, but it also reduces the potential productivity of rice fields, since immature weigh less than mature seeds.

Reduced Mobility: Cassava Continues to Decline Around 1997/98, the Batak were persuaded by the local government to come down from their upland location and move closer to the coast, in the location of Kalakuasan (less than 1.5 hours’ walk from the seashore). In Kalakuasan, Batak attempts to engage in domestic home gardening were frustrated by the presence of stray pigs owned by a Filipino neighbour. The construction of fences is labour-intensive, and the Batak had insufficient time and resources to invest in this activity. Being unable to plant root crops, some Batak decided to raise piglets instead. According to a verbal agreement with the piglets’ owners (a Filipino migrant), the Batak would be entitled to receive one piglet when the animals had given birth. Ultimately, because the Batak had insufficient fodder, they were also forced to leave their pigs to roam around. As a result, no one dared plant cassava in Kalakuasan.

Rice Ceremonies under Threat In the late 1990s the Batak lambay ceremony began to be exploited by the local government. In March 1998 Batak families were asked by the authorities to join the Puerto Princesa city festival, and to perform traditional

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dances for tourists and visitors. The festivity coincided with the beginning of the blooming of the Banebegan (Pterocymbium tinctorium) flowers. This was the time when the Batak were beginning ritual activities in connection with the lambay. The latter is an annual event involving shamans and the whole community in prayers for a successful honey season and an abundant rice harvest. Because of the pressing requests from the city government, Batak were forced to neglect their own ceremonial activities to attend the city festival. When the Batak returned to their community they had no food for the lambay. Ultimately, they were left with no alternative but to request the mayor’s assistance. This is how Pekto (a Batak in his mid-forties) described the situation: ‘Today the rice we eat at the lambay comes from the city government. Before we had enough rice from our fields. We were hunting during the two weeks preceding the ceremony, to ensure that we had sufficient meat. Today, we are asked by the government to dance for the tourists. So we cannot make good plans for our lambay.’

‘Slash or Not to Slash’: the Notion of Dati Kaingin and the ‘Populist View’ In the late 1990s the discourse on indigenous land rights became totally merged with and indivisible from that of biodiversity conservation. Environmental organizations tended to support indigenous claims over their ancestral lands because they perceived it as a means of achieving environmental protection. However, as the DENR argued, indigenous claims over land did not entail the right to cut trees, but only the right to protect them. The inherent ambiguity of DENR towards indigenous people was clearly visible in the notion of dati kaingin (literally ‘old swidden’), which, from a DENR perspective, referred to swiddens without tree cover and that had been used repeatedly over the years. DENR officials in Palawan insisted that present swiddens could not be expanded, and that slash-and-burn farming was allowed only in dati kaingin. This view was confirmed by a former DENR employee: ‘If the people are making kaingin in an area that is already kaingin, this is not prohibited. But if they have to cut more forest, even if this has been growing through fallow cycle, this is forbidden, unless the DENR issues them a permit to cut trees.’ Interestingly enough, the NGOs’ take on this was not much different. Thus, for Attorney Robert Chan of ELAC (Environmental Legal Assistance Center). We embrace the populist view. This is in line with the DENR view that kaingin will be allowed only in those areas that are not classified as forest (not even secondary forest). In short, to make kaingin in secondary forest is not

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Cycles of Politics and Cycles of Nature | 199 allowed. The populist view of conservation is one that allows tribal people to have their rights but not totally or, at least, not in the way they would like to. From our point of view burning eradicates everything, be it old growth or secondary growth.

Of course, indigenous views on these matters were diametrically opposed to those of the NGOs and DENR. For Elisio, a Batak in his forties: The coastal forest is forever gone. The migrants have substituted forest trees with other plants (cashew, mango, etc.). But for us, this is not a good idea. When we make a swidden, we like the forest to grow back, because we depend on it. If you walk in our fields under fallow (lumun) you’ll see a lot of plants. The foresters call them weeds. In reality, many of these ‘weeds’ are the seedlings of wild trees. As you can see, the forest is growing back.

The anthropogenic influence on the composition of old forest has been well documented (e.g. Fairhead and Leach 1998). And yet local environmentalists in Palawan seemed to have limited understanding of how fire and fallow periods contribute to the creation of highly diverse and biologically valuable ecosystems with thriving plant and animal species that could not survive in ‘natural’ forest (see Margalef 1968; Brosius 1981; Rai 1982). Cadeliña has argued that one adaptive function of Batak fallow forest is to produce ‘food resources that never grow in other zones … Plant species are highly diverse ranging from shrubs and bushy type trees in most recently fallowed fields to hardwood ones largely below one or two feet in diameter in areas fallowed for several years’ (1985: 30). These findings have been corroborated by inventories conducted in Palawan by McDermott (1994).

Batak Swiddens in the 1990s Around the late 1990s, several members of the Tanabag Batak complained that their fields were now maniwang (thin), in the sense of being infertile, with poor yields and some fields producing less than 400 kilograms per hectare. I did not measure the amount of rice harvested in each field and therefore I am unable to provide an accurate estimate of the average rice yield during these years. I rely, instead, on the data collected by Melanie McDermott (2000) in the neighbouring community of Kayasan. This settlement can be reached in about eight to ten hours walking southwards from the Tanabag river valley, and it is inhabited by a mixed population of Batak and Tagbanua, who have also been affected by the city government ban on shifting cultivation. In Kayasan, McDermott has calculated an average rice yield of the order of 615 kilograms per hectare, equivalent to an eighteenfold increase over the seed planted (2000: 367). This is significantly lower than estimates provided by elders in both Kayasan and Tanabag, who claim that typical harvests, before the massive arrival of

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migrants in the early 1960s, were forty to sixty or more times the volume of seed. This suggests that between the 1960s and 1990s indigenous rice yields have dropped by at least 50 per cent, and probably more. Ubad (the oldest Batak in Tanabag) remembers that fields were once left to fallow for fifteen to eighteen years.‘Today, because of government restrictions, the people clear their swiddens again after three to five years, when trees have not even reached the size of a leg. When you burn them, few ashes are produced – not enough to make your rice healthy’. A similar situation was observed by McDermott (2000: 357) during the late 1990s in Kayasan. She observed eight indigenous farmers making swiddens in fallows that were only two or three years old. Overall, it would appear that increasing Batak involvement in the cash economy and continuous dealings with government authorities and with other external agents had badly affected their internal cohesion and solidarity networks. Compared with the mid-1980s, reciprocal labour exchange in rice planting and harvesting was now confined to a more limited pool of close kin and rarely involved the whole network of relatives and fellow villagers. The decline of collective harvesting and planting was also justified by the poor yields limiting the quantity of harvested rice that a household could give and receive in exchange for labour. This situation was quite different from that described by Cadeliña (1985: 79) in the early 1980s when harvesting households provided those who were waiting with much needed rice until their turn came. At that time, rice exchanges constituted a Batak coping mechanism for cyclical food fluctuations. Today, these exchanges occur less frequently and are on a very small scale. As a result, compared with the 1980s, the people face more severe caloric stress, especially during the pre-harvest season. Because old fallow forest (lumakad) was rarely cut, the practice of dabdab (the planting of root crops in re-cleared swidden after rice harvest) was also adversely affected. This was because short-fallow fields are too poor to sustain a healthy second crop. Unsuccessful dab-dab practices also contributed to the progressive loss of local varieties of sweet potatoes. Also C. esculenta is now rarely planted, because it does not grow well in short-fallow land. Another reason for the collapse of root-crop production must be attributed to the Batak switch towards a more sedentary existence. Because of government demands, Batak occupation of upland huts generally lasts only until October, when rice harvesting is completed. After that, root crops are left unguarded and thus they become vulnerable to the attacks of wild pigs. Compared with the mid-1980s, cassava production in the 1990s was very low, and could no longer support people during the hungry months. Batak had little incentive to develop root-crop cultivation in the interior (because of wild pigs), as well as around their permanent settlement (because of stray pigs). Since root-crop production was shrinking,

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Batak favoured only those varieties that gave the highest yields in the shortest possible time. Root-crop cultivation was now focused on the madali (fast) varieties of cassava (e.g. dulaw and samar) and sweet potatoes (e.g. cuarenta días, tatlo buwan and camote luzun). As a result, the old mabuhai (long-duration) varieties were planted less frequently or replaced with improved ones.

The New Century: a General Overview Events since the year 2000 indicate that devolution and the socioeconomic development advocated during the 1990s have not brought the expected changes. Evidence shows that decentralization of central state functions has taken place in the absence of a receptive and genuinely reformist periphery. According to Donna-Zapa Gasgonia, a leading environmental lawyer, devolution has not succeeded because the central government has only devolved mandates and responsibilities to local government units (LGUs) but not the financial and technical resources to fulfil them. As a result, important decisions are left in the hands of local government agencies, whose staff are badly trained. In the spirit of devolution, the Tanabag Batak have been asked to settle down closer to the coast for the purpose of building a better interaction with the local authorities. However, as we have seen, this has added further stress to their livelihood practices. Too often, the people are requested to take part in official meetings and seminars in the capital city, but have no budget to cover travel costs and to support families during their absence. The implementation of innovative legislation from which the Batak could benefit has also been blocked by vested interests in Congress and politicians who are unwilling to shift towards a development policy geared towards the interest of the poor (see Vitug 2000). Not only are Batak disempowered by a bad implementation of the law, it is the law itself that is weakened by those agencies responsible for its implementation. This is exactly the case with the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), i.e. the national body mandated to implement IPRA (the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act). Often, NGOs in Palawan have accused the NCIP of being a tool for protecting the interests of politicians and private enterprises rather than those of the indigenous peoples. Late in 2000, President Estrada’s mandate was interrupted by his impeachment, followed by massive popular protest. He stepped down in January 2001 and was replaced by Gloria Macapagal-Harroyo. But these events seem to have had little impact on indigenous and environmental issues. Indeed, Macapagal-Harroyo reaffirmed a commitment to trade liberalization under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Furthermore, she fully

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supported the mining industry and the establishment of a hydrogen sulphide production plant and limestone quarrying operations by Rio Tuba Nickel Mining Corporation (RTNMC)11 in the southern tip of Palawan. This is having disastrous consequences for the coastal environment and for the livelihood and health of local farmers and fishermen. Recently, Ms Arroyo has fought for political survival amid accusations that she rigged the May 2004 presidential election.

‘Foundation Day’: a New Interference in the Batak Swidden Cycle By the year 2000, monetization and the breakdown of traditional reciprocity had reached such an extent that it was virtually impossible to see a Batak sharing wild pig meat with his neighbours. Meat was sold to the coastal restaurant, as well as to fellow villagers. Overall, the years 2000–5 have been characterized by social disorientation, decreasing reliance on community leaders and shamans and the growth of household-based responses to crisis. The deterioration of Batak social fabric is matched by increasing disenchantment with legislation, the state and the work of NGOs. Decreasing mobility is also coupled by an intensification of government control over community affairs. An instance of this is the so-called ‘Foundation Day’, a village-based celebration lasting three days. The barangay authorities expect the Batak to provide free labour (construction of benches and shade shelters), resources (rice, meat, etc.) and other amenities to entertain guests from neighbouring villages. This entails several days spent in preparatory activities, at a time when households are completing the planting of their rice fields. According to the Batak, the customary deadline for planting rice is determined by the alignment and position of three star groups: Murupuru (the Pleiades), Se’ang it babuy (the stars at the back of Taurus’s head with Aldebaran as the star of highest magnitude) and Balatik (the belt of Orion). Because of the Foundation Day, some households are unable to accomplish the planting on time. The Batak claim that, if rice is planted after the disappearance of Murupuru from the sky, yields will be poor.

Batak Responses to Unpredictable Weather Patterns In 2000, due to excessive rain, Batak were able to burn only small portions of their swiddens. In May, the continuous heat did serious damage to the young rice plants. The final outcome was crop failure. To cope with the new food crisis, the Batak utilized, for the first time, alternative livelihood strategies such as the collection and sale of small trees to be used in charcoal-making (ten pieces for 100 pesos, less than US$2). Some Batak also became skilful in charcoal-making, and were able to market their product

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to Filipino lowlanders. In the same year, gravel for the expansion and paving of the northern stretch of the national road was being extracted from Tanabag river. The Batak were opposed to mining operations and apprehensive about the consequences that these may have. On the other hand, they were willing to take advantage of the working opportunities offered by the company, such as guarding bulldozers at night. In the early 2000s, the drastic reduction of agricultural production, the sudden collapse of copra prices in the national and international market and the economic uncertainties following the Asian financial crisis forced the non-indigenous population to increase collection of NTFPs. Between 2001 and 2002 an increasing number of illegal gatherers entered the area managed by the Tanabag Batak under a Community Based Forest Management Agreement (CBFMA).12 The Batak complained about destructive tapping techniques employed by Filipino gatherers, which involved cuts exceeding the thickness of the bark, which resulted in destruction of the cambium and a halt in tree growth (Callo 1995; Novellino 1999), and exposed the tree to attacks from termites and fungi. Due to unsustainable tapping regimes many Agathis trees became unproductive and died. As a result, the most important source of Batak cash income (Agathis resin) was depleted. All this was happening at a time when agricultural production had collapsed after years of city government prohibition on swidden cultivation. In the year 2004–5 the pressure on resin extraction by non-indigenous gatherers decreased. Probably, this was due to the rising of new job opportunities at the barangay level, such as the construction of a new telephone line, contracts for road maintenance, etc. Thus, in the absence of strong competition over Agathis trees, Batak were able to restore more sustainable tapping regimes, and resin production registered an increase.

Insurgency and the Abandonment of Swiddens State attempts to crush communist guerrilla activity in Palawan is another example of how political events continued to impact on Batak subsistence strategies. In 2001–2, the Batak were requested by the military to refrain from visiting their upland fields planted with root crops. The military feared that Batak presence in the hinterland might encourage members of the Maoist New Peoples’ Army (NPA) to establish their camps in the forest and to collect from Batak the so-called ‘revolutionary taxes’ (a tribute in cash or kind). Batak food shortage was exacerbated by other restrictions imposed by the military. For instance, the people were not allowed to keep or construct home-made rifles used for hunting wild pigs. The military also feared that guerrillas might recruit community members to purchase rice for them. As a result, Batak were forbidden to buy rice in a quantity exceeding their daily needs. This entailed Batak having to take

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more frequent trips to the coast, thus switching their time and energy to non-productive activity. Again, in November 2003, the Batak uplands became the target of military operations and subsistence activity was curtailed for two months.

Farming Innovations and theAcquisition of Tagad During critical periods of food shortage, the Batak activate alternative livelihood strategies that are part of a ‘covert repertoire’ of memorized options. For decades, Batak have been receptive to new technologies introduced by migrants, e.g. charcoal-making and tagad (planting sticks with a flat metal blades). Such technologies have not been used by everyone, but only by some individuals at particular times. Only very recently have more Batak made use of this ‘stored knowledge’. For instance, they claim that the flat metal blade of the tagad facilitates the planting process and may ensure better harvesting outcomes, because: (1) it produces only thin cuts rather than circular holes (like the traditional dibble stick), preventing birds from digging the seeds out; (2) after placing the seeds in the cut there is no need to cover the hole with soil; and (3) it is lighter and more manageable than the heavy Batak dibble stick, allowing even children to use it. In this context we should note that traditional Batak rice planting is carried out by groups of men and women working together synchronously. Men strike the soil with the dibble stick, pointed at one end, and women place the seeds into the holes, covering these with a thin layer of soil, using the right or left foot. But why, if the Batak have known about the advantages of the tagad for many years, has this technology only become widespread since 2000? The answer must be found in the decline of larger Batak reciprocal labour parties at rice planting time, and of collective activity in general, leading to more individual and family-based approaches to farming. Today, Batak try to economize as much as possible on labour input and thus rely more on the manpower of their own household. Therefore, a technology such as tagad is useful. Batak acknowledge that their traditional planting method13 requires more labour per unit of output than the new tagad technology. For Lalay (Katibu’s wife): ‘With tagad, I can plant rice on my own, especially when my husband is busy collecting resin in the mountains. Sometimes, I hand the tagad to my daughters, and tell them: it’s your turn now. So we can accomplish the work on our own and much quicker.’

Cashew and the Notion of ‘Ownership’ As we have seen, new farming strategies are emerging among the Batak that allow both women and men to work more autonomously and to

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rely less on reciprocal labour exchange. Also cropping regimes are subject to much more change and, recently, a few households have introduced cashew trees in certain portions of their swiddens. This seems to occur more frequently during election time, when larger fields are opened from old fallow forest, and thus more land becomes available. However, some Batak fear that, after elections, these fields might be placed under government surveillance through the implementation of reforestation projects. Because of this, some households have decided to intersperse cashew with rice, as a way of establishing evidence of landownership. Some of the households I interviewed claimed that their decision to plant cashew was mainly dictated by: (1) its being a low-risk crop, whose seeds are not eaten by wild pigs; (2) the low requirement of capital and labour; and (3) its growth on poor soils. It should be pointed out that cashew flowers are particularly vulnerable to rain, and, often, this has been the cause of crop failure amongst the neighbouring migrant communities. Furthermore, in other regions of the Philippines, cashew plantations on slopes have shown low water infiltration rates and little capacity to accumulate soil organic matter, thus contributing to soil erosion.

Swidden Farming and the Election Cycle Batak swiddens in the 2000s do not seem to differ in size and yields from those of the late 1990s: they are labour-intensive and give low returns. My provisional assessment of Batak upland rice productivity in Tanabag during the year 2004 suggests an average yield between seventeen- and nineteenfold increase over the seeds planted. Again, a year after the 2004 election, government anti-shifting cultivation measures were enforced with vigour. In some indigenous communities, the Bantay Gubat (the implementing arm of the city mayor’s anti-kaingin policy) ordered community members to refrain from cutting trees with a diameter lower than 4 cm. On 5 June 2005, a Tagbanua member of the Kalakuasan community was apprehended for ‘over-cutting’, but the case was dismissed through the intercession of the barangay captain. In late July, rice plants in the vicinity of Kalakuasan looked stunted and frail because of the combined effect of limited rain and nitrogen and phosphorus deficiency. Many Batak expected a harvest delay of at least one month and a crop failure of up to 70 per cent. In comparison, the rice fields in the interior experienced a better growth. According to Batak this is due to the presence of moisture from the air that condenses on rice plants during the night, thus mitigating the effect of drought. As the population becomes more sedentary and the feeding pressure concentrates on fewer areas, at least two families have expressed an

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interest in acquiring ploughs and buffaloes to prepare fields. Though ploughing was long resisted by Batak, some are now becoming familiar with its potential benefits: enhancement of root growth, ability to reduce weeds and to allow a second crop (e.g. mung bean or peanuts), control of runoff and evaporation. Some households are even planning to break the soil in areas packed with well-developed grass for the purpose of planting maize and vegetables, but they do not have the equipment to pursue these goals. More importantly, the land around the settlement is limited and of poor quality; as a result, most community members are clearing swiddens further in the interior. Only twelve families continue to reside and cultivate land in the immediate vicinity of Kalakuasan. However, most families will still keep a house in the permanent settlement in order to comply with the local government demands. I was told that from the ripening of rice (July) up to the end of the harvest season (late October) several families will spend considerable time in their swiddens, returning to the permanent settlement after the harvesting is complete. What we have is a residence pattern where each household, depending on the availability of labour, will move back and forth between Kalakuasan and the upland locations to take care of the domestic pigs that have been left behind and, at the same time, to guard their swiddens against birds and wild pigs. Of course, disadvantaged household (with very young or no children) will be unable to sustain this pattern. Indeed, agricultural decision making varies from household to household, and is subject to continuous changes. For instance, for the two years following election, some families rely mainly on soils that have not regained their nutrients, and thus are quickly colonized by shrubs14 and weeds of dominant species such as agunuy (Chromolaena odorata), muyumuyu (Lantana camara) and karangian (Trema orientalis). In the location of Maysaray, portions of kugun (Imperata cylindrica) land are being cleared, and new methods to suppress this grass are being tested by Batak. One technique has already proved successful; it consists of the combined planting of cassava and banana (the latter planted for two consecutive years) in a plot colonized by Imperata. I was told that, during the growth of cassava and banana, the kugun must be cut constantly, ‘to weaken’ it. By the time cassava is harvested, banana leaves are large enough to produce shade that hampers Imperata growth. In the third year, several households take advantage of the local election15 to convert old-fallow forest into swiddens. Households with a favourable composition distribute their unmarried children in different locations, in order to open as many fields as they can. This serves to minimize the drastic decline of rice yields, especially during the two years following the election.

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Discussion and Conclusion In the previous section, through a chronology of changes and crises from the 1950s to the present day, I have argued that declining yields per unit of land and labour are amongst the basic features of contemporary Batak swidden practices. This trend has reinforced public misconceptions about indigenous shifting cultivators in Palawan. Furthermore, I have attempted to show that a complex set of events and circumstances, rather than Batak ‘ignorance’, have led to the present upland farming crisis. Such events include demographic pressures, loss of important ecological food zones, the drop in seasonal movements, competition over resources, indebtness, government restrictions of forest use and lack of political will to uphold indigenous peoples’ rights. The Batak involvement in the cash economy has also led to the destabilization of culturally imposed limits on material wealth, thus affecting internal community cohesion. Moreover, top-down technical approaches to stabilizing shifting cultivation, imposition of imported participatory logics and various other forms of external interference have further contributed to the breakdown of Batak social support and mobility patterns. My description of Batak agricultural transformations does not provide much hope for a positive turn of events. Indeed, the overall picture is gloomy. What appears as inevitable is that Batak traditional practices will continue to undergo radical changes, the outcomes of which cannot be easily predicted. Nowadays, the people are ever more concerned about increasing the number of pigs, increasing the cultivation of permanent and semi-permanent tree crops (especially coconut, cashew and banana) and optimizing the household labour force. Overall, they are adopting short- and longterm livelihood alternatives to compensate for agricultural decline, as well as a number of techniques and strategies giving the highest results per unit of labour input. Interestingly, the trend displays some elements of the transition from shifting to sedentary upland agriculture, as well as an orientation towards household-level agricultural specialization. In Palawan, a few cases indicate that such a transition has occurred with a certain degree of success, but not without environmental cost.16 It is unlikely that the Batak will replicate the kind of technological innovation that has accompanied agricultural change among some nonindigenous farmers in Palawan. This is mainly because agricultural intensification in the uplands requires greater labour intensity and increased use of various subsidies to the production process (e.g. fertilizers and pesticides) as well as marketing skill and the ability to withstand competition from producers in other communities. The socio-economic deprivation and caloric stress that the Batak are presently facing, in addition to their cultural disorientation, make it impossible for the people to manage such changes successfully. First, Batak are already fully enmeshed in the NTFP

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trade (especially resin and rattan) through which they obtain most of their rice supply. A typical Batak household, where men are most of the time busy in commercial gathering, are generally unable to mobilize sufficient labour internally to ensure successful gardening. On the other hand, although occasional tree cropping is increasing, the deferred character of its returns does not make it a viable and appealing option to most people. Furthermore, Batak households lack the necessary capital to purchase production inputs and to sustain themselves until sales begin. More importantly, they also lack the knowledge of changing market conditions and of commercial gardening technology. The latter would also be incompatible with the people’s present mobility patterns. Overall, Batak are not willing to give up the cultivation of traditional upland rice and, in fact, old and new landraces are being acquired yearly from relatives, neighbouring communities and even migrants. In 2004, at least thirty-three rice varieties were being cultivated by the Tanabag Batak, with each family planting between four and eighteen varieties. This chapter has indicated that in recent years changes have become so complex and diversified as to constrain Batak ability to cope with them successfully. In particular the ‘democratic climate’ that opened up with the Aquiño administration in 1986 signalled an intensification of crisis, which only worsened subsistence conditions for the Batak descending to a historic low point during the later 1990s. Why have the 1990s and the early 2000s been exceptionally difficult for the Batak? The answer must be sought in a concatenation of events that include both socio-political and more obvious natural causes (e.g. El Niño). I have summarized the latter in the preceding part of this chapter, and finally intend to look more closely at certain political dynamics and their modes of operating. To give a lead into the discussion, I shall first recall what Contreras (2000: 147) has written with reference to the rise of post-Marcos discourses and politics. He argues that, in the past two decades, what the Philippines has witnessed is an ‘ideological rearrangement’ that has turned former outright opposition into differences of opinion, and former protesters (human rights organizations) into partners (NGOs). I would add that, as a result of this, the friendly notions of ‘participation’, ‘people’s empowerment’ and ‘sustainable development’ have become part of a common vocabulary used and abused by both state and the society. The state needs the NGOs to support forest protection policies and the NGOs need government legitimacy and approval to be able to carry out their programmes. In Palawan, local government and NGOs have promoted a common discourse that is apparently liberating but which, in fact, offers few opportunities to indigenous communities for upholding their traditional ecological knowledge. The new discourse proposes that ‘ecological sustainability’ and the protection of biodiversity can be attained if upland

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communities work hand in hand with the local government and the NGOs to assert the value of preserving both their culture and the environment. One of the envisaged outcomes of this collaboration is the implementation of stable forms of agriculture and other suitable livelihood alternatives to replace swidden cultivation. Devolution, enacted through the 1991 Local Government Code, was thought to provide the ideal framework within which these goals could be achieved. In reality, devolution has exposed the Batak to a kind of highprofile ‘participation’ that they have no ability to cope with. They have found themselves involved in a new discourse of ‘civil participation’ that has brought only more consultations, more interactions with external agencies, more duties than rights and, ultimately, increasing surveillance of their swidden cultivation practices. In turn, their understanding of state dynamics continues to be confined to the assessment of benefits that they can get from those in power. A ‘good politician’ is generally remembered for his ability to give, and this is largely measured in relation to food and goods. A politician refraining from giving commodities in exchange for votes is not viewed as morally upright, but rather as excessively frugal or, worse, ungenerous and unworthy. Batak perceptions of politicians are clearly reflected in Pekto’s words: Politicians are like a big tree, below which the people sit. We are the nutrients. Without us the tree could not survive. Every three years (election time) the tree bears its fruits; when the fruits are mature they fall down and we collect them. The fruits come in the form of rice donations in exchange for votes. The politicians give us a reward for the nutrients we have given to the ‘tree’. Now, they pretend it is okay to make swidden cultivation. But after the election they will forbid it again.

In Palawan, local government units (LGUs) are aware that a discrepancy exists between the mandate of the national law (e.g. forbidding shifting cultivation) and the conditions for its implementation (practicalities and feasibility). As is well known, law implementation seldom depends on its statutory and inflexible character, but rather on the ambiguities that it generates, and on the extent to which it can be exploited, manipulated and stretched to accommodate the expectations of different stakeholders. On the whole, laws and rules emanating from different sources are conflicting and overlapping. As Vitug (2000: 24) points out, in the Philippines policies tend to change with each new leader and different leaders emphasize different programmes. ‘Hence leadership takes precedence over the system.’ This entails that, while strict implementation of laws is commanded from above (the national government), diversions and exceptions to the rules are tolerated from below (provincial, municipal and barangay governments). Overall (differently from their national counterparts), local politicians are more interested in encouraging flexibility in the implementation of

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policies, rather than coercion. This is because flexibility allows them to manipulate legislation in a way that suits them best. They often appeal to devolution to legitimize their own ‘interpretation’ of the law. And yet ‘flexibility’ is not separated from the ‘power of coercion’. The latter, to be exercised (or paraded), requires that indigenous people and rural peasants be kept in a state of latent illegality. In turn, the state, if it so wishes, can create avenues and opportunities for the so-called ‘unauthorized users of public land’ to revert into ‘legal citizens’, to pursue their slashand-burn practices without being apprehended, and even to be praised for their ecological wisdom. Every three years, during the provincial and municipal elections, politicians tend not to enforce restrictions on shifting cultivation. In this way, they hope to maximize votes from their upland constituents. Some members of local communities, such as that of Kalakuasan, take advantage of this opportunity to increase the size of their swiddens, and even to clear patches of old-growth forest. Instead, during the two consecutive years preceding the election, they clear lands where only small-diameter trees and shrub vegetation are found. If, during elections, more old growth is converted into swiddens, this is not because politicians fail to implement the law. Rather, they want to show their indigenous constituents that they have the power to divert the law, as long as they receive electoral loyalty. Given this, to be resilient, Batak farming knowledge and practices must be structurally modified in a form of ‘dependency’ to state demands and political contingencies. These adjustments are problematic because the discrepancy between the official requirements and the actual implementation of national laws blurs the distinction of what is legal and what is not. To gain access to their natural resources, the Batak have learned new strategies to exploit this vagueness (as well as government institutional weakness, clientship and administrative inefficiency). On the one hand, these strategies tend to counter domination by central authorities, but – unavoidably – they also foster government malfunctioning and a state of permanent crisis in the uplands. Therefore, one should not be surprised that, during the last local elections of 2004, Batak, and the majority of the indigenous people in the municipality of Puerto Princesa, continued to support Mayor Edward Hagedorn, in spite of the fact that he was the mastermind behind the city ordinance against shifting cultivation. A Batak in his thirties told me: Yes, Hagedorn is the maker of the law against kaingin [swidden farming] but we know him and he knows us, he visited our village and gave us rice during the electoral campaign. If I vote for another candidate what difference will it make? Politicians are all the same, they only make promises, but after the election they quickly forget them.

Batak are aware that they can only choose from a limited pool of politicians speaking the same language. Thus, their rational choice is to select a

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candidate community members are familiar with, someone that has already given them material assistance and from whom they hope to receive additional support, especially during periods of food shortage. We are dealing therefore, with a well-established pattern of patronage at all levels of the society, which finds its most vivid expression in the electoral cycle. With reference to this, Walden Bello (2004: 2) has argued that: the beauty of the system is that by periodically engaging the people in an exercise to choose among different members of the elite, elections make voters active participants in legitimising the social and economic status quo. Thus has emerged the great Philippine paradox: an extremely lively play of electoral politics unfolding above an immobile class structure that is one of the worst in Asia.

In the Philippine cycle of elections, powerful families, powerful political oligarchies, powerful companies succeed in paralysing the legal procedures that could guarantee the protection of the weakest in society. Thus private interests persist to the detriment of millions of Filipinos (Bernas 1992: 4). While the Batak have learned how to establish relationships with politicians, their ability to understand the intricacies of legislation remains limited. As a result, NGOs have come into the picture to assist communities with the operational structure of law implementation. However, in some cases, community leaders bypass NGO mediation and, instead, prefer to enter into personalized relationships with influential politicians. Today, it is a common practice for the leaders of the Tanabag Batak to walk straight into the city mayor’s office to request rice, money and commodities and also to seek exemption from the ban on kaingin. Because these requests are, in part, fulfilled, the Batak feel that some politicians are more accountable than NGOs. Politicians act as patrons towards village leaders, who tend to capitalize on their knowledge of local politics to gain as many benefits as they can for their communities and for themselves. Of course, these interactions are prone to high-level manipulation. For instance, during election time, the promise of ‘libre kaingin’ (unrestrained swidden practices) is the incentive that is usually dangled by politicians in front of the indigenous communities. As a result, every three years, more old forest is converted into swiddens that, in most cases, will no longer undergo a long fallow rotation. This is because government interventions, over the years, have already altered the sustainability of indigenous agricultural systems, to the extent that it has become increasingly difficult for the Batak to replicate their traditional ecological knowledge. My argument has, I think, come full circle. In the absence of a credible and committed political class, devolution, ‘popular participation’ and those liberating ideologies that were meant to uplift the most marginal sectors of society have contributed, instead, to further disempower them. We

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have good reason to believe that in the 1970s, at the height of the Marcos regime, the Batak were much better off and were still able to carry out most of their swidden practices undisturbed. And yet it was in 1975, during Marcos’s time, that the state prohibition on slash-and-burn cultivation was reinstated through Presidential Decree No. 705. And it was in 1976 that one-third of the total land area of Palawan was given to timber concessions (Conelly 1996). And it was also in the 1970s that the infamous PANAMIN project was implemented. Nevertheless, in Marcos’s day the state had limited capacity to control remote communities, partially because (differently from today) it could not obtain the collaboration of non-governmental and people’s organizations. The latter, instead, were rather perceived as enemies of the state and, in many instances, were banned and suppressed. Furthermore, the Batak were too geographically marginal and politically insignificant to be paid attention to. More importantly, northern Palawan was not an insurgency spot, and thus there were no attempts on the part of the state to control the people through militarization. It was only in the late 1980s that Batak fully emerged from their ‘political isolation’ and, particularly in the 1990s, they began to interact ‘freely’ with government and non-government agencies. As Foucault (1982: 221) puts it, not only is freedom the precondition for power, but ‘power is exercised only over free subjects and only insofar as they are free’. In the 1990s, through devolution, government programmes and NGO projects, the Batak were no longer displaced outside the boundaries of the state. Rather they became recipients of external assistance and were invited to ‘participate’ in meetings and seminars, and to settle down closer to the coast. Thus they become ‘locatable’ and ‘being locatable, local peoples are those who can be observed, reached and manipulated as and when required’ (Asad 1993: 9). Those who do not grasp the connection between the cycles of politics and those of nature will continue to blame indigenous communities for the dramatic changes occurring in the landscape, for the expansion of bush land and for the progressive decline of forest cover. However, the link between government policies and what goes on in the environment is, for the Batak, a rather obvious and recurrent experience. In order to comply with the government demands for permanent cultivation, some community members are converting their swiddens (or portions of it) into agroforestry. In this way, they hope to counter the harassments from Bantay Gubat. However, those fields planted with tree crops, because of poor tending and no pruning are unlikely to generate significant extra income. In the meantime, Batak will continue to clear forest plots (old fallows and secondary forest) for upland rice, in less accessible locations, and the election cycle provides them with the opportunity to do so. One possible scenario can be envisaged: since forest is not increasing, the conversion of some swiddens into permanent orchards may reduce the

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number of fallow fields under rotation, and this may lead to further decrease in the length of fallow periods, which may lead to further decline in yields, and so on in a vicious circle of escalating resource degradation. The more precious topsoil and vegetative cover are lost, the more local environmental organizations will be supportive of government measures against shifting cultivation. The more such measures are enforced, the more Batak will cultivate soils that have not regained their nutrients, and hence they will have to devote more time in controlling weeds and pests. The consequences, once again, are all too predictable and tragic: more areas will lose the capacity to support forest, local landraces will continue to decline, malnutrition will worsen and pressure on NTFPs will increase exponentially. It is a rather nice irony that the expansion of degraded fallow land gives new opportunities to external agencies for engaging in treeenrichment planting and other conservation measures. In a similar vein, declining food production and diminishing biodiversity provide additional incentives to international organizations for financing more of the same. It is no secret that much of the international aid money for the conservation of Palawan has already been spent in vain for projects that have failed to respond to the uplands crisis.17

Is There a Way Out of the Crisis? It will require detailed scientific studies to determine whether the conditions for optimal long fallows are still present anywhere in Palawan. And yet such studies are difficult to carry out and require a long-term commitment. Part of the problem lies in the evolving demography and in the economic changes taking place within lowland peasant societies. In recent years, urbanization rates in Palawan have been high. Therefore it would be a mistake to take for granted that, in the near future, the rural population of Puerto Princesa municipality will colonize additional portions of the Batak upland territory by opening more swiddens in the interior. Indeed, the young Filipino generations of the coastal settlements do not find shifting cultivation an appealing option, regarding it as a backward practice, a failure to progress. Conversely, the majority of young people aim at educational attainments and, often, they look for off-farm employment opportunities in the capital city. On the other hand, Batak continue to be anchored to their land, while experiencing a dramatic demographic decline. We may speculate that, compared with other neighbouring indigenous communities, the Tanabag Batak would still enjoy a favourable land ratio in the coming decades. This, however, could not entail that they turn back the clock to fully sustainable swidden agriculture and replicate the farming regime they had in the 1950s. Too many socio-political contingencies and environmental changes have occurred

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since then. Remarkably, some Batak are still able to recover fertility in fallowed sites but, to do so, they have to cut old fallow forest ‘illegally’, facing the risk of being apprehended and fined. Perhaps what is most needed is government recognition of the differences between indigenous and migrants’ practices of shifting cultivation. Until now, decision-makers have ignored such differences. Through appropriate legal means the government should provide more space for indigenous communities to use their swiddens rotationally instead of imposing top-down technical solutions. This further entails that ‘degraded areas’ (those that are unlikely to revert to forest) should no longer be equated with indigenous fallow fields. It is my contention that laws should move away from coercion towards a legislation that provides incentives to indigenous cultivators to make their swidden practices more productive and sustainable. This law should be paralleled by serious efforts to offer technical, credit, institutional and other support services, in order to increase and stabilize indigenous farming outputs. In places where swidden practices have become irreversibly unsustainable, specific strategies should be developed in close coordination with the client communities rather than forcing them to cultivate their swiddens continuously, as government foresters often suggest. Another major challenge is to document and evaluate upland farming strategies through an integrated and interactive long-term process of research and development. This process should identify indigenous best farming practices, understanding them and the contexts in which they are used. Sadly, the type of development that is setting the trend in Palawan is not moving towards these objectives, nor is there is any indication that it will. If so, is there a way out of the present upland crisis? It might seem odd to raise this question in a context where the nation, as a whole, is facing enduring socio-political stagnation, which finds its causes in the evergrowing imbalances between societal influence and state power (Bernas 1992), and thus in the failure of the state to control elite factions and to harness them and their resources for development (Bello 2004: 286). Suffice it is to say that the goals of equitable and sustainable development, indigenous people’s empowerment and grass-roots participation are not compatible with the narrow economic interests of the political elite or with the doctrine of technocrats. This may sound all too obvious, but sometimes the obvious can teach us a lesson.

Notes 1. Palawan is the fifth largest island in the Philippines and has the highest percengtage of forest cover in the archipelago, between 38 per cent and 44 per cent of the island surface (see Serna 1990; Kummer 1992).

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Cycles of Politics and Cycles of Nature | 215 2. A barangay is the smallest administrative unit under a municipality, which is governed by an elected captain and council. 3. Batak traditional ecological knowledge and their accounts of the antiquity of their swidden practices run counter to Eder’s hypothesis. In fact, Batak have a very complex and detailed mythology dealing with rice and elaborate swidden rituals. Numerous legends trace the origin of rice back to people’s remote past. They name and recognize about seventy-two landraces of upland rice, of which forty-four are said to be dati (old) and tunay (original) to the area, twenty-one are considered relatively new and at least seven have been acquired very recently. Moreover, the Batak have a complex nomenclature related to the different stages of rice growth, rice types and morphology, as well as an elaborate classification of soil areas and types (see Novellino 2003c). 4. According to local informants one cavan of unhusked rice weights approximately 50 kg and the conversion rate for salop or ganta (the measure used for rice seeds) is 2.5 kg. 5. In 1978, around 1,000 square kilometres of primary forest nationwide were estimated to have been logged, paving the way for the landless migrants. During the same period, around 380,000 families are said to have engaged in kaingin (shifting cultivation) countrywide, occupying at least 23,000 square kilometres of forest and critical watershed areas (Myers 1980: 96). 6. At that time, I assisted the Tanabag Batak in writing a petition against this logging firm. The document was submitted to the DENR and to the Office of the President. A few months later, a DENR investigation sent to the area established that the logging company had operated outside the boundaries of its concession and hence its licence was revoked. 7. I was told that the lambay ceremony was not originally from Tanabag and, traditionally, it was practised only by the northern Batak groups. Most probably, it was introduced in Tanabag around thirty years ago by the shaman Padaw, who had married and lived there for many years. 8. Reported yields of swidden elsewhere in the Philippines run as high as 2,300 kg/ha (Conklin 1957). Conelly (1983), after an assessment of numerous studies, proposes that the average productivity of traditional long-fallow shifting cultivation in southeast Asia is 1,600 kg/ha. In comparison to such findings, Cadeliña’s data on Batak rice productivity may support an over-estimation. 9. Note that shifting cultivation is not perceived by the government as compatible with the responsibilities of the indigenous peoples in their ancestral domain. According to the IPRA law (sec. 9 of chapter 3) such responsibilities include the preservation, restoration and maintenance of a balanced ecology in the ancestral domain through the protection of flora, fauna, watershed areas and other reserves, as well as participation in the reforestation of denuded areas. For an extended treatment of the ancestral domain legislation, see Novellino (2000b), available at http://www.fao.org/Docrep/x7069t/x7069t06.htm 10. Lately, the ban has been partially lifted in favour of ‘regulated burning’, the definition and interpretation of which remain ambiguous. 11. The Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD) endorsed the plan of the Rio Tuba Nickel Mining Corporation (RTNMC), while the DENR provided the environmental assessment (EA) clearance. PCSD is a unique government body formed by Republic Act No. 7611 with a mandate for the protection of the environment within the province. In reality, indigenous interests are not represented within the council, whose members continue to entertain several new applications for mining.

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216 | Dario Novellino 12. In April 2001, through Grant No. MG59 from the Biodiversity Support Program, I assisted the Tanabag Batak in the implementation of several initiatives to stop the entry of illegal gatherers in the CBFMA area. The trail leading to Kalakuasan was fenced with wire, and a main gate was constructed. 13. In April 2004 I witnessed the planting of a large swidden by groups composed of at least eight men and about five women. Women and men were working in separate groups, and each individual had his/her own tagad. 14. This situation represents a common trend, but there are individual variations and exceptions to the rule. For instance, also during non-election time, some households, in spite of government prohibitions, still opened old-fallow forest in remote locations, where they could not be easily reached by foresters. On the other hand, newly married couples, especially those with a pregnant wife, lacked labour and resources to invest in cutting secondary forest, and opted for the clearing of bush land. The poor health of a family member, or old age, may also force a household to clear areas in the immediate vicinity of Kalakuasan, where soils are generally poorer. In short, the impact of policy on farming practices varied according to households’ individual decisions and contingencies. Often, the latter are unpredictable and cannot be easily accounted for. 15. Local elections (municipal and provincial), as well as the elections for district representatives of the lower house, are held every three years. The presidential elections are held every six years. 16. In the case of Cuyonin farmers of San Jose (Puerto Princesa municipality) such costs included the disappearance of the last stands of tropical forest in that area, depletion of water sources and the massive use of commercial fertilizer, with deleterious effects on the soil (see Eder 2000). 17. One of these top-down projects was the Palawan Tropical Forestry Protection Programme (PTFPP), funded by the European Commission and operating since 1995. I have visited several PTFPP sites and found no evidence of success.

References Alejo, A.E. 2000. Generating Energies in Mount Apo. Cultural Politics in a Contested Environment. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Apthorpe, R. and D. Gasper (eds). 1996. Arguing Development Policy: Frames and Discourses. London: Frank Cass/Geneva: EADI. Asad, T. 1993. Genealogies of Religions: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Bech, J. 1997. Project Evaluation ‘Sustainable Utilizatuion of Non-Timber Forest Products in Palawan’ (January–February 1997), unpublished manuscript. Bello, W. 2004. The Anti-development State: the Political Economy of Permanent Crisis in the Philippines. Quezon City: Department of Sociology, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines, Diliman. Bernas, J.G. 1992. ‘Beyond Mere Legitimacy’, in L. Kalaw-Tirol and S.S. Coronel (eds), 1992 and Beyond: Forces and Issues in Philippine Elections. Manila: Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and Ateneo Center for Social Policy and Public Affairs, pp. 3–5. Brosius, P. 1981. ‘After Duwagan: Deforestation, Succession and Adaptation in Upland Luzon, Philippines’, Master’s thesis. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii. Bryant, R., J. Rigg and P. Stott. 1993. ‘Forest Transformation and Political Ecology in Southeast Asia’, Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters 3: 101–11.

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Cycles of Politics and Cycles of Nature | 217 Cadeliña, R.V. 1985. In Time of Want and Plenty: the Batak Experience. Dumaguete City: Silliman University. Callo, R.A. 1995. Damage to Almaciga Resources in Puerto Princesa and Roxas, Palawan Concessions. College, Laguna, Philippines: Report to Ecosystems Research and Development Bureau, Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Conelly, W.T. 1983. ‘Upland Development in the Tropics: Alternative Economic Strategies in a Philippine Frontier Community’, Ph.D. dissertation. Santa Barbara: University of California. ___. 1996. ‘Strategies of Indigenous Resource Use Among the Tagbanua’, in J.F. Eder and J.O. Fernandez (eds), Palawan at the Crossroads: Development and the Environment on a Philippine Frontier. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, pp. 71–96. Congress of the Philippines. 1997. Republic Act No. 8371. Manila, the Philippines: Congress of the Philippines. Conklin, H.C. 1957. Hanunóo Agriculture: a Report on an Integral System of Shifting Cultivation in the Philippines. Forestry Development Paper 12. Rome: FAO. Contreras, A.P. 2000. ‘Rethinking Participation and Empowerment in the Uplands’, in P. Utting (ed.), Forest Policy and Politics in the Philippines. The Dynamics of Participatory Conservation. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press and United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, pp. 144–70. Eder, J.F. 1977a. ‘Modernization, Deculturation, and Social Structural Stress: the Decline of the Umbay Ceremony among the Batak of the Philippines’, Mankind 11: 144–49. ___. 1977b. ‘Portrait of a Dying Society: Contemporary Demographic Conditions among the Batak of Palawan’, Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society 5: 12–20. ___. 1978. ‘The Caloric Returns to Food Collecting: Disruption and Change among the Batak of the Philippine Tropical Forest’, Human Ecology 6: 55–69. ___. 1987. On the Road to Tribal Extinction. Depopulation, Deculturation, and Maladaption among the Batak of the Philippines. Berkeley: University of California Press. ___. 2000. A Generation Later: Household Strategies and Economic Change in the Rural Philippines. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Eder, J.F. and J.O. Fernandez 1996. ‘Palawan, a Last Frontier’, in J.F. Eder and J.O. Fernandez (eds), Palawan at the Crossroads. Development and Environment on a Philippine Frontier. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, pp. 1–22. Fairhead, J. and M. Leach. 1998. Reframing Deforestation: Global Analysis and Local Realities – Studies in West Africa. London: Routledge. Foucault, M. 1982. ‘The Subject and Power’, in H.L. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow (eds), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 208–26. Grillo, R.D. 1997. ‘Discourses of Development: the View from Anthropology’, in R.D. Grillo and R.L. Stirrat (eds), Discourses of Development. Anthropological Perspectives. Oxford, New York: Berg Publishers, pp. 1–33. Haribon-Palawan and IUCN. 1996. Sustainable Utilization of Non-timber Forest Products, Phase I: Final Report. IUCN: Palawan, Philippines. Hilhorst, D. 2003. The Real World of NGOs: Discourses, Diversity and Development. London, New York: Zed Books. Kirsch, S. 2001. ‘Lost Worlds. Environmental Disaster, “Culture Loss”, and the Law’, Current Anthropology 42(2): 167–98.

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218 | Dario Novellino Kummer, D.M. 1992. Deforestation in the Postwar Philippines. Manila: Ateneo University Press. Marche, A. 1970 [1883]. Luzon and Palawan. Manila: Filipiniana Book Guild. Margalef, R. 1968. Perspectives in Ecological Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McDermott, M. 1994. ‘Conservation Assessment Report (Annex)’, in WWFPhilippines, Tribal Filipino Apostolate, NATRIPAL and PANLIPI (eds), Community-based Conservation and Enterprise Program for Indigenous Communities in Palawan, Philippines. Manila: WWF-U.S. ___. 2000. ‘Boundaries and Pathways: Indigenous Identity, Ancestral Domain, and Forest Use in Palawan, the Philippines’, Ph.D. dissertation in Wildland Resource Science. Berkeley: University of California. Miller, E.Y. 1905. ‘The Batak of Palawan, the Philippines’, Department of the Interior, Ethnological Survey Publication 2: 179–89. Myers, N. 1980. Conversion of Tropical Moist Forests. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences. Novellino, D. 1997. Social Capital in Theory and Practice. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). ___. 1999. ‘The Ominous Switch: From Indigenous Forest Management to Conservation – the Case of the Batak on Palawan Island, Philippines’, in M. Colchester and C. Erni (eds), Indigenous Peoples and Protected Areas in South and Southeast Asia. Document No. 97. Copenhagen: IWGIA, pp. 250–95. ___. 2000a. ‘Forest Conservation in Palawan’, Philippine Studies 48: 347–72. ___. 2000b. ‘Recognition of Ancestral Domain Claims on Palawan Island, the Philippines: Is There a Future?’, Land Reform: Land Settlement and Cooperatives 1: 57–72. ___. 2003a. ‘Contrasting Landscapes, Conflicting Ontologies: Assessing Environmental Conservation on Palawan Island (the Philippines)’, in D. Anderson and E. Berglund (eds), Ethnographies of Conservation: Environmentalism and the Distribution of Privilege. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 171–88. ___. 2003b. ‘Miscommunication, Seduction and Confession: Managing Local Knowledge in Participatory Development’, in J. Pottier, A. Bicker and P. Sillitoe (eds), Negotiating Local Knowledge. London: Pluto Press, pp. 273–97. ___. 2003c. ‘Shamanism and Everyday Life. An Account of Personhood, Identity and Bodily Knowledge amongst the Tanabag Batak of Palawan, the Philippines’, Ph.D. dissertation in Environmental Anthropology, University of Kent at Canterbury. ___. in press. ‘”Talking about Cultura” and “Signing Contracts”: the Bureaucratization of the environment on Palawan Island (the Philippines)’, in C.A. Maida (ed.), Sustainability and Communities of Place. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Preston, P.W. 1994. Discourses of Development: State, Market and Polity in the Analysis of Complex Change. Aldershot: Avebury. Rai, N. 1982. ‘From Forest to Fields: a Study of Philippine Negrito Foragers in Transition’, Ph.D. dissertation. Honolulu: University of Hawaii. Serna, C.B. 1990. ‘Rattan Resources Supply Situation’, in N.K. Toreta and E.H. Belen (eds), Rattan, Proceedings of the National Symposium/Workshop on Rattan, Cebu City, 1–3 June 1988. Book Series, No. 99. Los Baños, Laguna, the Philippines: Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development. Tandon, Y. 1996. ‘An African Perspective’, in D. Sogge (ed.), Compassion and Calculation. The Business of Private Foreign Aid. London, Chicago: Pluto Press with Transnational Institute.

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Cycles of Politics and Cycles of Nature | 219 Thrupp, S., S. Hecht and J. Browder. 1997. The Diversity and Dynamics of Shifting Cultivation: Myths, Realities and Policy. Washington DC: World Resources Institute. Venturello, M.H. 1907. ‘Manners and Customs of the Tagbanuas and Other Tribes of the Island of Palawan, Philippines’, (trans. E.Y. Miller), Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 48: 514–58. Vitug, M.D. 2000. ‘Forest Policy and National Politics’, in P. Utting (ed.), Forest Policy and Politics in the Philippines. The Dynamics of Participatory Conservation. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press and United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, pp. 11–39. Warren, C.P. 1964. The Batak of Palawan: a Culture in Transition. Research Series No. 3, Philippine Studies Program. Chicago: University of Chicago.

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CHAPTER

9

The Tobe and Tara Bandu A Post-independence Renaissance of Historical Forest Regulation Authorities and Practices in Oecusse, East Timor

Laura S. Meitzner Yoder

Introduction The new nation of East Timor has experienced decades of political tumult, culminating in full independent statehood in May 2002. Political transitions precipitated rapid forest decline under Indonesian rule (1975–99) and during the violence and reconstruction surrounding the 1999 transition to independence.1 In response, villagers and government officials alike turned to displaced traditional mechanisms for forest regulation to manage locally important crises of forest degradation, specifically to address recent losses of sandalwood (Santalum album L.) and gewang palm (Corypha sp.). Local actors revived and adapted the ecological institutions of ritual authorities (tobe) and forest prohibitions (tara bandu) to give new form to state-supported customary practices for forest protection. This chapter examines developments in forest regulation in one rural district of East Timor, the Oecusse enclave, during the first two years of the new nation’s administration (Figure 9.1).

Sandalwood Trade History and its Local Political Context The history of East Timor’s Oecusse enclave includes centuries of local and extra-local traders jockeying for control over the region’s lucrative sandalwood, which thrives in disturbed soils of the interior mountains. Asian traders visited Timor before the thirteenth century (Ptak 1983,1987;

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Figure 9.1. The political divisions of East Timor showing Oecusse enclave to the West

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Villiers 1985). One of the earliest Chinese descriptions of Timor (c. 1350) stated that sandalwood was a dominant and abundant species on the island (Ptak 1983: 37; 1987: 89). A pre-1600 source added detail to Timorese authorities’ involvement in coastal trade (Zhang Xi 1981): local figures performed sacrifices, and, when a merchant ship landed, a local king travelled to the marketplace with his entourage to collect a tax and to oversee the sandalwood trade, which could only take place in his presence (Ptak 1983: 40–41). Competing Portuguese and Dutch mercantile interests from the 1500s eventually led to the formal colonial partitioning of the island between Portuguese areas, constituting eastern Timor and the Oecusse enclave on Timor’s northwest coast, and Dutch areas, across the western half of the island (Farram 1999). Exogenous factors including trade and non-native rule have long played important parts in written and oral narratives of changing forest cover and a long, but incomplete, sandalwood decline in Oecusse (see Jarosz 1996; Ellen 1999; Sandlund et al. 2001). Oral histories in Oecusse insist that, before early Asian and later European trade, there were no local uses for the ubiquitous native sandalwood; it is said that local people did not know what the purpose of this plant was. Its value was revealed only when Chinese traders appeared on Oecusse’s shore with a sandalwood branch, which they showed local people and asked them to bring for trade on the coast. Traders obtained the sandalwood through dealing with part-European rulers and indigenous kings, who commanded that the wood be brought to them. Extensive trade reduced the sandalwood stocks, which had enjoyed legendary abundance; early European and Asian traders believed the supply to be inexhaustible and reported that Timorese used the tree for firewood (Ptak 1983: 40; Villiers 1985: 64). But, even by the late 1600s, merchants blamed Oecusse-based Eurasian rulers for decimating the region’s sandalwood to the point that the Timorese trade was no longer worthwhile (e.g. Boxer 1947; Leitão 1948: 248–49). In the mid-1800s, a Portuguese governor viewed sandalwood as insignificant to Timor’s trade (de Castro 1867: 304), but the beginning of the twentieth century again saw peak exports of Timorese sandalwood (Ormeling 1956: 156). In 1901, the Portuguese governor blamed native leaders for sandalwood depletion (Cinatti Vaz Monteiro Gomes 1950: 14). Subsequent legislation restricting sandalwood trade made Oecusse the exception to the colonial ban: a 1929 decree acknowledged that vast quantities of Oecusse sandalwood continued to be cut for trade to surrounding Dutch territories and that the government was unable to supervise compliance in the enclave (ibid.: 15–16). Soon after, one colonial administrator suggested that the Oecusse region was so poor since the disappearance of sandalwood from its forests that the Portuguese should consider trading it to the Dutch for some more favourable piece of Timor (Martinho 1945: 38, 268).

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Contested access to the region’s sandalwood among Asian and European traders, two colonial powers and powerful native and Eurasian kings contributed to the formation of Oecusse as a political enclave under nominal Portuguese authority. For centuries, local kings proved unwilling to relinquish their control over the trade, rebuffing multiple colonial military and political efforts to control the Oecusse region (Fox 2000). Oecusse served as a hub for sandalwood export for centuries and was the first Portuguese political capital until local rulers forced the Portuguese eastward in 1769 (de Castro 1867). This one-time economic centre became a neglected zone, receiving little attention from the central government. From the 1700s to the present, the persistent isolation of the enclave permitted, or required, a high degree of autonomy from local governing officials and the customary authorities who collaborated with them in forest oversight. For centuries, sandalwood access has been closely regulated by ritual authorities legitimized by local kings, with severe penalties for nonapproved harvest. On Magellan’s expedition in January 1522, Antonio Pigafetta (1969 [1522]: 139) went ashore at Oecusse to secure food and met a local chief. Pigafetta’s account noted the presence of Asian traders and described sacred and ritual elements surrounding sandalwood; he noted that sandalwood had to be ‘cut at a certain phase of the moon, for otherwise it would not be good’ (141).2 In addition, ‘when they go to cut the sandalwood (as they told us) the devil appears in divers forms, who tells them, if they have need of anything, to demand it of him. Because of this apparition they are sick for some days’ (141). Although people observed rituals around cutting sandalwood, they still met with supernatural consequences. Oecusse’s central ritual authority is called a tobe, a figure found throughout western Timor, although decades ago some noted their declining power in formerly Dutch-claimed territories (Middelkoop 1960: 22; Schulte Nordholt 1971: 55–83; McWilliam 1991, 2002). As custodians of specialist ecological knowledge, the tobe have broad oversight of land and forests: they carry out all stages of agricultural rituals; collect an annual beeswax tribute for the kings; establish and enforce forest prohibitions; and have the power to grant or to deny land used for agriculture in a given year. Today, there are about seventy tobe in Oecusse, each responsible for clearly bounded, named, nested territories that cover the entire expanse of the district (Meitzner Yoder 2005). While some tobe are restricted to performing agricultural rituals, as a group they are best known popularly for their role in sandalwood regulation. During the Portuguese era until the 1970s, when the king – or the colonial administration, through the king – ordered sandalwood to be cut, the tobe performed pre-harvest rituals and then went alone into the forest to check for the presence of adequate aromatic heartwood as judged by bark thickness, using a chisel originally conferred by the king for this purpose. People frequently mention that sandalwood cut inappropriately,

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without proper ritual and authority, would not yield the valuable heartwood, even if the trees were large and should be expected to have heartwood. The tobe marked trees approved for harvest, which villagers then cut, taking the best portion to the king and small amounts to the tobe and other village authorities. People caught cutting sandalwood outside this procedure or farmers who damaged sandalwood seedlings in the cutting or burning of swidden field preparations were reported by the tobe and subjected to physical punishment by the king’s guards, heavy fines assessed by the tobe and potential exile from Oecusse. In Portuguese times, the tobe were powerful and feared as much for their ability to charge and to fine people as for their spiritual–ritual powers, and people reportedly rarely risked transgressing a tobe’s prohibitions or dared to cut sandalwood. In marked contrast to outsiders’ blame of local authorities for sandalwood depletion in the pursuit of a trade monopoly, Oecusse villagers portray local kings and tobe as extremely parsimonious with sandalwood requests over the past century; during the 1950s and 1960s, Oecusse-based traders often sourced sandalwood in Indonesian West Timor for trade beyond the island, as they were unable to obtain any substantial quantity within the district, given the strength of local restrictions. Oecusse people consistently report that very large sandalwood trees were commonplace in the mid-1970s.

The Parallel Decline of Ritual Authorities and Sandalwood Soon after Indonesia began ruling East Timor in 1976, an Indonesian parastatal corporation commenced massive purchasing expeditions which rapidly depleted Oecusse’s sandalwood, by the mid-1980s leaving only saplings in the district, exemplifying a pattern replicated in forests throughout the province (Aditjondro 1994; Sandlund et al. 2001; Bouma and Kobryn 2004). Although Oecusse was not subjected to the extreme levels of violence and social disruption that occurred in the eastern regions (Budiardjo and Liong 1984, Taylor 1999), some Oecusse residents report that farmers who did not present sandalwood for sale were threatened with its forcible and unpaid removal from their land. Villagers were required to sell the wood at low prices within Oecusse; those who dared to sell wood for more profit over the border in West Timor risked severe punishment if caught. Indonesian military governance combined with corporate activity to weaken the local kingdom structure, and existing controls on sandalwood harvest broke down.3 While the tobe’s other ritual activities continued, their sandalwood monitoring role faded as the wood was cut and sold in record quantities (see also Ellen 1993: 140 on economic motives to transgress traditional

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prohibitions). Villagers say that in 1977/78, when they initially cut sandalwood against the tobe’s prohibitions, they would smuggle the sandalwood for sale at night to avoid detection and identification, but by 1980 people sold the wood openly and without fear of fines. People frequently comment that the Indonesian administration ‘replaced’ the tobe with forestry officers, who under Indonesia had power to approve felling of trees. Many Oecusse residents closely associate the decline of tobe authority with degradation of forest resources in general during the Indonesian period, and with sandalwood loss in particular. Comparable cases of state involvement in forest decline are amply described throughout the Indonesian archipelago ( Peluso 1992; Dove and Kammen 2001; Sandlund et al. 2001; de Jong et al. 2003; Bouma and Kobryn 2004; McWilliam 2005).

The Over-harvesting of Palm Leaves and the Implementation of Forest Protection Measures With the development of Indonesian civil servants’ and highlanders’ resettlement housing in the lowlands from the early 1980s, Corypha palm forest on Oecusse’s north coast declined. Residents tell how, during the 1960s, they hunted a wide variety of animals in thick forests on the outskirts of the then sparsely populated coastal district capital, areas that following housing expansion remain largely cleared of vegetation. While maintaining roofing is a persistent challenge throughout Oecusse, the crisis in thatch leaf supply occurred following the widespread burning of people’s thatch houses at the time of the 1999 political transition, when the vast majority of families in Oecusse had to rebuild their homes all at once. One survey4 estimated that two-thirds of the district’s homes were made unlivable by the September–October 1999 violence; many settlements suffered complete destruction of every home and public structure. Instead of families replacing their roofs in a staggered pattern as normally required every ten to fifteen years, the simultaneous need caused sudden and serious depletion in district stocks of lowlanders’ gewang palm (Corypha sp.) and highlanders’ alang-alang grass (Imperata cylindrica L.) leaves used for thatch. Prices soared: in 2000 and 2001, the cost of enough Imperata grass – purchased from Indonesian West Timor – to roof one house went as high as two large cattle, worth up to US$400 at that time. An international relief agency that planned to supply labour and transportation to provide palm thatch as part of an emergency shelter kit soon depleted available stocks of the leaves within Oecusse, and had to redesign the programme to supply corrugated metal roofing. One lowland community noted the toll that over-cutting had taken on its palm supplies, and in 2001 declared a three-year total ban on harvesting its leaves for thatch, to permit recovery of the palms, to be followed by

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limited harvesting upon approval by a village committee headed by a tobe. This community initiative was the start of what grew into a districtwide forest protection programme, supported by the local government and mediated by customary authorities.

Tara Bandu Forest Protection Ceremonies and Reinstating the Tobe The first two post-independence tara bandu ceremonies held in Oecusse were coastal community initiatives in 2001 (Figure 9.2). After the first palm frond harvesting ban, a second community held a tara bandu to ‘restore’ a breached prohibition on logging in a sacred forest near the Indonesian border that was opportunistically cut during the refugee crisis of 1999–2000; in this case, the district Agriculture Department assessed additional penalties to those charged by the villagers. In 2002 and 2003, the district government became directly involved in the tara bandu ceremonies, which eventually developed into an Agriculture Department programme. The third and fourth (highland) villages that held tara bandu

Figure 9.2. Village tobes listen to the ritual speech describing tara bandu restrictions, while standing next to an altar ornamented with representative samples of restricted items

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conducted them as part of fine payments by individuals who cut villageprotected forest, with the animals, rice and drink consumed in the feast being part of the fine paid by the perpetrators. The fifth and sixth ceremonies were part of state-funded agricultural development programmes. In the remaining villages, bringing the total by late 2004 to fifteen out of Oecusse’s approximately twenty-one traditional villages,5 the tara bandu ceremony was part of the district Agriculture Department’s formation of ‘(Agri)Cultural Associations’ in most villages. In explaining the purpose of these Associations during village meetings, local government staff emphasized the inseparable link between agricultura and cultura (national Tetum-language terms) in the almost entirely agrarian Oecusse context. The Associations recognize and organize the tobe, and other leaders designated by villagers, into committees charged with forest oversight and two-way communication between villages and the Agriculture Department. The first activity of many Associations was a tara bandu, during which the Agriculture Department formally reinvested these groups with the former forest control functions and powers enjoyed by the tobe in Portuguese times. From the district government’s perspective, tapping into traditional leaders’ authority in this way was an economical, pragmatic extension to their severely limited state budget and staff.6

Tara Bandu: Ceremony, Documents and Effects The term tara bandu, which labelled the focal point of the district government programme, is Tetum for seasonal or extended restrictions on using named forest products. It designates an institution akin to sasi and other similar practices elsewhere in the region (Manehat 1990; Zerner 1994; Benda-Beckmann, Benda-Beckmann and Brouwer 1995; Thorburn 2000; see also the contributions to this volume by Ellen and Soselisa). The normal visible symbol of a tara bandu is hanging (tara) an inverted cut branch in a prominent spot near the protected area or species to inform and to remind people of the prohibitions (bandu). The Oecusse language (known as Meto, Dawan or Baiqueno) term for tara bandu is kelo or kero, or simply banu for prohibition.7 As Tetum, one of East Timor’s newly official national languages, is not widely spoken in Oecusse’s highlands, using the term tara bandu required government staff to translate it for community groups, signalling the Oecusse local government’s attempt to participate in this aspect of national life and modern identity. On the national level, tara bandu became a core part of the stated conservation strategy of agriculture and forestry policies (Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries 2003: 25–26). In the new nation, many actors (including local non-governmental organizations,8 village committees, academics and others) have promoted tara bandu as a unique

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national tradition that should be revived and respected (Azerino 2001; Babo-Soares 2001; Sandlund et al. 2001: 34). Particularly where forests were reduced through conflict or sandalwood extraction during the Indonesian period, people present tara bandu and its associated preIndonesian institutions as important expressions of national pride and restored national identity. For Oecusse, the only East Timorese district that has a ritual authority with resource regulation roles as specific as the tobe, state recognition of these authorities signals a welcome closer collaboration among local customary and state authorities.9 In Oecusse, a tara bandu prohibition is publicly initiated by a ceremony in which tobes announce or pronounce the restrictions with ritual speech, sometimes referring to samples of protected items presented on an altar. After animals are sacrificed, local authorities read a letter of between one and three pages (written in Indonesian, and orally translated to the local language) detailing the conditions of the tara bandu, prepared by the tobes and printed by the district Agriculture Department. The letter lists the named areas and tree or animal species protected by that village’s tara bandu, along with the specific fines for transgressing each prohibition. Villages list sacred forests, springs and other ritually important locations in the letters; letters from half the villages in Oecusse totalled 374 named protected locations.10 Protected tree species include up to eight ‘economically valuable species’ of trees, always including sandalwood. Fines consist of livestock of a specified age or size, rice, palm wine and either cash or traditional items such as coins or bead necklaces. Sandalwood cutting is usually the most serious offence, in one case bringing a fine more than five times higher than any other offence. Each village has unique, locally determined prohibitions and sanctions, set by the tobe and other members of the association. The intent is that anyone breaking the prohibition must provide the fine for consumption at the restoration ceremony that reinstates a breached tara bandu. The letters combine national forestry regulations and traditional authority in novel ways. For example, the letters refer to official restrictions on harvest of sandalwood and other economic species, while applying traditional penalties carried out by local authorities. This legitimizes traditional leaders’ authority to assess fines, which, if necessary, can be reinforced by the state, potentially involving – community members are told – police arrest or court trials for those who refuse to comply. After several hours of lively community discussion and debate, the tobe and other members of the Association sign or put their thumbprint on the letters, followed by a feast. In 2003 and 2004, four villages had payments of debts incurred by cutting forest areas protected by tara bandu. In one case, the district government paid the designated fine of one cow, fifty kilograms of rice and palm wine to the community that implemented the first tara bandu on their

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palm forest, when a government irrigation project removed some protected trees without prior tobe permission. This is a remarkable instance of the state being subject to a newly formalized customary law.11 In another case, villagers jointly paid eight cattle, worth over US$1,000, for allowing escaped swidden fires to destroy a protected area.12 While cutting prohibited areas has not ceased, people believe it has been checked, and people’s willingness to pay fines indicates some measure of their acceptance of the reinstated tobe and new Associations. During the pre-planting season in late 2004, farmers and customary authorities in many regions of Oecusse viewed the past two years’ tara bandu programme as having a significant effect in reducing incidence of escaped fires during swidden preparations, although they report that it did not greatly reduce theft of individual sandalwood trees or normal burning for swidden fields. Customary authorities in one border settlement applied the tara bandu fines to a West Timorese individual who cut and removed sandalwood trees from a protected forest for sale across the border, with ongoing negotiations involving tobe and other village leaders in neighbouring Indonesia.

Giving New Form to Established, Displaced Institutions These changes in traditional ecological institutions and knowledge demonstrate their adaptation to new situations, combining old and new features to lend novel form to established institutions in response to perceived crises in forest decline. Long-familiar elements of the tara bandu include authority and oversight of the tobe in forest product regulation (especially sandalwood), the giving of fines for specified offences, the ceremonial form of conducting sacrifices with ritual speech to initiate oral and visual prohibitions, and reaffirming the specific restrictions on access and use of each sacred or protected forest area. New aspects include government recognition of and collaboration with the tobe, who previously had little direct contact with ruling governments.13 Incorporating native and non-native tree species ‘of high economic value’ and specifications given in forestry regulations (e.g. concerning minimum distances from water sources for cultivation) indicate the hybrid nature of this ‘traditional’ forest regulation. The importance of having governmentwitnessed letters for tara bandu prohibitions set by customary leaders, villagers’ eagerness to confirm that the state would enforce the tobeassessed fines if necessary, and making even the state and non-citizens subject to the prohibitions all point to a complex and dynamic relationship of customary and state authorities surrounding forest control in the independent state. The importance of outside influences on local mechanisms of forest regulation is evident. While the tobe figure lost power decades ago and

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has now nearly disappeared in parts of Dutch–Indonesian West Timor (Schulte Nordholt 1971; McWilliam 1991, 2002), the Oecusse tobe remained active and influential in sandalwood regulation until the late 1970s and in agricultural rituals to this day. Some reasons for this difference include a far more active government forest service in Dutch West Timor than in Portuguese Oecusse (Cardoso 1937; Ormeling 1956); the solid presence of the Protestant Church in parts of West Timor, which displaced traditional rituals more than the sparse Catholic leadership in Oecusse (McWilliam 1991; Daschbach 1992); and more extensive transition from swidden to permanent cultivation in West Timor, with associated decline in some agricultural rituals. National-level interest in and support for tara bandu does exist (though largely rhetorical), but that gave little impetus to the events in isolated Oecusse; in practical terms, Oecusse had virtually no contact with the central government regarding the programme, and Oecusse far surpassed the extent of tara bandu happening elsewhere in the nation. The programme primarily developed out of the local initiative of district Agriculture Department staff working together with customary authorities. However, the impulse to launch such a programme emerged from the broader context in which political independence was hailed as a time to forge new institutional arrangements, and the transition afforded an opportunity to redress some of the recent forest declines. In this case, reinstating the traditional figures was of central importance to bridging old and new forms of special knowledge and authority. Each tobe has expert knowledge about land uses, forest composition, resource access and the locations and numbers of sandalwood seedlings and mature trees within his territory, as well as exclusive rights to name the boundaries of his domain. Since all of Oecusse has long been divided among tobe jurisdictions, mobilizing this traditional network enabled the government to reach all areas of Oecusse with virtually no administrative effort.14 As the state was unable to operationalize forest oversight, villagers and government saw this as an appropriate role for the tobes. Although tobes’ sandalwood monitoring role disappeared under Indonesian administration, they maintained local village legitimacy for their essential role in conducting the annual agricultural rituals. New recognition by the state further bolstered their authority, extending it once again to sandalwood control. Villagers were already familiar with the position of the tobe as forest overseers and sandalwood protectors, and rural residents and the district government largely support this renaissance of tobe authority at this point in time. Villagers frequently highlight how the continuity provided by the tobe’s ritual authority contrasts with the successive, disruptive political changes, serving as a stabilizing factor through the past few tumultuous decades of political transitions from colonialism through independence in East Timor. The perceived crises were multiple: not only sandalwood depletion from the late 1970s and

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acute thatch leaf shortage after 1999, but also extending to social disruptions and uncertainties over locally legitimate authorities. Local government and villagers explicitly linked socio-political crises and ecological effects in reinstating customary figures’ roles in environmental regulation. With the recent disintegration of kingdom structure, the tara bandu programme lent new sources of authority to customary figures, although this move was not immediately accepted. In a December 2002 government meeting with traditional leaders invited from every Oecusse village to discuss the tara bandu programme, several village heads and tobes raised the matter of the current ambiguities surrounding the status and identity of Oecusse’s king(s). Since the village-level customary authorities ultimately draw their legitimacy from the king, they insisted that the customary authority structure be clarified – a new king publicly recognized and crowned – before taking up the responsibilities proposed by the district government. Top church and government officials responded that such action was outside their mandate and control, and eventually most village authorities agreed to participate in the tara bandu despite the persistent uncertainty regarding kingship.

Prohibition as the Means to Forest Recovery The operational purpose of tara bandu is merely to limit harvest of or damage to particular species or areas in order to allow their increase. This is a modest intervention in ‘natural’ forest systems: offenders are not required to establish seedling nurseries or to replant cut trees, but just to protect the trees that do come up so they may persist. Both sudden declines in sandalwood and gewang palms were answered by returning to forest oversight by traditional authorities, establishing the social structures that support management with virtually no attention to technical interventions or activities that would foster forest expansion. This local approach to forest protection centred on social regulation stands in contrast to some outside actors’ afforestation or conservation-development programmes that promote aggressive tree-planting but pay scant attention to the social aspects needed to support seedling survival. The same response – absolute, temporary prohibition – was given for losses in both species: for sandalwood, with its key historic and trade value and elaborate ritual protections; and for gewang palm, chiefly used for domestic roofing, a species without specific ritual importance and meriting no special attention by tobe in the past. Neither species is normally planted;15 yet both are known to emerge on their own in abandoned swidden fields, conferring a status as semi-cultivated, economically important species suitable for regulation by customary mechanisms (see also Ellen 1999). The tara bandu programme extended the known forms of forest

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protection already practised in Oecusse, over forested areas and individual species, to include a broader range of individual species under control by the village authorities.

Forest Protection Serving Diverse Purposes The Oecusse tara bandu programme highlights the many complexities of state interaction with customary institutions, including divergent purposes surrounding forest regulation, implications of state recognition and empowerment of certain individuals as local authorities, and redirection of customary mechanisms to suit government purposes (Zerner 1994; Ward and Kingdon 1995). While the stated government purpose is forest protection, village leaders who participate in tara bandu are enthusiastic about two accompanying aspects of political recognition: first, recognition from the state concerning customary authority structures at the village level; and, secondly, state recognition of village territories vis-à-vis neighbouring villages. Following decades of state neglect of locally important authorities, village leaders are pleased with the independent government’s effort to acknowledge and to reinforce their positions. As mentioned in footnote 5, Oecusse’s administrative villages are not exactly congruent to traditional divisions, so the tara bandu affords an opportunity for village leaders to seek validation of their internal structure and geographical domains. The existence of a customary hierarchy is seen as the defining characteristic of a village’s legitimate existence, so cooperating with the government programme is a means to solidify and to formalize a place for the village and its leadership in the new government. Certain villages, not among the eighteen currently recognised, successfully held their own tara bandu ceremonies with government participation, furthering their case that they are legitimate political entities. When the district government denied one (unrecognized) village their request to hold a separate tara bandu event, the villagers stated their refusal to participate in the programme until receiving political recognition as an independent village. By imposing local knowledge of customary mechanisms that exist in rural areas on the state apparatus, villagers hope to secure official recognition. Through the tara bandu programme, several Oecusse villages also sought state recognition of their boundaries, often using the ceremony to assert claims to disputed land. Taking advantage of the state’s limited knowledge of multiple, remote, locally named protected areas, the village authorities listed contested border locations or even forests that clearly belonged to a neighbouring village in their own tara bandu letters. Government officials’ signatures on these letters then lent unwitting support to such claims, in several instances precipitating large-scale,

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intractable conflicts with the other village. Such incursions illustrate the multiple means to which villages put their local knowledge, especially where it is different from that known to the state. In conclusion, local ecological knowledge includes but is not limited to biophysical aspects of people’s environments; it extends to the social elements considered relevant for desired forest changes. Villagers and government officials alike in East Timor’s Oecusse enclave district are seeking to redress recent forest losses associated with political transitions by giving new form to the customary institutions of the tobe and tara bandu. These are seen as anchors to an idealized, more stable past, and at present people hope this renewed reliance on local authorities and practices can allow forest recovery.

Acknowledgements This chapter is based on research conducted in East Timor, Indonesia, Australia and the United States between 2001 and 2004, with generous support from the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University, Fulbright–Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, Mustard Seed Foundation, Yale Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University Southeast Asia Program, Yale University Program in Agrarian Studies and the Charles Kao Fund of the Yale University Council on East Asian Studies. I offer sincere appreciation to East Timorese and international staff of the agricultural land research and administration institutions, alongside local land authorities, for their time, patience and collegiality.

Notes 1. After a 1999 vote to separate from Indonesia, East Timor had a transitional United Nations administration until full independence in May 2002. 2. This is reminiscent of the oft-stated Oecusse belief that sandalwood cut without proper ritual will not contain aromatic heartwood, as mentioned below. At present in Oecusse, there seems to be no ideal lunar time for sandalwood harvest. Evidently, in 1833 a Portuguese official in Mangalore suggested that sandalwood trees should be cut in the waning moon (Cinatti Vaz Monteiro Gomes 1950: 11–12). 3. Warren (1993) describes how Indonesian state involvement with customary institutions served to weaken those institutions, following a similar effect attributed to colonial Dutch efforts to codify tradition (Burns 1999). 4. While other estimates and actual housing reconstruction figures are higher,

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5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

this survey noted that 7,294 Oecusse homes were destroyed, plus nearly all public buildings (East Timor Transitional Administration et al. 2001: 34, 64). This represented approximately two-thirds of houses district-wide, although the violence affected some areas far more than others. The official number of administrative villages (Indonesian desa, Portuguese/ Tetum suco) in Oecusse since at least the 1950s has been eighteen (Sherlock 1983: 36). However, some administrative units combine several autonomous customary units that have the full complement of hierarchical leadership, ritual practices and land area to constitute villages in the traditional system. The clandestine movement and early United Nations administration recognized twenty-four villages in Oecusse, and the district government gives de facto recognition to anywhere from eighteen to twenty-three villages, depending on the programme. Under Indonesia, there were more than seventy Department of Agriculture staff in Oecusse. Now there are just six permanent staff, including only one dealing with forestry, and their field activities are often constrained by lack of transport and programme funds. The kelo or kero prohibition is usually applied to extensive areas of mixed forests, especially for timber trees or large areas of fruit trees (e.g. Areca catechu palms) that have many different individual owners. An individual can also place a sign on his or her privately owned fruiting trees warning passers-by that some dire consequence would befall any thieves; this individual prohibition on specific trees is called bunuk, or curse (see Middelkoop 1960: 50). An important distinction here is in the responsible authority for each prohibition: only a tobe can institute or lift a kero/kelo, but any individual can place a bunuk. In addition, someone transgressing a kero/kelo must recompense the affected community with claim to the protected region, while someone violating a bunuk owes only the individual tree owner. One of the most active proponents of restoring tara bandu practice is the Dilibased East Timorese NGO Haburas. Haburas staff disapprove of too much government involvement in tara bandu, voicing concerns that officializing its practice robs the ceremony of its essential spiritual element and risks making the agreements culturally inauthentic. No other district in East Timor has had formal government involvement in tara bandu to the extent organized in Oecusse. Ten villages named from ten to sixty-three protected sites each in their letters. The letters, written in Indonesian, refer to the customary law penalties as hukum adat, usually with a written and oral translation to Tetum as lei cultura. In this case, the villagers sold the cattle to store the cash. Three full days of formal village-wide discussion determined that the offenders would be responsible for ensuring naturally-occurring seedling survival in the burned area, and that the funds would be used to buy food for the village during the following year’s hungry season, picking up on one former task of the tobe reported by Schulte Nordholt (1971: 77) but rarely mentioned in Oecusse. The district government allowed the village association to securely store the funds until that time. Curiously, given the centrality of the tobe in sandalwood control, Portuguese sources make virtually no mention of these figures. Even today, many individual tobes have some restriction on schooling and extensive travel outside their domains. Regarding Indonesian state knowledge of the tobe, Oecusse villagers and government officials have a uniform response: ‘Indonesia didn’t even know who the tobes were.’

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References Aditjondro, G.J. 1994. In the Shadow of Mount Ramelau: the Impact of the Occupation of East Timor. Leiden: Indonesian Documentation and Information Centre Azerino. 2001. ‘Tara Bandu’, Verde: Hamatak no Haburas 2: 1–2. Babo-Soares, D. 2001. ‘East Timor: Perceptions of Culture and Environment’, Conference on Sustainable Development in East Timor, Dili, East Timo 2001. Dili, East Timor: Timor Aid, pp. 18–21. Bouma, G.A. and H.T. Kobryn. 2004. ‘Change in Vegetation Cover in East Timor, 1989–1999’, Natural Resources Forum 28: 1–12. Boxer, C.R. 1947. The Topasses of Timor. Koninklijke Vereeniging Indisch Institut Mededeelingen, LXXIII No. 24. Amstersdam: Institut voor de Tropen. Afdeling Culturelz en Physische Anthropologie. Budiardjo, C. and L.S. Liong. 1984. The War Against East Timor. London: Zed Books. Burns, P.J. 1999. The Leiden Legacy: Concepts of Law in Indonesia. Jakarta: Pradnya Paramita. Cardoso, J.G.A. 1937. ‘Serviços Agrícolas, Florestais e de Pecuária da Colónia de Timor’, Boletim Geral das Colónias 13: 30–54. Castro, A. de. 1867. As Possessões Portuguezas na Oceania. Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional. Cinatti Vaz Monteiro Gomes, R. 1950. Esboço Histórico do Sândalo no Timor Português. Lisbon: Ministério das Colónias, Junta de Investigaçoes Coloniais. Daschbach, R. 1992. ‘Batu Karang di Bebu, Ambeno’, in G. Neonbasu (ed.), Agenda Budaya Pulau Timor (2). Atambua, West Timor: Komisi Komunikasi Sosial Provinsi SVD Timor, pp. 104–12. de Jong, W., B. Belcher, D. Rohadi, R. Mustikasari and P. Levang. 2003. ‘The Political Ecology of Forest Products in Indonesia: a History of Changing Adversaries’, in L. Tuck-Po, W. de Jong, and A. Ken-ichi (eds), The Political Ecology of Tropical Forests in Southeast Asia: Historical Perspectives. Kyoto and Melbourne: Kyoto University Press and Trans Pacific Press, pp. 107–32. Dove, M.R. and D.M. Kammen. 2001. ‘Vernacular Models of Development: an Analysis of Indonesia under the “New Order”’. World Development 29: 619–39. East Timor Transitional Administration, Asian Development Bank, World Bank and United Nations Development Programme. 2001. The 2001 Survey of Sucos: Initial Analysis and Implications for Poverty Reduction. Dili. Ellen, R. 1993. ‘Rhetoric, Practice and Incentive in the Face of Changing Times: a Case Study in Nuaulu Attitudes to Conservation and Deforestation’, in K. Milton (ed.), Environmentalism: the View From Anthropology. London: Routledge, pp. 126–43. ___. 1999. ‘Forest Knowledge, Forest Transformation: Political Contingency, Historical Ecology and the Renegotiation of Nature in Central Seram’, in T.M. Li (ed.), Transforming the Indonesian Uplands: Marginality, Power and Production. London: Harwood, pp. 131–57.

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236 | Laura S. Meitzner Yoder Farram, S. 1999. ‘The Two Timors: the Partitioning of Timor by the Portuguese and the Dutch’, Studies in Languages and Cultures of East Timor 2: 38–54. Fox, J.J. 2000. ‘Tracing the Path, Recounting the Past: Historical Perspectives on Timor’, in J.J. Fox and D.B. Soares (eds), Out of the Ashes: Destruction and Reconstruction of East Timor. Canberra: ANU Press , pp. 1–27. Jarosz, L. 1996. ‘Defining Deforestation in Madagascar’, in R. Peet and M. Watts (eds), Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements. New York: Routledge, pp. 148–64. Leitão, H. 1948. Os Portugueses em Solor e Timor de 1515 a 1702. Lisbon: Tip. da Liga dos Combatentes da Grande Guerra. Manehat, P. 1990. ‘Tabuu-nuinta’, in G. Neonbasu (ed.), Agenda Budaya Pulau Timor (1). Atambua, West Timor: Komisi Komunikasi Sosial Provinsi SVD Timor, pp. 74–79. Martinho, J.S. 1945. Problemas Administrativos de Colonizacão da Provincia de Timor. Oporto: Livraria Progredior. McWilliam, A. 1991. ‘Prayers of the Sacred Stone and Tree: Aspects of Invocation in West Timor’, Canberra Anthropology 14(2): 49–59. ___. 2002. Paths of Origin, Gates of Life: a Study of Place and Precedence in Southwest Timor. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 203. Leiden: KITLV Press. ___. 2005. ‘Haumeni, Not Many: Renewed Plunder and Mismanagement in the Timorese Sandalwood Industry’, Modern Asian Studies 39(2): 285–320. Meitzner Yoder, L.S. 2005. Custom, Codification, Collaboration: Integrating the Legacies of Land and Forest Authorities in Oecusse Enclave, East Timor. Ph.D. dissertation. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University. Middelkoop, P. 1960. Curse–Retribution–Enmity as Data in Natural Religion, Especially in Timor, Confronted with the Scripture. Amsterdam: Drukkerij en Uitgeverij Jacob van Campen. Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. 2003. ‘Forestry Management Policy and Strategy of Timor-Leste’ (draft). Dili, East Timor. Ormeling, F.J. 1956. The Timor Problem: A Geographical Interpretation of an Underdeveloped Island. Groningen, The Hague: J.B. Wolters and Martinus Nijhoff. Peluso, N.L. 1992. Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pigafetta, A. 1969 [1522]. Magellan’s Voyage: a Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation, Vol. I. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. Ptak, R. 1983. ‘Some References to Timor in Old Chinese Records’, Ming Studies 17: 37–48. ___. 1987. ‘The Transportation of Sandalwood from Timor to China and Macao c. 1350–1600’, in R. Ptak (ed.), Portuguese Asia: Aspects in History and Economic History, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Stuttgart: Steiner, pp. 87–109. Sandlund, O.T., I. Bryceson, D. de Carvalho, N. Rio, J. da Silva and M.I. Silva. 2001. Assessing Environmental Needs and Priorities in East Timor: Final Report. Dili, Trondheim: UNDP-Dili and Norwegian Institute for Nature Research. Schulte Nordholt, H.G. 1971. The Political System of the Atoni of Timor. Verhandelingen van Het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde, 60. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Sherlock, K. 1983. East Timor: Liurais and Chefes de Suco; Indigenous Authorities in 1952. Darwin: Kevin Sherlock. Taylor, J.G. 1999. East Timor: The Price of Freedom. London, New York: Zed Books. Thorburn, C.C. 2000. ‘Changing Customary Marine Resource Management Practice and Institutions: the Case of Sasi Lola in the Kei Islands, Indonesia’,

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The Tobe and Tara Bandu | 237 World Development 28: 1461–79. Villiers, J. 1985. ‘As Derradeiras do Mundo: the Sandalwood Trade and the First Portuguese Settlements in the Lesser Sunda Islands’, in J. Villiers (ed.), East of Malacca: Three Essays on the Portuguese in the Indonesian Archipelago in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. Bangkok: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, pp. 59–90. von Benda-Beckmann, F., K. von Benda-Beckmann and A. Brouwer. 1995. ‘Changing “Indigenous Environmental Law” in the Central Moluccas: Communal Regulation and Privatization of Sasi’, Ekonesia 2: 1–38. Ward, R.G. and E. Kingdon (eds). 1995. Land, Custom and Practice in the South Pacific. Cambridge Asia-Pacific Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Warren, C. 1993. Adat and Dinas: Balinese Communities in the Indonesian State. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Zerner, C. 1994. ‘Through a Green Lens: the Construction of Customary Environmental Law and Community in Indonesia’s Maluku Islands’, Law and Society Review 28: 1079–122. Zhang Xi. 1981. Dongxi Yang Kao (Investigations on Eastern and Western Seas). Beijing: Zhonghua Publishing House.

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CHAPTER

10

Perceptions of Local Knowledge and Adaptation on Mount Merapi, Central Java Michael R. Dove

Introduction Interest in local, non-Western systems of knowledge extends back to some of the earliest work in anthropology (as exemplified in the writings of Malinowski (1935) and Evans-Pritchard (1940)). The pursuit of this interest was guided for decades by such questions as: Is there such a thing as a non-Western system of knowledge? If so, how does it differ from modern, Western knowledge? And how can we best study and understand it? In the 1990s the label ‘indigenous knowledge’ began to be applied to non-Western systems of knowledge (Warren, Slikkerveer and Brokensha 1995), and almost immediately a debate began over the accuracy of this label. The debate has focused on revealing the implicit, often problematic premises in our view of a given body of knowledge as indigenous or not (Agrawal 1995; Ellen and Harris 2000). Whereas the history and hybridity of such bodies of knowledge have come under scrutiny, however, the identity and integrity of these bodies of knowledge have tended to be taken as a given. That is, relatively little attention has been given to the premises that determine what is implicitly encompassed by the phrase ‘body of knowledge’, indigenous or not. The development of a theory of practice, among other things, has alerted us to the importance of looking beyond formally defined bodies of knowledge to the realm of informal, everyday practice (Bourdieu 1977; Giddens 1984; Ortner 1984; see also Scott 1998). The problematic premises of the way phrases such as ‘systems of knowledge’ have been used can be illustrated by the case of Mount

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Figure 10.1. The location of Merapi volcano in the Special Region of Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia

Merapi in Central Java, which is one of the most active volcanoes in the world (Figure 10.1). Mount Merapi has been the subject of great attention within Indonesia over the past dozen years because of a destructive eruption in 1994, which was popularly interpreted as a harbinger of the national chaos leading up to and following the downfall of Suharto’s military regime. There is a detailed historical exegesis of the meaning of Merapi’s eruptions within classical, court-based Javanese thinking. There is also a system of folk knowledge among the Javanese living on its slopes, central to which is a beguiling story that victims of volcanic hazard are lured to the next world by spirits masquerading as kinsmen and neighbours. Public knowledge of these beliefs is widespread in Java, especially in central Java. Virtually unknown to the Javanese public, however, is the more prosaic story of the actual day-to-day adaptation to a volcanic environment of the villagers who live on Mount Merapi. This adaptation encompasses some empirical knowledge of how to predict eruptions and avoid their impacts. But the most critical dimension of the local adaptation involves the historic development of an ability to productively adopt to the ecology (including the political ecology) of the volcanoes: the

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villagers of the volcano have developed a unique agro-ecological system that links use of high-altitude grasslands on state lands to the intensive intercropping of maize and tubers on low-altitude privately held fields. This agro-ecological system, which is primarily responsible for the ability as well as the desire of the Javanese to continue to live on the volcano’s slopes, is virtually unknown to the wider public, national as well as international. The invisibility of this agro-ecological system is the subject of this chapter. My thesis is that this system goes unrecognized largely because it does not fit into a contemporary ‘standard narrative’ about marginal peoples and natural hazards in Indonesia. There are many factors that determine the content of this narrative, but I suggest that the dominant one is the extent to which information supports versus undercuts an image held by the state (as well, perhaps, as international development agencies) of local peoples as needy victims of ineluctable natural hazards. Following a brief description of the field site and my data, I shall begin my analysis with a description of the knowledge used to understand Merapi volcano held by, respectively, the Indonesian state, the Yogyakarta royal court and the local villagers living on its slopes. I shall then describe in some detail the agroecological system by which these villagers utilize the land and vegetation on these slopes. In the next section I shall discuss the politics of the almost completely unsuccessful state effort to transmigrate the people living on Merapi’s slopes to other parts of Indonesia, which has been the principal state response to volcanic hazard. I shall conclude with a discussion of the implications of the Merapi case study for understanding our premises regarding natural hazards in particular and local systems of knowledge in general.

The Field Site: Merapi Volcano A high proportion of the 175,000 human deaths due to volcanic eruption over the past two centuries worldwide occurred on the island of Java (Chester 1993: 271). There are 129 volcanoes on Java, and the most active of these is Gunung Merapi (‘the Fire Mountain’) in central Java. Historical records show that Merapi has had at least fourteen major eruptions with human casualties since 1006. However, since all but one of these recorded eruptions took place in the last one-third of this period (namely, since 1672), the poorer records from earlier times are probably disguising a much higher toll. The first of the recorded eruptions, in 1006, is popularly credited with burying the Buddhist temple of Borobudur, toppling the kingdom of Mataram (whose capital lay where Yogyakarta is today), driving the Hindu kingdom to Bali and precipitating the Islamicization of Java (Decker and Decker 1997; but see Coedès 1968: 128). The deadliest

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eruption in historical times occurred in 1672, leaving a reported 3,000 people dead.1 One of the most feared aspects of Merapi, and something that is characteristic of this type of volcano, is the eruption not of magma but of revolving clouds of superheated gases. Called ampa’-ampa’ or wedhus gembel in Javanese and awan panas in Indonesian (and nuée ardente in the international literature), these clouds descend the slopes at speeds of 200–300 km/h, have temperatures of 200–300 degrees Celsius and present a far greater threat to life and limb than the much slower-moving rivers of lava. Villagers on the slopes of Merapi commonly speak, indeed, of only two volcanic hazards: these heated gases, and the mixtures of ash and water called lahar dingin, ‘cold lava flows’, which can also descend the slopes at great, destructive speed. The 1994 eruption of Mount Merapi consisted of a gas cloud that rapidly travelled six kilometres down the southern slope of Merapi following the Boyong riverbed and four kilometres down the south-east slope following the Krasak riverbed (Figure 10.2). The inhabitants of a dozen villages on the southern and southeastern slopes fled the cloud on foot down the mountain. Of these, fifty-six died on the spot or subsequently of their injuries and 4,452 were officially evacuated to refugee camps further down the mountain. I shall draw in this analysis on, first, field data that I gathered on Merapi volcano during a study I conducted there from January 1982 to

Figure 10.2. The location of the study site, Turgo village, on the southern slopes of Merapi volcano

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May 1985, in collaboration with students and colleagues in the Department of Anthropology at Gadjah Mada University in nearby Yogyakarta. The site of this and the subsequent study was Turgo (in the subdistrict of Pakem), a hamlet of several dozen households. For many years this has been the highest remaining inhabited village on the southern slope of Merapi. Turgo, lying 600 metres above sea level, is approximately eight kilometres from the summit and crater of Merapi, which rises to 2,962 metres above sea level. Our initial study focused on the ethno-ecology of the system of agriculture and animal husbandry practised on the slopes of the volcano, and included daily and long-term monitoring of the economic activities of a sample of village households. Particular attention was paid to the impact of volcanic activities and hazards on this system of natural resource use and on local bodies of knowledge for comprehending and managing these activities and hazards. I shall also draw on data gathered in the wake of the major eruption of Mount Merapi on 22 November 1994, concentrating on the interpretation of this eruption by the wider Indonesian society. I shall especially draw on a detailed content analysis of coverage of the eruption and its aftermath in major local and national newspapers following the eruption, as well as follow-up fieldwork in the study community. For more recent changes, I shall also draw on data gathered during a collaborative study carried out over the past two years with a colleague at Gadjah Mada.

Visible Knowledge Three relatively distinct sources of knowledge of Mount Merapi can be discerned, beginning with the villagers who live on its slopes.

Local People: Lost Villagers Villagers on the slopes of Merapi in general and in the village of Turgo in particular express the threat of volcanic hazard as a feeling of getting lost (kesasar), being confused (bingung), being invited (diajak) to go away.2 The danger is expressed as kesasar di hutan, ‘getting lost in the forest’, not being burned alive by the volcano (or by fire spirits, which do exist in the traditional Javanese pantheon – e.g. Banaspati).3 This is a discourse not of material hazard but of spiritual liminality and loss.4 These beliefs were widely reported in the press in the wake of the 1994 eruption, even on the part of people who were burned over half their bodies by hot gases. This response to natural hazards is not peculiar to Java. In a global review of the subject, Hewitt (1997: 42) writes that ‘Survivors of disaster recall, among their first sensations, not knowing where they are, even in their own homes. They speak of being disoriented, lost and unable to recognise anything.’

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The villagers on Merapi say that those who try to lead them away while in this state of loss and confusion are wewe female spirits who appear to them as relatives or close friends. The feeling of going off with the wewe is said to be like ‘rasa pulang ke kampung sendiri – pada hal makin keatas’, ‘the feeling of going home to one’s own village – whereas in fact you are going continually upwards [towards the crater, and the home of the wewe]’.5 The danger thus lies in being lured away from one’s own home to someone else’s home, in being lured away from the place where one belongs to a place where one does not belong. This is an interpretation of volcanic hazard as a threat to domestic identity. It is ultimately a threat of alienation: the greatest sort of alienation is not just to leave home for the unknown ‘other’ but to feel like going home when you aren’t. As Hewitt (1997: 43) writes, ‘A further way in which this [the impact of natural disaster] is expressed is the sense of being “a stranger” or of feeling “strange” in the home area.’ The power of this interpretation of volcanic hazard lies, thus, in the fact that the journey towards the crater of the volcano – towards this most ‘other’ of places – is perceived as a journey towards home. The power of this discourse comes from the fact that what feels to the villagers like home is actually something far different: it is the quintessential other. The extent of this otherness is emphasized in the stories about those who recover sufficiently from their loss and confusion to return to their own homes, bringing back evidence of what this other spirit world is like. Repeated here are two stories told me by the villagers of Turgo of people who got ‘lost’ on the volcano: Cerita orang mau ke pasar, kesasar, beli jadah [delicacy made of rice], penjual tidak bicara, kembali ke desa, ternyata jadah ada batu gepeng. This is a story of someone who went to the market to buy rice cakes, the seller did not speak; when he returned to the village, the rice cakes turned out to be flat rocks. Orang mau membeli bibit padi, kesasar, ternyata yang dibeli duri [thorn]. Someone wanted to buy seed rice, got lost, and it turned out that what he bought was thorns.

These two stories – with their juxtapositions of rice cakes and rocks, seed rice and thorns – highlight the otherness of the volcano’s crater, and the magnitude of the transformation involved in the villagers going there. Hewitt (1997: 46) similarly observes that ‘Everyday life becomes the reference frame of extreme experience … The meaningful vocabulary [of disaster] is not of spatial abstractions but the concrete terms of everyday life.’

Local People: The Spirit Palace Central Javanese believe that there is another world within the crater of Merapi, which they variously characterize as parallel to, or a replica or miniature of, their own, and which they believe to be inhabited by

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baureksa ‘spirits’ (like the wewe).6 According to the Javanese origin tale Babad Tanah Jawi (‘The Clearing of Java’), human settlement of the island drove all of its spirits into the volcanoes and other marginal places, where they remain to this day (Geertz 1960: 23; see also Carpenter 1985). In Javanese cosmology, the Merapi crater is thought to be the counterpart of the South Java Sea: both have spirit courts and rulers, and humans are called to both when there is a need for labour, much as a traditional Javanese ruler would call upon his populace.7 As this suggests, in many respects ‘life’ in Merapi (as in the South Sea) is thought to resemble the everyday life of the Javanese.8 Thus, the Turgo villagers, in whose own lives animal husbandry looms large, can speak in detail about the purported animal husbandry of the spirits in Merapi. They believe that the spirits keep both horses and pigs – the latter being the wild pigs (Sus scrofa) that are abundant on Merapi’s slopes. They further believe that the spirits graze the pigs in the villagers’ own fields and that they graze both pigs and horses on the highest grasslands of Merapi. The villagers believe that the spirits manage these grasslands, citing as proof the fact that they are rejuvenated by every eruption. These grasslands (the very highest and thus most often affected by volcanic activity) are said to belong to the spirits, their grasses are said to be intended for the spirits’ livestock and they are proscribed for human use. Violation of this proscription is said to result in the loss of either the grass or the villager who gathers it. Someone from Turgo is said to have violated one such proscribed area in 1983, and Merapi subsequently produced a small eruption as a sign to cease their behaviour.9 There are numerous, transformative linkages between the spirit palace in Merapi’s crater and the everyday world of the villagers. Already mentioned is the stream of lost people who depart this world (all unbeknownst) for the world within the crater, where they become servants or citizens of the spirit palace. Another example involves a macan, ‘leopard’, thought to belong to the Merapi spirits, which dwells in a particular place on the upper slopes of Merapi (and reveals its spirit nature by never leaving that spot).10 The villagers say that this leopard will not eat people, except for those who are unlucky (julung), who appear to it as chickens or goats. There are other variations on this sort of alimentary transformation. For example, the Turgo villagers say that rice eaten in lowland pond fields by rats becomes the rice of the Merapi spirits.11 When rice moves in the other direction, namely from the spirit world to the everyday world, it turns into stones and thorns, as we saw in the earlier-recounted story of a ‘returnee’. When pigs (of the spirits) move from the spirit world to the everyday world, they turn into people. The Turgo villagers believe that a former inhabitant of a nearby village, a spiritual leader, was actually a celeng bumi, ‘an earth pig’.12 He could alternate back and forth between his identity as a pig in the spirit world and his identity as a man in the everyday world.13

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By far the most important linkage between the spirit world in Merapi’s crater and the world of the villagers on its flanks is volcanic eruptions. These eruptions are thought to be manifestations of the mundane, day-today activities of the spirit palace. It is believed that house-cleaning and house-building are scheduled in the Merapi palace during each Bulan Sura’ (the first moon of the Islamic calendar) and the dirt and waste produced by these activities are manifested in the ejection of what are perceived by villagers to be lahar, ash, and gas clouds (see Triyoga 1991).14 Thus, one well-known shaman from a village on Merapi’s slopes suggested that the 1994 eruption was occasioned by the construction of a gerbang ‘ceremonial arch’ in the spirit palace (Suara Merdeka 26 November 1994). Some also believe that the eruptions represent the sallying forth of inhabitants of the spirit palace in a pawe, ‘procession’, headed by one of the volcano’s foremost spirits (Kerto Dimejo) riding in a carriage. As this last comment in particular suggests, the eruptions are thought to be rationally directed, following a set direction and limited in duration or extent. (Just as is it believed that the spirits will not graze their livestock anywhere on the mountain, but only in fixed places, so is it believed that their processions will follow certain rules.) It is explicitly believed that this order is intended for the benefit of the villagers living on Merapi’s slopes. One of the most widely reported beliefs regarding Merapi is that its spirits always mark the intended extent of eruptions with benang (‘thread’), so that the villagers can stay out of harm’s way. The overall effect of these beliefs is to demonstrate not just that there is a parallel reality in the volcano, but that there is an order to this reality that is comprehensible to the Javanese living on its slopes.15

Court Twenty kilometers to the south of the spirit palace of Merapi lies its realworld counterpart, the kraton (‘palace’) of Yogyakarta, where the last ruling sultan in Indonesia still sits to this day. The two palaces, spirit and mundane, are closely linked. This linkage is demonstrated most clearly during the labuhan jumengan, ‘offerings’ that the Yogyakarta palace makes every year on the 29th day of the seventh month (Rajab) of the Islamic calendar to Mount Merapi, to Mount Lawu to the east and on the shore of the southern coast (at Parangtritis). To facilitate these offerings, the Yogyakarta palace maintains relations with a particular village (known as the desa kraton, ‘palace village’) and a particular ritual expert (known as the juru kunci, ‘key master’) in each of these places.16 The Yogyakarta palace claims to have some influence over Merapi, based on these ritual relations. It asserted these claims even in the wake of the 1994 eruption, with its heavy toll on life and property. For example, when reporters asked the Sultan of Yogyakarta why the palace had not

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been able to prophesy in advance the eruption, given the ‘mystical’ connection between the volcano and the palace, the Sultan replied, ‘Kalau tanya firasat, ya tanya saja para korban itu’, ‘If you want to ask about prophecies, ask the dead’ (Jawa Pos 24 November 1994). The Sultan’s implication seemed to be that the palace did prophesy the eruption, but too little attention was paid to its special knowledge and that is why people died. Somewhat more explicitly, an official in the palace told the press that the eruption could not be blamed on insufficient offerings by the palace: Mengingat sesaji dalam upacara labuhan jumenengan juga tidak pernah dikurangi atau ditambah. Jadi kalau ada yang mengatakan peristiwa meletusnya Gunung Merapi dan wedhus gembel yang mengarah ke Selatan karena ada kekurangan sesaji dari Kraton Yogyakarta tentu tidak benar Recollect that the offerings in the labuhan jumenengan are never reduced or increased. Thus if anyone says that the incident of the eruption of Mount Merapi with its gas cloud that descended to the south was due to deficiencies in the offerings from the Yogyakarta palace this of course is not true. (Kedaulatan Rakyat 9 December 1994a)

The implication is that the palace was doing its job to forestall eruptions so the 1994 eruption had to be due to something else. Popular accounts from outside the palace went beyond this to suggest not only that the Yogyakarta palace did its job, but that it actually minimized the magnitude and destructive impact of the 1994 eruption.17 Thus, a Javanese ritual expert with a practice in the capital city of Jakarta told the national press that one of Yogyakarta’s spiritual leaders had buried an heirloom kris (‘ritual dagger’) on Merapi and thereby delayed by several years the eruption that eventually occurred in 1994 (Suara Merdeka 24 November 1994a). This same expert asserted that there had been a protracted tawar-menawar, ‘negotiation’, between spiritual leaders and the spirits of Merapi, and the eruption on 22 November 1994 represented the expiration of the period of grace that the former had won from the latter (ibid.). This expert added that the timing of the eruption at 10.15 in the morning also reflected considerable ‘tolerance’ on the part of the spirits of Merapi, because, if it had occurred at night when people were asleep, casualties would have been far higher (ibid.). Like the belief that the extent of eruptions will be marked by spirits with string, therefore, these accounts reflect a belief that there is some order to volcanic activity and that it is susceptible to influence by and consideration for humans. There is often an ambivalent character to the impact of natural disasters. On the one hand the severity of attendant losses can reinforce the authority of those who claim to be in control; but on the other hand this same severity can challenge the legitimacy of these claims.18 An eruption like that in 1994, with its considerable toll of human casualties and property damage – notwithstanding claims that it would have been worse

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without ‘negotiations’ – inevitably raises questions as to whether palace influence is waning. The challenge to the control of the Yogyakarta palace that was posed by the 1994 eruption was most directly made in comments in the press about the direction of the eruption, which was to the south – towards Yogyakarta (Figure 10.2) (e.g. Suara Merdeka 11 December 1994). That is the one direction in which eruptions should not go if the palace’s authority vis-à-vis Merapi is holding strong. Unease on this subject within the palace is reflected in the somewhat defensive character of the aforementioned responses by both the Sultan and a palace official to questions from the press regarding the eruption.

State Like the Yogyakarta court, Indonesia’s secular national government has always been very interested in Merapi. Whereas the court developed a body of ritual knowledge for understanding and dealing with the volcano, the state developed, with the assistance of international bodies concerned with volcanology, a world-class scientific service devoted to research on Merapi, monitoring of its activity and dissemination to the public of warnings (Chester 1993: 292). Thus, the government Volcanology Service has mapped out the zone judged unsafe for human habitation, with sub-rankings from 1 to 3 (from most to least dangerous). The service has also developed a ranking system for the day-to-day condition of the volcano, with current rankings routinely publicized in the environs of the volcano. From least to most dangerous, these are: Aktif Normal, ‘Normally Active’, Waspada Merapi, ‘On Guard [for] Merapi’, Siap Merapi, ‘Prepared [for] Merapi’ and Awas Merapi, ‘Beware Merapi’. State investment of symbolic capital in the activity of Merapi and in its own ability to understand and control Merapi was reflected in the amount of high-level political attention that the 1994 eruption garnered (which greatly exceeded that for equal numbers of casualties from other, more mundane causes of death). This attention included early and close involvement in aid efforts by former President Suharto himself, including a visit to the evacuee camps.19 Sensitivity on this issue was also reflected, in the aftermath of the eruption, in the public debate as to whether or not the government Volcanology Service had provided adequate warning of the eruption. The Minister of Mining and Energy, who has authority over the Volcanology Service, complained to the National Assembly that he was slandered by a political cartoon that depicted a volcanologist asking, ‘What’s happening, what’s happening?’ while villagers fleeing the eruption ran past him (Suara Merdeka 1 December 1994). The Minister asserted that his service had previously advised the Yogyakarta government to resettle all villagers out of the danger zone and that they had also warned the government of an imminent eruption eighteen days before it occurred.

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The Volcanology Service was engaged in an ongoing effort to assert its authority over the volcano and demystify the eruptions, central to which were detailed daily press briefings on the state of the volcano (drawing data from its monitoring stations on Merapi’s slopes), an example of which follows: Kemarin, tidak terjadi gempa vulkanik, gempa low frequency, maupun gempa tremor. Hanya terjadi gempa fase banyak 2 kali dan guguran lava 88 kali. Yesterday, there were no volcanic earthquakes, low-frequency earthquakes, or earth tremors. There were only two multi-phase earthquakes and 88 discharges of lava. (Suara Merdeka 8 December 1994)

These briefings not only emphasized the government’s understanding of, and thus to some extent authority over, the volcano, but their overt use of an exotic, scientific language emphasized the exclusivity of this authority in representing the activity of the volcano activity to the public.20 The importance to the state of encompassing volcanic activity within its orbit of influence is reflected in its long-standing investment in volcanic research and monitoring (Chester 1993: 292),21 which is clearly not commensurate with the annual toll in life and property due to volcanic activity, compared with, for example, malnutrition, infant mortality or even other natural perturbations like landslides and flooding. There is something special about volcanic hazards on Java: death and destruction due to volcanic activity are ‘privileged’ in a way that other deaths are not (including those, for example, in the transmigration sites to which evacuees are sent).22 Rooted in old and pervasive beliefs in the region about power and perturbation, events like the 1994 eruption of Merapi raise questions not merely about the ability of rulers to protect their subjects from natural hazards, but in a much wider and more threatening sense about their fundamental mandate to rule (Anderson 1972; Keeler 1988; Harwell 2000a). In Java (and, indeed, throughout southeast Asia (Adas 1979)), perturbations in the natural realm are interpreted as presaging perturbations in the social/political realm.23 And, indeed, during the years following Merapi’s 1994 eruption, Indonesia was shaken by financial, political and environmental crises, which culminated in the collapse of Soeharto’s three-decade-long reign, all more or less in accordance with the predictions made in the wake of the eruption.24

Local Adaptation/Invisible Knowledge Turgo is much unlike the popular image of a Javanese village: it has no sawah, or pond-fields, such as still dominate much of the lowland landscape of Java, and up until the 1994 eruption its inhabitants mostly ate not rice but maize (albeit cooked into a rice-like gruel) and tubers, raised in an

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unusual system of land use.25 The 1994 eruption precipitated a number of important changes in Turgo’s agro-ecological system, which will be the subject of another analysis; the description here applies to the system up to the time of that eruption. There have always been many exceptions to the stereotyped, idealized image of the Javanese village, culture and agriculture (see Hefner 1985). This was especially true before the twentieth century, when swidden agriculture was still practised widely in the island’s forests (Dove 1985). The contemporary system of agriculture on Merapi’s higher slopes is only a step or two removed from that historic system (Pranowo 1985). Indeed, the ancestors of my informants in Turgo are said to have practised swidden agriculture up until the beginning of the twentieth century, when wono, ‘swiddens’, made within the forest gave way to tegalan, ‘permanent fields’, made on open and continuously cultivated lands. Turgo villagers explicitly characterize this historic shift as one from an agricultural system in which fertility was guaranteed by ‘moving’ about within the forest (namely, utilizing a long forest fallow to restore fertility) to a system in which fertility is guaranteed by replenishing the earth every harvest or two with fertilizer. There was an associated shift from free grazing of cattle in grasslands and forests to stall-feeding.26 The fertilizer on which the agricultural system now depends is not purchased from markets, but is produced by the villagers’ own cattle. Cattle are a central component of the agricultural economy, raised for their milk (one of the village’s most important marketable commodities), for their usefulness as a means of ‘banking’ surplus resources against the time that they are needed and for their production of manure (Hudayana 1987). During the wet season, the cattle can mostly be fed with grasses that are cultivated or grow naturally on the fields in the vicinity of the village; but, in the dry season, these sources are insufficient and the villagers must turn to grasslands lying higher up on the flanks of the volcano, which are kept moist by the cloud cover that typifies the higher elevations.27 Gathering these grasses is labour-intensive (Figure 10.3): the grasslands are a sixty-to-ninety minute walk from the village, it takes another hour or so to cut the grasses and then another hour to carry a 55–60 kilogram bundle of cut grass back to the village. These labour costs restrict this activity to times when there is no intensive work in the cultivated fields by the village. These higher-elevation grasslands in effect subsidize the productivity of the lower-elevation agricultural fields in a form of forest–farm linkage known the world over (Pandey and Singh 1984; Blaikie and Brookfield 1987: 46). These grasslands are dominated by a particular grass that is popularly (but incorrectly) excoriated as one of the world’s most noxious weeds, Imperata cylindrica (L.) Beauv.28 Elsewhere the object of elaborate and costly state extermination campaigns, on Merapi Imperata is cut and

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Figure 10.3. Turgo villagers gathering fodder grasses at the edge of Merapi’s lava fields, for stall-feeding to cattle

carried, by dint of the great labour just described, to stables down in the village for stall-feeding to cattle (see Sherman 1980; Dove 1986). The villagers of Turgo in fact feed Imperata to their cattle in preference to grasses like Napier grass (Pennisetum purpureum) that state extension agents have encouraged them, with little success, to cultivate in and around their gardens and fields. These high grasslands lie below the treeline, in areas where forest can and does grow but is periodically burned back by volcanic eruptions. The Turgo villagers say that the high grasslands are periodically scorched by hot gas clouds (ampa’-ampa’) erupting from the crater. During my fieldwork, I have personally seen evidence of this (browned and scorched stands) when accompanying villagers to the high grasslands. Imperata has

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Figure 10.3 continued

a competitive edge in any such fire-dominated environment because its extensive below-ground root system and fast rate of growth favour its rapid regeneration after being burned.29 The villagers explicitly recognized a linkage between volcanic activity and the presence and persistence of these grasslands (van Steenis 1972). They state that eruptions favour the replacement of the forests on Merapi’s higher flanks with grasslands and that ash falls every few years help to keep these grasslands unusually productive (Blong 1982: 186).30 The villagers also believe that grassland composition is affected by volcanic activity. They claimed that an eruption in 1961 precipitated the succession of Imperata in some areas to a new grass not seen there previously, which they called iringiring or bledekan (Eupatorium riparium Reg.) and which first appeared in the ravines near the lava flows. In the absence of frequent eruptions, they say that it disappears and Imperata reasserts itself.31

The Politics of Natural Hazard Turgo, which had not been-hit by an eruption within recorded history, was the hardest hit village in the 1994 eruption. Popular opinion had previously held that Turgo would always be shielded from eruptions by the fact that a sizeable hill of the same name lay between the village and the main slope of the volcano.32 Many of Turgo’s casualties were said to

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have been villagers who were caught by the gas cloud upslope (i.e. north) from the village while gathering grass in the aforementioned high grasslands (Suara Merdeka 23 November 1994a, 2 December 1994).33 These casualties prompted a debate in the press as to why the eruption was not better predicted, why the villagers were not given more advance warning and, especially, whether the affected villagers should be transmigrated to another island. The villagers of Turgo and the surrounding communities, notwithstanding their apparent isolation, live within a centralized state with a long tradition of close management of rural landscapes. In colonial Dutch times, state concerns on the slopes of Merapi focused not only on volcanic hazard but also on such things as retarding soil erosion and maintaining forest cover; in more recent times, state concerns have also encompassed production forestry, tourism and now agribusiness. State interventions included ‘closing’ the forests to settlement and cultivation in colonial times and, in contemporary times, involving some villagers in afforestation and soil conservation efforts through taungya-type programmes (called tumpang sari) while transmigrating other villagers off the volcano altogether for hazard- as well as conservation-related reasons.34 State interest in the safety of the inhabitants of Merapi’s slopes and its interest in applying the policy tool of resettlement have historically spiked upwards after every major eruption. For example, the deadliest eruption during the forty years leading up to the 1994 eruption occurred in May 1961, destroying 109 homes and killing five people. This was followed by the transmigration of 1,905 villagers (Suara Merdeka 8 December 1994a). In 1978, in the wake of a smaller eruption of hot gases and ash, the village of Turgo was actually officially ‘erased’ (dihapus) from government maps, although its inhabitants were allowed to continue living there.35 The eruption on 22 November 1994, with a death toll exceeding anything experienced on Merapi since 1930, intensified the debate about the safety of life on Merapi’s slopes and the virtues of resettlement by the state. The Merapi villagers display remarkable unanimity in their opposition to transmigration. In the aftermath of the 1994 eruption, 7,962 households in villages lying in the danger zone (in the kabupaten, ‘regencies’ of Magelang, Boyolali and Klaten) were interviewed and less than 1 per cent (i.e. sixty-eight households) expressed any interest in transmigrating (Suara Merdeka 7 December 1994).36 So unnerved were some villagers at the mere mention of transmigration that they actually fled the refugee camps where the interviews took place and returned to their still off-limits villages on the volcano. Many villagers, in short, saw the government resettlement programme as just another sort of hazard (and a similar one at that – for, just as volcanic spirits contest the reality of their settlement on the volcano, so does the state), and they preferred the hazard that they know to the one that they don’t. Following the eruption one evacuee told

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the press: ‘Jika ia harus mati disebabkan oleh bencana Merapi, itu sama dengan mati ngrungkebi negara’, ‘If one has to die because of the hazards from Merapi, it is the same as dying from giving up to the state’ (Kedaulatan Rakyat 8 December 1994b). Local activists drew a similar parallel: ‘Bencana kedua ini, tidak saja membakar menjadi arang tubuh manusia tetapi juga jiwa’, ‘This second hazard [of state relocation being pushed by elite developers] does not just burn people’s bodies and turn them into charcoal but also [burns] their spirits’ (Gunungan 25 January 1995). There was no official comprehension, much less appreciation, of this comparative view of natural and state hazards by the villagers, as the following official responses indicate: Masih ada sebagian warga yang enggan ditransmigrasikan. There are still some people who do not want to transmigrate]. (A local transmigration official – Suara Merdeka 7 December 1994). Belum semuanya dapat mengerti tentang situasi Gunung Merapi. Not yet everyone can understand the situation of Merapi. (A local police official – Kedaulatan Rakyat 8 December 1994b).

Some outside observers attributed the villagers’ reluctance to leave to valuable deposits of sand left on the volcano’s flanks by periodic eruptions and the ability of villagers to earn a living by mining it for construction companies (Suara Merdeka 7 December 1994). The impetus for this industry, of course, comes from the lowland companies and their customers as opposed to the local labourers, but in any case the exploitable sand deposits until recently lay lower down on the mountains slopes. The villagers who live high on the volcano’s flanks, within the danger zones, did not become involved in this industry until after the 1994 eruption. Outside observers mention the sand mining because this is one of the few resource-use systems on the volcano that is visible to them. The villagers of Turgo have a modest involvement in production of milk and fruit (especially Salak pondoh (Zalacca edulis)) for external markets; but at the time of the eruption most of their energy went into the subsistence-oriented cultivation of maize and tubers, based on the linking of lowland fields with highland grasslands, as described earlier, and there was virtually no outside interest in or knowledge of this.37 The wider society’s lack of interest in the indigenous system of resource use, coupled with its emphasis on volcanic hazards and the need for transmigration, is associated with keen interest in rival systems of resource use. Interest on the part of both public- and private-sector actors, which was long confined to forestry, has extended in recent years not only to sand mining but also to newer and more lucrative developments in tourism and agribusiness. Plans to develop tourist villas on lands to be relinquished by transmigrants circulated so widely in the wake of the

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1994 eruption that the Minister of Transmigration was forced by the press to address them, albeit in a characteristically opaque bureaucratic manner, as follows: Rencana itu, menurut Siswono, semata-mata untuk menyelamatkan warga yang bertempat tinggal di daerah rawan bencana. Meski begitu, pihaknya tidak akan memaksa kalau masyarakat menolak program itu. That plan, according to Siswono [the Minister], was simply to save people who reside in the area disturbed by the disaster. However, no one will force [the issue] if the villagers reject the programme. (Kedaulatan Rakyat 9 December 1994b)

Even the traditional government forestry sector saw opportunities in the eruption and moved quickly to take advantage of them, as reflected in this announcement: Akan dilakukan inventarisasi hutan milik masyarakat yang tak tergarap lagi, yang mungkin akan diserahkan kepada pemerintah secara sukarela. We will have an inventory of private wood lots that will no longer be cultivated, and that probably will be voluntarily turned over to the government. (Suara Merdeka 6 December 1994)

The fact that some of the alternative resource uses proposed were no less vulnerable to volcanic hazard than the existing community uses raised questions regarding government motives, as reflected in this comment by a Merapi villager published by local activists: Mengapa hanya kami yang dipermasalahkan pemerintah? Kalau mau jujur, ya, Kaliurang itu letaknya sijajar dengan kami. Jadi kemungkinan terkena bencana itu sama besarnya dengan kami. Itu tidak dipermasalahkan. Malah kami yang dipermasalahkan. Bahkan Kaliurang dibuka untuk wisata. Why are we the only ones problematized by the government? To be honest, Kaliurang [a tourist center] is at the same altitude as we are. Thus the likelihood of [their] being struck by disaster is just as great as with us. But that is not problematized. Instead we are the ones that are problematized. In fact Kaliurang is opened up to tourists. (Gunungan 25 January 1995)

Another activity that escaped official concern and censure was sand mining, which not only continued but greatly expanded in the wake of the 1994 eruption (Suara Merdeka 27 November 1994), in spite of the fact that it is one of the most vulnerable of all activities because it is carried out in the riverbeds that are the avenues for most eruptions of gas and cold lahars.

Discussion and Conclusion The villagers who lived on the slopes of Mount Merapi at the time of its 1994 eruption had developed a complex, multi-zonal agro-ecological system that was uniquely adapted to the biophysical as well as political– ecological characteristics of the volcano. It was this system that permitted

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them to live productively in proximity to, and thus to develop a familiarity with, the volcano. This system of knowledge was not primarily focused on the natural hazards of the volcano, and villagers sometimes did fall victim to these hazards, as happened in 1994. If their knowledge of these hazards sometimes proved inadequate, however, this was not true of their knowledge of the agro-ecological possibilities of its slopes, which gave them a relatively stable, sufficient and apparently sustainable livelihood (the relative success of which has become only more clear as national economic conditions worsened in the years following the 1994 eruption). Why, then, was this agro-ecological adaptation so little known beyond Merapi’s slopes? The most obvious reason, perhaps, is the competing political-economic interests of state elites in the land that was involved in this agro-ecological system. Less obvious, but arguably more important, is the ideological stance of the nation state with respect to natural hazards and disasters. The regional tradition whereby natural perturbations are thought to herald political ones is clearly relevant. This sensitivity was updated and amplified, however, by the central developmental discourse of Soeharto’s New Order government. National development became the central, unfiying raison d’être of this government, the application of which consisted in making a development subject out of every Indonesian citizen. The agro-ecological system of Turgo and other villages – creative, dynamic and locally developed – did not fit the idealized picture of a development subject; a poor village needing to be saved from volcanic eruptions fits this picture much better. Public constructions of knowledge about Mount Merapi were predominantly influenced by the state need to project an image of power and authority, a felt need that only increased during the waning years of Suharto’s regime. Similar needs seem to have influenced the international scientific community, which has devoted great resources to the study of volcanic hazards on Mount Merapi but little or nothing to the study of local agro-ecological adaptation. The latter suffers, in part, the common fate of banal or mundane topics in modern Western science (Kammen and Dove 1997). To the extent to which the activities of the villagers on Merapi have been the object of scholarly attention, domestic as well as international, this attention has focused on traditional ritual knowledge. The neglect and invisibility of the equally unique body of agro-ecological knowledge of the volcano raises new questions for current debates about the scholarly study of local knowledge and practice.

Acknowledgements Field research was initially carried out on Mount Merapi between 1982 and 1985, with support from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and

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the East-West Center, and with sponsorship by Gadjah Mada University. The author was assisted in this research by the following students from Gadjah Mada University: Handojo Adi Pranowo, Bambang Hudayana and Lucas Sasongko Triyoga. A return visit to Java in 1993 was supported by the Indonesian Central Planning Ministry (BAPPENAS) and the United Nations Development Programme. Research over the past two years has been supported by the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, in collaboration with Bambang Hudayana at Gadjah Mada University. An earlier version of this analysis was presented at the Tenth Anniversary Conference of Yale University’s Program in Agrarian Studies, 12–13 May 2000, New Haven. The author gratefully acknowledges helpful comments on this draft by Carol Carpenter. The author alone is responsible for the analysis presented here.

Notes 1. This was far from the deadliest volcanic eruption in recorded Indonesian history, however. The eruption of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in eastern Indonesia in 1815 is estimated to have been responsible, either directly or indirectly, for 117,000 deaths (De Jong Boers 1995). 2. See Rosaldo (1989) and Tsing (1993) on how local and extra-local people construct and contest identity, especially at the margins. 3. Villagers explicitly told me that Banaspati (or Kala, son of Durga) is not one of the spirit inhabitants of Mount Merapi. 4. This discourse of natural hazard as abduction also extends to the unruly South Java sea, drownings in which are said to be the result of a similar liminal state. 5. One local Javanese shaman told the press in the aftermath of the 1994 eruption that he possessed jumpa-jumpi ‘magic spells’ which made him invulnerable to the wewe (Kedaulatan Rakyat 8 December 1994a). 6. See Taussig’s (1980: 185–86) account from the Peruvian Andes of spirits who are thought to live within mountains in palaces, haciendas and villages, where they receive sacrifices from the human community, which they turn into gold and silver and then give to the government on the coast. 7. Good people are thought to be called to Merapi or the South Sea (or sent to heaven), whereas bad people are turned into noxious weeds and thrown out of Merapi and back into the everyday world of Java (note the earlier reference to the appearance of Eupatorium after the 1961 eruption). 8. The everyday banality of life in the spirit world of Merapi even includes such modern bureaucratic activities as a census. Villagers in Turgo assert that so many dead have been called to Merapi that they had to have a catah jiwa, ‘census’. 9. There are similar stories about government soldiers shooting wild pigs (i.e. the livestock of the spirits) on the volcano and then disappearing. 10. Leopards (Panthera pardus melas) do still live on Mount Merapi. 11. Principles of reciprocity and conservation of matter seem to underpin these beliefs. Thus, the Turgo villagers say that formerly, if their crops were raided by wild pigs, their harvest would be all the better as a result (i.e. the spirits

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12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19. 20.

would make good the losses to their pigs) – although they say that this is no longer true today (see Dove and Kammen 1997: 96). The perceived cross-over character of the pig derives from its liminal status, and thus great potency, for nominal Muslims like these on Merapi. The Turgo villagers say that formerly they used pig skins to cover their maize cribs, so that their maize stores could not be exhausted. While I was carrying out my research in Turgo, the villagers killed two pigs with commercial poison, ate the flesh, used the skin for cattle medicine (shared out with the entire village) and kept the tusks and feet for use as talismans against evil spirits. Human–animal transformations are an old theme in Javanese beliefs, most often involving were-tigers (Wessing 1992; Boomgaard 2001). Some believe that this explains only the ‘regular’ and ‘scheduled’ eruptions, whereas ‘irregular’ ones are occasioned by moral lapses in human behaviour, including proscribed behaviours and the forgetting of one’s ancestors and customs (Triyoga 1991). The belief in an orderly reality within volcanoes is not unique to Java. One of the first people to descend into the crater of an active volcano, the Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher, said of his 1638 descent into Mount Vesuvius: ‘The underground world is a well fram’d House, with distinct Rooms, Cellars, and StoreHouses, by great Art and Wisdom fitted together … not, as many think, a confused and jumbled heap or Chaos of things’ (cited in Botkin 1990: 91). The reliance of the Yogyakarta palace on local ritual experts in these distant places shows that villagers like those on Merapi are seen as geographically but not culturally distant from the heart of Javanese society. The slopes of Merapi represent not the primitive to Javanese society but the ‘other’. Interestingly, most Turgo villagers flatly denied the existence of any such person as a juru kunci on Merapi. Those who admitted that some such person existed insisted that he was simply a guide for officials from the palace who wanted to climb the mountain but explicitly denied that he had the role or ability of predicting or forestalling volcanic activity. A prominent ritual expert in Yogyakarta told the national press that the palace would function like a payung agung (‘great umbrella’) to protect Yogyakarta and environs from even greater eruptions in the future (Suara Merdeka 24 November 1994a). The U.S. Geological Service successfully managed this conflict in the wake of the destructive 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. In spite of the fact that the agency failed to predict the magnitude of the eruption (one of its own scientists was killed by the eruption) or adequately warn vulnerable populations of the subsequent ash fall (Chester 1993: 252, 260), it came out of the disaster with increased funding and political clout. Additional evidence of the sensitivity of the President to this issue was his purported annual involvement in the Yogyakarta palace’s labuhan (‘offerings’) to Merapi. Keeler (1988: 100) makes a similar point in his analysis of government coverage of the total solar eclipse in Java in 1983: It meant that people in Java, while construing the eclipse in many ways familiar to them, nevertheless experienced it in a language irrevocably associated in their minds with national and bureaucratic interests, with scientific modes of knowing, and with modernity. By means of language, the government embraced the eclipse, or attempted to embrace it, within its national project, and to make of it not a reflection upon the government, but yet another of that authority’s many expressions.

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258 | Michael R. Dove 21. See Harwell’s (2000a) analysis of the linkage between Indonesia’s internationally embarrassing fires in 1997/98 and its commitment to the development of remote-sensing technology. 22. Laksono (1988) argues that mortality rates on Merapi, the volcanic hazards notwithstanding, compare favourably with the rates in the government’s unhealthy transmigration sites. 23. As a newspaper article noted in the wake of the 1994 eruption, natural disasters as well as illness and social unrest are all reminders from God (Suara Merdeka 24 November 1994a). Adas traces this interpretation throughout southeast Asia but suggests that it is strengthened in Java by its history and culture: ‘The assimilation and transmutation of Hindu–Buddhist concepts produced a heightened sensitivity among the Javanese to stability and tranquility and the disruptive effects of change. It also resulted in a time sense that was based on a belief in the repeated and cyclic creation, decline, and destruction of the universe’ (Adas 1979: 97–98). 24. Wisner (1993: 137, note 11) has compiled an impressive list of contemporary governments that have fallen as a direct result of natural disasters (see also De Boer and Sanders 2002 on the ‘far-reaching’ impacts of volcanic eruptions). Less studied but equally intriguing is the relationship between natural disaster and the waxing and waning of local societies (see Blong 1982 on the Enga of Papua New Guinea). 25. See Boomgaard (2003) on the history of the cultivation of maize and other nonrice starch staples in Java. 26. A related development was the historic replacement of the digging stick of the forest swiddens by the cattle-drawn plough in the open fields and then, as field size decreased and fragmentation increased under population/land pressure, with the hoe in most cases. See Dove (2003) on the historic shift from extensive to intensive agriculture in Indonesia. 27. The villagers say that grasses like I. cylindrica grow more slender stalks at the higher elevations, which is more palatable for the cattle, whereas at lower elevations they grow thicker stalks, which is better suited for traditional roofing material. 28. Whereas Clifford Geertz (1971: 25) dubbed Imperata grasslands ‘the green desert’, Blaikie and Brookfield (1987: 159) write, ‘A certain amount of Imperata grassland is useful.’ 29. See Blong (1982: 186) on grassland succession on eruption-impacted areas. On the succession of Imperata in particular in such areas, see Bartlett (1955–61, II: 9, 1956: 703 note) and De Jong Boers (1995: 47). 30. A number of scholars have looked at the general relationship between the geography of volcanic-enriched soils on Java and the geography of human settlement and population density (e.g., Mohr 1938; Geertz 1971; MacDonald 1972). There has also been some study of the soil fertility of specific locales in the aftermath of particular eruptions (see De Jong Boers’s 1995 review of the historical evidence on the impact of the 1815 Tambora eruption on soil fertility around Indonesia) and of plant succession on lands impacted by volcanic activities (e.g., the reforestation of Krakatau following its famous 1883 eruption). But there have been relatively few attempts to link these two bodies of work, to examine, for example, the way that volcanic-related changes in vegetative cover affect agro-ecology. An exemplary exception is Blong’s (1982) study of the way that some highland Papua New Guinea groups have adapted their agriculture (as well as culture) to frequent ash falls. 31. Interestingly, they now claim that the 1994 eruption has been followed by a decrease in Eupatorium.

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Perceptions of Local Knowledge and Adaptation on Mount Merapi | 259 32. Turgo villagers call this hill the ‘aunt’ of the volcano, thus imputing to it greater age (which is corroborated by geologists) and authority. 33. At the time of my initial interviews in the early 1980s, villagers said that they had never been caught by a gas cloud while cutting grass in these locations. 34. The idealized linkage between volcanic disaster and resettlement is graphically seen in the Social Services pavilion observed by Pemberton (1994: 175) at the Solo’s court’s 1982 Sekaten celebration: ‘Near the pavilion’s exit door stood a papier-mâché volcano in a state of perpetual eruption and a tiny model community representing what the government would provide should volcanic catastrophe totally obliterate a village.’ 35. The ability to erase a village in law but not fact reflects the reality that, as with resettlement programmes elsewhere in Indonesia, the government’s actual abilities to move populations about typically fall far short of its announced policies and programmes (Harwell 2000b). 36. Not a single villager from the study village of Turgo subsequently transmigrated. 37. Some media accounts did acknowledge ‘soil fertility’ in discussing the villagers’ reluctance to transmigrate, but just as many accounts simply cited the fact that the villagers had lived there for generations (turun-menurun) (Dinamika Berita 27 November 1994; Suara Merdeka 28 November 1994b; Kedaulatan Rakyat 8 December 1994b).

References Academic Literature Adas, M. 1979. Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest against the European Colonial Order. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Agrawal, A. 1995. ‘Dismantling the Divide between Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge’, Development and Change 26: 413–39. Anderson, B.R.O’G. 1972. ‘The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture’, in C. Holt (ed.), Culture and Politics in Indonesia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 1–69. Bartlett, H.H. 1955–61. Fire in Relation to Primitive Agriculture and Grazing in the Tropics; Annotated Bibliography, 3 vols. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Botanical Gardens/Department of Botany. ___. 1956. ‘Fire, Primitive Agriculture, and Grazing in the Tropics’, in W.L. Thomas (ed.), Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 692–720. Blaikie, P. and H. Brookfield. 1987. Land Degradation and Society. London: Methuen. Blong, R.J. 1982. The Time of Darkness: Local Legends and Volcanic Reality in Papua New Guinea. Canberra: Australian University Press. Boomgaard, P. 2001. Frontiers of Fear: Tigers and People in the Malay World 1600–1950. New Haven: Yale University Press. ___. 2003. ‘In the Shadow of Rice: Roots and Tubers in Indonesia, 1500–1950’, Agricultural History 77(4): 582–610. Botkin, D.B. 1990. Discordant Harmonies: a New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Oxford University Press. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carpenter, C. 1985. ‘A Socio-ecological Analysis of the Forest in Java: Forest Deities in a Wet-rice Society’. Paper presented at American Anthropological Association annual meeting.

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260 | Michael R. Dove Chester, D. 1993. Volcanoes and Society. London: Edward Arnold. Coedès, G. 1968. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, ed. W.F. Vella, trans. Susan Brown Cowing. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press for the East-West Center. De Boer, J.Z. and D.T. Sanders. 2002. Volcanoes in Human History: the Far-Reaching Effects of Major Eruptions. Princeton: Princeton University Press. De Jong Boers, B. 1995. ‘Mount Tambora in 1815: a Volcanic Eruption and its Aftermath’, Indonesia 60: 36–60. Decker, R. and B. Decker. 1997. Volcanoes, 3rd edn. New York: W.H. Freeman. Dove, M.R. 1985. ‘The Agroecological Mythology of the Javanese, and the Political Economy of Indonesia’, Indonesia 39: 1–36. ___. 1986. ‘The Practical Reason of Weeds in Indonesia: Peasant vs State Views of Imperata and Chromolaena’, Human Ecology 14(2): 163–90. ___. 2003. ‘Forest Discourses in South and Southeast Asia: a Comparison with Global Discourses’, in P. Greenough and A. Tsing (eds), Nature in the Global South: Environmental Projects in South and Southeast Asia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 103–23. Dove, M.R. and D.M. Kammen. 1997. ‘The Epistemology of Sustainable Resource Use: Managing Forest Products, Swiddens, and High-yielding Variety Crops’, Human Organization 56(1): 91–101. Ellen, R.F. and P. Harris. 2000. ‘Introduction’, in R.F. Ellen, A. Bicker and P. Parkes (eds), Indigenous Environmental Knowledge and its Transformations. Amsterdam: Harwood, pp. 213–251. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1940. The Nuer: a Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. New York: Oxford University Press. Geertz, C. 1960. The Religion of Java. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ___. 1971. Agricultural Involution: the Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Harwell, E.E. 2000a. ‘Remote Sensibilities: Discourses of Technology and the Making of Indonesia’s Natural Disaster’, Development and Change 31: 307–40. ___. 2000b. ‘The Un-Natural History of Culture: Ethnicity, Tradition and Territorial Conflicts in West Kalimantan, 1800–1997’, Ph.D. dissertation. School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University. Hefner, R.W. 1985. Hindu Javanese: Tengger Tradition and Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hewitt, K. 1997. Regions of Risk: a Geographical Introduction to Disasters. London: Longman. Hudayana, B. 1987. ‘Tanaman dalam Usaha Tani Subsisten di Sebuah Desa Lahan Kering Lereng Merapi Yogyakarta’ (The Plants of the Subsistence Cultivation System of an Unirrigated Village on the Slopes of Merapi, Yogyakarta), Sarjana thesis, Anthropology Department, Gadjah Mada University. Kammen, D.M. and M.R. Dove. 1997. ‘The Virtues of Mundane Science’, Environment 39(6): 10–15, 38–41. Keeler, W. 1988. ‘Sharp Rays: Javanese Responses to a Solar Eclipse’, Indonesia 46: 91–101. Laksono, P.M. 1988. ‘Perception of Volcanic Hazards: Villagers Versus Government Officials in Central Java’, in M.R. Dove (ed.), The Real and Imagined Role of Culture in Development. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 183–200. MacDonald, G.A. 1972. Volcanoes. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Malinowski, B. 1965 [1935]. Coral Gardens and Their Magic. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

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Perceptions of Local Knowledge and Adaptation on Mount Merapi | 261 Mohr, E.C.J. 1938. ‘The Relation between Soil and Population Density in the Netherlands East Indies’, Comptes Rendus du Congrés Internationale de Géographie Amsterdam 1938, 2 sect. IIIc. Leiden: Brill, pp. 478–93. Ortner, S. 1984. ‘Anthropological Theory since the Sixties’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 26(1): 126–66. Pandey, U. and Singh, J.S. 1984. ‘Energy-Flow Relationships between Agro- and Forest Ecosystems in Central Himalaya’, Environmental Conservation 11(1): 45–53. Pemberton, J. 1994. On the Subject of ‘Java’. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Pranowo, H.A. 1985. Manusia dan Hutan (Man and Forest). Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press. Rosaldo, R. 1989. Culture and Truth: the Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon Press. Scott, J.C. 1998. Seeing Like a State. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sherman, G. 1980. ‘What “Green Desert”? The Ecology of Batak Grassland Farming’, Indonesia 29: 113–48. Taussig, M.T. 1980. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Triyoga, L.S. 1991. Manusia Jawa dan Gunung Merapi: Persepsi dan Sistem Kepercayaanya (The Javanese People and Merapi Volcano: Perceptions and System of Belief). Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press. Tsing, A.L. 1993. In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-way Place. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Van Steenis, C.G.G.J. 1972. The Mountain Flora of Java. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Warren, D.M. , L.J. Slikkerveer, and D. Brokensha (eds), 1995. The Cultural Dimensions of Development: Indigenous Knowledge Systems. London: Intermediate Technology Publications. Wessing, R. 1992. ‘A Tiger in the Heart: the Javanese Rampok Macan’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land en Volkenkunde 148(2): 287–308. Wisner, B. 1993. ‘Disaster Vulnerability: Scale, Power and Daily Life’, GeoJournal 30(2): 127–40.

Indonesian-language Newspaper and Magazine Articles Dinamika Berita, 27 November 1994, ‘Menengok Kehidupan Anak di Barak Pengungsian’. Gunungan, 25 January 1995, ‘Geger Uang Merapi’. Jawa Pos, 24 November 1994, 15 ‘Mayat Dikubur Masal’. Kedaulatan Rakyat, 8 December 1994a, ‘”Danyang” yang Murah Senyum’. Kedaulatan Rakyat, 8 December 1994b, ‘Pengungsi Pulang tak Izin, Dijemput Dandim Sleman’. Kedaulatan Rakyat, 9 December 1994a, ’Kraton Tetap Lakukan Cara Labuhan di Merapi’. Kedaulatan Rakyat, 9 December 1994b, ’Kualat, Kalau Membangun Villa di Daerah Terlarang’. Suara Merdeka, 23 November 1994a, ’Awan Panas Merapi Tewaskan 19 Orang’. Suara Merdeka, 24 November 1994a, ’Gembong: Akan Ada Bencana Besar’. Suara Merdeka, 26 November 1994, ’Takkan Ada Letusan Besar’. Suara Merdeka, 27 November 1994, ’Kali Bebeng Banjir Lahar’. Suara Merdeka, 28 November 1994b, ’Statusnya Masih “Awas Merapi”’. Suara Merdeka, 1 December 1994, ’IB Sudjana Merasa Difitnah dengan Karikatur’. Suara Merdeka, 2 December 1994, ’Pencarian Korban Merapi Dihentikan’.

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262 | Michael R. Dove Suara Merdeka, 6 December 1994, ’Korban Merapi bertambah Lagi’. Suara Merdeka, 7 December 1994, ’Kali Bebeng, Blongkeng, dan Krasak Banjir Lahar Dingin Gunung Merapi’. Suara Merdeka, 9 December 1994, ’Banjir Lahar Dingin di Kali Boyong’. Suara Merdeka, 1 1 December 1994, ‘Permadi SH’.

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Index

Aceh, 12 adaptation biological, 21, 54 concept of, 3, 36 cultural, 3, 15, 36, 161 Adas, M., 248, 258n23 Aditjondro, G., 12, 154, 224 affinity (personal attributes), concept in relation to rice landraces, 85, 89–90, 94, 102, 105–106, 109n4 Agathis resin, 188–92, 195–97, 203 Agrawal, A., 238 agriculture cycles of, 61, 105; Baduy, 112, 115–19, 135; Kenyah, 71 intensification of, 5, 17, 108n1, 129 involution of, 5–6 ritual and, 223 See also rice agrobiodiversity, 10, 112 aid and humanitarian programmes, 20 alang-alang grass, 225 See also Imperata cylindrica Alatas, S., 6 Alcorn, J., 1 Alejo, A., 186 Alland, A., 36 Ambon, 29, 144–47, 153, 161n1, 162n3, 163n9 Ananta, A., 12 ancestor-worship, 85 Anderson, B., 248 animism, 85, 138, 148 anthropogenic landscapes, 4 Apthorpe, R., 186

Aquino, D., 14 Aragon, L., 12 Arenga pinnata, see sugar palm Ariff, S., 4, 18, 140 Asad, T., 212 Asia, financial crisis in, 12–13 Azerino, 228 Babo-Soares, D., 228 Baduy, 2, 7, 15, 21–22, 30, 33–34, 84, 87, 112–42 cosmology, 130n3 environmental values of, 115 rice production, 119–21 See also swidden cultivation Bakels, J., 130nn1–2 baku cungkul, 176–78, 183 Balagopalan, C., 152 Bali, 8, 30–31, 121, 129, 240 Banana (Musa paradisiaca), 146–49, 155–57, 206 Banda Islands, 4 Banten, 112–14, 133–35 Bantong Antaran, 3 Barber, C., 14 Barr, C., 11 Bartels, D., 147, 154 Bartlett, H., 258n29 Batak, Tanabag (Palawan), 2, 34–35, 185–216 responses to unpredictable weather, 202–3 Bates, D., 28, 167 Beachell, H., 8 Bech, J., 196

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264 | Index Beckerman, S., 167 Bello, W., 194, 211, 214 Bellwood, P., 3 Bernas, J., 211, 214 Bernstein, J., 3, 9–10 Bernstein, R., 8 Bhandari, M., 24 Bicker, A., 1 BIMAS policy, 8–9, 85–87, 89 biodiversity loss, 10–11, 14 Blaikie, P., 249, 258n28 Bloch, M., 158 Blong, R., 251, 258n24, 258n28, 258n30 Boeke, J., 6 Boevink, W., 130n2 Boomgard, P., 172, 257n13, 258n25 Booth, A., 8 Borneo, 21, 46–83 See also Kalimantan Boster, J., 167 Botkin, D., 257 Bouma, G., 224–25 Bourdieu, P., 238 Boxer, C., 222 Brassica spp., 169–70, 181 Breazeale, K., 119 Breman, J., 9, 13 Brinkman, W., 163n11 Brokensha, D., 1, 15, 238 Brookfield, H., 59, 249, 258n28 Brosius, P., 14, 67, 199 Brouwer, A., 27, 29, 31, 147, 153, 227 Browder, J., 185 Brunei, 2–3, 9, 15 Brush, S., 84 Bryant, R., 186 Buano, 2, 29, 34, 143–65 Budi, S., 99 Budiardjo, C., 224 Budiman, A., 12 Burkill, I., 25 Burns, P., 233n3 Butonese, 30, 144, 156–57, 162n8 Cadeliña, R., 191–94, 199–200, 215n8 Callo, R., 203 Campbell, D., 24 Cardoso, J., 230 Carpenter, C., 244 Carr, L., 24 carrots (Daucus carota), 166, 169–82 carrying capacity, 5, 27 cashew (Anacardium occidentale), 204–5

cassava (Manihot esculenta), 146–47, 150–53, 155, 157, 161–63, 165, 192–93, 197, 201, 206 bitter, 153, 155, 162n8 catastrophe theory, 12 Catley, R., 6 cattle, 249–50, 258n26 See also livestock Cederroth, S., 84 Chauvel, R., 153 Chayanov, A., 6 Chedd, G., 13 Chester, D., 240, 247–48, 257n18 Chin, S., 14 Chinese, 222 Christensen, H., 10 Christianity See religion Christopher, T., 25 Cinatti Vaz Monteiro Gomes, R., 222, 233n2, 235n15 Cleveland, D., 140, 166 climate, stability, variation and change in, 15, 22–23, 46–83, 108n1, 122 responses to, 47, 53–58, 60–63, 55, 77 clove (Syzygium aromatica), 124, 130, 137–38, 141, 147, 170, 173, 183 coast, degradation of, 11, 14 Cock, J., 152 coconut (Cocos nucifera), 25, 147 Coedes, G., 240 coffee (Coffea arabica), 124, 130, 137–38, 141, 172–74 Colfer, C., 74 Collier, W., 8, 107, 109n5 Collins, J., 144 Collins, M., 140 Colombijn, F., 12 colonial period, 4–6, 114, 135, 137, 144, 147, 151, 160, 162n2, 162n9, 163n9, 222–23, 230, 234n14, 252 commerce See market Conelly, W., 187, 212, 215n8 conflict See violence Conklin, H., 15, 102, 166–67, 215n8 Contreras, A., 190, 208 coping strategy, concept of, 35–36, 73, 147, 157 Corypha sp., see gewang palm Cox, T., 37n2

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Index | 265 crisis concept of, 23 cooperative strategies and, 30 individualistic strategies and, 30 local and historically specific responses to, 28–30 management, concept of, 35–36 responses to, 19–24, 190 social strategies in response to, 30–31 threefold, 11–14 typology of, 15–19 crops diversification of types and varieties, 153 drought-resistant, 122, 127 failure of, 4, 11, 17–18, 85–89, 108n1, 121–23, 150–52 high diversity of perennial, 123 mixed perennial,129 post-Columbian, 32 tolerant varieties, 22 cross-species commensality, 88 Curran, L.,11 dab-dab, 193, 200 Danasamita, S., 130nn1–2 Daschbach, R., 230 Dayak, 109n4 De Boer, J., 258n24 de Castro, A., 222–23, 235n14 de Fretes, Y., 151, 163n11 de Jong, W., 225 de Jong Boers, B., 256n1, 258n29, 258n30 decentralization, political, 201, 209–12 Decker, B., 240 Decker, R., 240 development, top-down, 1, 14, 108n1 Dili, 221, 234n8 disaster, natural concept of, 23 disaster capitalism, 20 official constructions of, 19 predictors of irregularity and, 20–22 typology of, 16–17 disease epidemics, 16–18, 37n1, 150 dislocation administrative, 161n1 of population, 154, 157, 160 Djatisunda, A., 130nn1–2 Donner, W., 4 Donovan, D., 11, 14

Dove, M., 14, 18–19, 21, 30, 32–33, 109n6, 114, 129, 141, 167, 225, 249–50, 255, 257n11, 258n26 drought, 11, 13, 16, 18, 22, 37n1, 46–83, 118, 121–23, 126, 129, 150, 152, 156–58, 160–62, 162n4 Baduy responses to, 122–23 Buano responses to, 151–53 dual societies, concept of, 6 Dunlop, J., 24 Durham, D., 19 Dutch, 222–23, 233n3, 172 See also colonial period Dwyer, P., 30, 148 earthquakes, 4, 15–16, 37n1 East Timor, 2–3, 5, 12, 31, 220–35 economy crisis of in Indonesia, 114, 126, 129, 152 growth in, 1, 3 Eder, J., 186–89, 191, 215n3, 216n16 Ehrenfield, J.,108 El Niño Southern Oscillation,11–12, 16, 18, 21–23, 29, 37n1, 46–83, 112, 119, 121–22, 126–27, 150, 162n4, 164, 196–97, 208 and anthropological research, 77–78 elections, 205–6, 209–12, 216nn14–15 Ellen, R., 3, 5, 9, 20, 22–27, 29, 33, 109n3, 112, 124, 135, 137–40, 146–48, 160, 162, 222, 224, 227, 231, 238 environment command and control management of, 108 hazards of, 15 management of by self-regulation, 108 neglect of, 156 the new history of, 4 epidemiology, 21 ethnoclimatology, 46–47, 48–53, 64–67, 69, 70, 75–76 Eugeissona utilis, see sago Evans-Pritchard, E., 176, 238 exchange, 147, 154–55, 160–61, 164 alternative relations of, 157 breakdown of relations, 157 inter-island, 31 labour, 107 See also trade ‘extinction of experience’, concept of, 9

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266 | Index Fairhead, J., 199 fallback foods See famine foods fallow, 136–37 famine, 4, 13, 17 foods, 24–28, 35, 54 farmer-forager alliances, 55, 68–69 See also Penan relationship with Kenyah Farram, S., 222 Fegan, B., 7 Fernandez, J., 187 fertilizer, 119, 129, 135, 137, 207, 249 Fiji, 28 finger knife, 87, 104–105, 108n2 Firth, R., 24 Fisher, C., 3 fishing, industrial, 14 Flach, M., 162n6 flooding, 4, 11, 16–18, 20, 23, 37n1, 46–47, 58, 248 Florey, M., 10 food security, 1 food shortage, 17, 54, 68, 72 See also famine foragers, 54–56 forest-fallow cultivation See swiddening forest degradation and removal of, 14, 17–18, 225 fires, 11–12, 14, 16–18, 37n1, 47, 59, 68, 74, 79, 162n4, 229, 258n21 production, 11 prohibitions, 223 protection, 226–27, 232–33 regeneration, 231–33 regulation, 220–35 sacred, 226, 228 Foucault, M., 212 Fox, J., 8–9, 11, 223 frosts, 16 game theory, 18 Gammie, G., 24 gardening, 148–49 Garna, J., 130n2 Gasper, D., 186 gathering, 189–91, 195, 197, 208 See also hunting and gathering Geertz, C., 5–6, 8–9, 13, 167, 172, 244, 258n28, 258n30 Gellert, P., 11

genetic resources conservation of, 126 diversity of, 96 erosion of, 17, 84, 186 genetically-modified crops, 17 Gerdin, I., 8, 84 gewang palm, 220, 225–26, 231 Giddens, A., 238 Glass, N., 21 Goss, J., 12 grassland, 249–52, 259n33 Gray, A., 14 green revolution, 7–10, 13, 86, 108n1, 112, 119, 121–22, 129–30 Griffin, K., 8 Grillo, R., 186 Gunderson, L., 36 Gupta, R., 24 habitat loss, 17 Halimun, Mount, 84 Halmahera, 29 Hames, R., 167 Hansen, G., 86 Hanusz, M., 173 Harris, H., 33, 139–40, 238 Harrison, G., 21 Hart, G., 7, 9 Harvey, B., 182 Harwell, E., 248, 258n21, 259n35 Hatley, B., 12 Headland, T., 27 health-care delivery, 9 Hecht, S., 185 Hefner, R., 249 Hely-Hutchinson, W., 24 Henley, D., 174–75 Hewitt, K., 242–43 Higgins, B., 6 Hilhorst, D., 190 Hoare, A., 10 Hose, C., 61, 75 home gardens, 122 Hudayana, B., 249 Huliselan, M., 147 Huma See swidden cultivation human ecology, benign, 4 hunting, 65, 68, 74, 191, 198, 203 and gathering, 187 See also gathering Hurricanes See wind damage

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Index | 267

Jacob, C., 24 Japanese occupation, 173–74 Jarosz, L., 222 Java, 2, 4, 6, 12, 32–33, 35, 37n1, 107, 108nn1–2, 109n5, 112–13, 119, 122, 129, 135, 140, 147 central, 121, 238–59 cosmology of, 244 environmental stress in lowlands, 121–22 west, 2, 33–34, 84, 108n2, 109n4, 112, 114, 121–22, 133–34 Jay, R., 107 Jellinek, L., 13 Jobse, P., 163n9 Jordan, B., 20

Kanekes See Baduy Kanodia, K., 24 Kantu, 109n6 karlotta, 176–77 Kartawinata, A., 130n2 Kasepuhan, 2, 8, 22, 31, 34, 84–109, 146 concepts of nature and natural cycles, 85, 88, 107 owner-batur (matuh-batur) relationship among, 31, 89–91, 106, 108 Kayan Mentarang, 60 Keeler, W., 248, 257n20 Kei Islands, 32 Kenyah, 2, 23, 47, 66, 69, 70–72, 74–75 relationship with Penan, see Penan Keuning, J., 147 Kikuchi, M., 107 King, V., 51–52, 59, 69 Kingdon, E., 232 Kingsbury, D., 12 Kirsch, S., 189 Kissya, E., 147 Knapen, H., 4, 37n1, 60–61, 63 knowledge agroecological, 140 authoritative, 20, 33 changing repertoires of, 32–35 erosion of, 1, 10, 13, 73 ethno-ecological, 15, 37, 48–49, 133, 242 hybridization of, 3, 33, 133–42, 160–61, 238 indigenous or traditional, concepts of, 143, 238 local, 53 off-the-shelf (or ‘stock’), 32, 37n2 perceptions of local, 238–59 rediscovery of traditional, 14–15 stereotypes of traditional knowledge, 21 traditional, dynamism of, 33 transmission of, 46–47, 53 Kobryn, H., 224–25 Kools, J., 114 Kummer, D., 214n1

Kalimantan, 2, 11–13, 23, 37, 109n4, 109n6, 162n4, 170 See also Borneo Kalland, A., 14 Kammen, D., 21, 225, 255, 257n11

La Niña See El Niño Laksono, P., 258n22 landrace, defined, 109n3 See also rice

Iban, 51, 69 Imperata cylindrica, 206, 225, 249–51, 258n27 See also alang-alang India, 24 indicators of seasonality and perturbation, 112, 115–19, 150–51 infrasonic, 21 indigenous movements, 14 Indonesia, 2–5, 7–9, 11, 13–14, 16, 18, 30, 35, 84, 107–8, 112, 121, 135, 143, 145, 160, 162n4, 220, 224–26, 227, 230, 233n3, 234n5, 239–42, 245, 247–48, 253, 256n1, 258n21, 259n35 New Order in, 7–8, 12–14, 108, 129 Ingold, T., 47 Irian See Papua irrigation associations, 30–31, 129 irrigation and irrigated rice, 17, 22, 95–96, 112, 114–15, 119–22, 125, 129, 135, 189, 193, 196, 229, 248 Irvine, F., 24 Iskandar, J., 7, 15, 30, 33, 109n3, 109 n5, 112, 117, 124, 126, 130n2, 135, 137–38, 140, 160, 166 Islam See religion island southeast Asia, concept of, 3

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268 | Index landslips, 16, 248 land tenure, 179 language loss, 10, 14 Lansing, S., 5, 8, 84, 122, 129 laor (Eunice viridis), 150–51, 162 Leach, M., 199 Lee, R., 176 Leighton, M., 11 Leirissa, R., 147 Leitão, H., 222 Li, T., 5 Lim Teck Ghee, 7 Limadharma, H., 172, 182 limiting factor, 27 Linares, O., 148 Lindblad, J., 12 Liong, S., 224 livestock, ecology, management, predation on and infestation of, 64–65, 67, 69, 148–49, 152, 154–57, 161, 162n3, 164, 203, 244, 256n9 logging, 28 Lokollo, J., 153 Lolang, H., 173 Lombard, D., 130n1 Lombok, 4 Louhenapessy, J., 162n6 Lundstrom-Burghoorn, W., 174 maano, 31, 147, 156, 161 MacDonald, G., 258n30 Madura, 4 Maffi, L., 10 Magellan, F., 223 Maize (Zea mays), 162n5, 169–73 Malaysia, 2–3, 5–7, 9, 13–15, 17, 25, 30, 141 Malinowski, B., 238 malnutrition, 248 Maluku, 2, 12, 14, 18–19, 25–26, 143–45, 147–50, 152–54, 160, 161n1, 162n8, 163–65 Manehat, P., 227 Manning, C., 13, 108n1 mapalus, 172, 175, 180–81 Marche, A., 187 Margalef, R., 199 market dislocation of, 17 effect of responses, 74–74 gardening, 171 penetration of, 114, 135 price fluctuation in, 129

relations, 56, 62, 67, 72 as a strategy in times of hardship, 124–26, 130, 158, 161 uncertainty in, 35 Martinho, J., 222, 235n14 mast fruiting, 65, 67, 69 Matiza, T., 24 Maxwell, H., 24 McCay, B., 15 McDermott, M., 188, 192, 199–200 McWilliam, A., 223, 225, 230, 235n15 Meilleur, B., 48 Meitzner Yoder, L., 25, 31 Melaleuca oil, 34, 146, 149, 158–61, 162n9, 163n11 Melnyk, M., 25 Merapi, Mount, 2, 4, 18, 30, 33, 238–59 Merrifield, S., 168 Metzner, J., 34 Middelkoop, P., 223, 234n7 migration, 11, 19, 28, 30, 186–90, 192, 197, 199, 204–5, 208, 214, 215n5, 240, 253–54, 258n22, 259n37 Miller, E., 187 Minahasa, 2, 30, 35, 146, 166–84 Minnegal, M., 30 misfortune, conceptualization of, 19 modernization, 1, 3 and the decline of local knowledge, 5–10 Moerman, M., 109n6 Mohr, E., 258n30 Moluccas, 1, 27, 31–32 See also Maluku Monk, K., 151, 163n11 moral economy, concept of, 6 multi-purpose species, 167 Murphy, D., 11 Myers, N., 215n5 Nabhan, G., 9 Nash, J., 108 natural hazards, 11, 15, 240 politics of, 251–54 New Guinea, 2–3, 33 nitrogen fixation, 33, 133, 136–37, 139 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 185, 190, 194–95, 198–99, 201–2, 208–9 non-timber forest products and their collection (NTFPs), 62, 68, 188–89, 195, 203, 207, 211–13 Norimana, A., 147

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Index | 269 Novellino, D., 34, 187, 191–92, 194, 203, 215n3, 215n9 Nuaulu, 2, 9, 19, 22–29, 31, 138, 148 Nusa Tenggara, 4, 12, 18, 147, 161n1 Oecusse, 2, 25, 220–35 off-farm activities, 122, 128 Oliver-Smith, A., 11–12 Onwueme, I., 162n8 Orlove, B., 47, 50–52, 75 Ormeling, F., 4, 222, 230 Ortiz, S., 108 Ortner, S., 238 over-harvesting, 225–26 over-intensification, 129 Paijmans, K., 163n11 Palawan, 2 Palmer, I., 84 PANAMIN, 189, 196, 212 Pandey, U., 249 Papua, 2–3, 12, 147, 170 Papua New Guinea, 47, 55, 57, 258n24, 258n30 Paraserianthes (Albizia) falcataria, 33, 112, 124–25, 133–42 Paton, D., 24 patron-client relations, 56, 67, 79 Pattiselanno, J., 154 peasant mentality, concept of, 6, 8 Peluso, N., 225 Pelzer, K., 129 Pemberton, J., 259n34 Penan, 2, 23–25, 47–49, 56, 63–69, 74–75 relationship with Kenyah, 69–70 Persoon, G., 8, 14, 114 Peru, 52, 75–76 pest infestation, 17, 62, 71, 85–89, 92, 108n1, 116, 129–30, 150, 162n5 pesticide use, 17, 88, 119, 129, 135, 207 Philippines, 2–7, 14–16, 34, 86, 185–216 Pigafetta, A., 223 Pigs See livestock plant resource pools, 28 plantations, 11, 14 planting patterns, 22 staggered, 22 strategies, 93 Platten, S., 18, 30, 35, 146 Pleyte, C., 130n2

political instability, 17 Pollock, N., 24, 28 pollution atmospheric, 17 water, 11, 16–17 population displacement, 143 growth, 4 Portuguese, 222–23, 230, 233n2, 234n5 Posey, D., 138 Potter, L., 62 Pottier, J., 1, 8, 20 Pranowo, H., 249 Preston, P., 186 Pretty. J., 25 prohibitions, cultural, 130, 137, 139, 148–49, 225, 227–29, 231–32 Ptak, R., 220, 222 Puri, R., 14, 22–23, 25 Rai, N., 199 rain, as a hazard, 16, 37n1, 119 rainforest, 4, 11, 27, 134–35, 138, 140 conservation of, 133 See also forest Ramasastri, B., 24 Rao, P., 24 Rappaport, R., 166 Raratonga, 28 rattan, 64, 67 Read, B., 25 Reformasi (political reform), in Indonesia, 11–12, 14, 29, 34, 84 Reksodiharjo-Lilley, G., 151, 163n11 religion, in relation to resource management and conflict, 148 Christianity, 144, 148–49, 153–57, 162–63 Islam, 144, 148–49, 153–57, 162 resource conflict, 232–33 resource management, 144, 154–55, 160–61, 165 integrated, collapse of, 155 Rhoades, R., 22 rice, 150, 157, 186–87, 191–94, 197, 199–200, 202–6, 208–10, 212, 215n4, 244 high-yielding varieties, 7–8, 13, 17, 19, 34, 84–89, 108nn1–2, 122, 138, 140 identification of landraces, 96–105 landrace diversity, 5, 84–109, 112, 114, 189

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270 | Index names for parts of plant, 103 ritualization of production, 115, 119–21, 130–31, 197–98, 215n7 selection of landraces, 91–96 sharing, 107, 131n3, 135, 188 social character of landrace selection, 107–8 symbolic validation of new varieties, 105 traditional landraces, 8, 34, 71, 84, 86, 89–94, 96, 105–6, 109n2, 186, 188, 193–95, 208, 213, 215n3 wet rice cultivation, see irrigation Resosudarmo, I., 11 Richards, P., 33, 166 Rigg, J., 186 risk, 88, 92, 105 cosmological legitimation of risk sharing, 107–8 management of, 105–6 perception of, 17 in relation to symbolic discourse, 85–86 risk-averse populations and strategies, 30, 114 risk-prone populations, 30 self-regulation, 108 sharing, 92, 107–8 road-building, 17, 28, 125 root crops, 180–82, 187, 193, 197, 200–1, 203 See also cassava Rosaldo, R., 175, 256n2 Rosset, P., 108n1 Roumasset, 108 Rubber (Hevea brasiliensis), 30, 127, 137–38, 141 Rurukan, 166–84 Rustanto, B., 13 St. Antoine, S., 9 ‘safety first principle’, 108 sago, 19, 25, 27–32, 64, 68, 71, 146–47, 151–53, 156–58, 160–61, 162n6 Sahlins, M., 6 Said, M., 7 Salafsky, N., 60 Salea, M., 168 salinization, 20 sandalwood, 220, 222–25, 228, 230–31, 233n2, 234n13, 235n15 trade history of, 220, 222–24 Sanders, D., 258n24

Sandlund, O., 222, 224–25, 228 Santalum, album See sandalwood sasi, 14, 31, 147, 164–65, 227 Sasongko, H., 121 Sawah See irrigation and irrigated rice Schmid, H., 162n9 Schouten, M., 174, 176 Schulte Nordholt, H., 12, 223, 230, 234n12 Schwarz, A., 12 Scoones, I., 25 Scott, J., 6, 9, 19, 33, 108, 139, 238 sea-level rise, 11, 20, 31 seasons, local classification of, 47, 50–51, 66 Seram, 2, 9, 19, 26, 29, 31, 144–48, 151–52, 154–55, 161, 162n9, 163n9 Serna, C., 214n1 Setyawati, I., 109n4 share-cropping, 109n5 shared poverty, concept of, 9, 13 sharing and exchange as social responses to hazards, 74, 88, 123 See also exchange Sharma, S., 13 Sherman, G., 250 shifting cultivation See swidden cultivation Shortt, J., 24 Sikka, 34 Sillitoe, P., 1, 47, 140 Silitonga, C., 121 siltation, 16 Singapore, 6–7 Singh, J., 249 Siwi, B., 8 Slikkerveer, L., 1, 15, 238 Smith, A., 6 Smith, J., 11 Sodhi, 11 Soemardjan, S., 119 Soemarwoto, O., 11, 13, 122 Soemarwoto, R., 8, 14, 18, 34, 146 Soeriaatmadja, R., 4, 18, 140 soil erosion, 17, 126, 252 revitalization, 133, 136–37, 259n37 Soleri, D., 166 Sondakh, L., 177 Soselisa, H., 22, 29, 31, 34, 147, 153, 161, 227

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Index | 271 Sowerwine, J., 10 Speth, J., 21 Spielman, K., 21 state responses to climate change, 75, 77 to disaster in general, see disaster to volcanic eruption, see volcanic eruption Stauffer, R., 7 Steward, J., 166 Stewart, P., 176 Stini, W., 19, 21 Stoler, A., 108n2 Stott, P., 186 strategies innovatory, 133, 143–65, 204 non-rice crops as a strategy to compensate for poor rice harvests, 121–22, 124–27, 129–30 short-term, 157 Strathern, A., 176 Strauss, J., 12 Straver, J., 178 stress environmental, 143, 152 nutritional, 21, 28, 32 socioecological,160 subsistence, 31, 36, 130 subak See irrigation associations subsistence failure long-term irregular failure, 21–24 short-term cyclical failure, 21–22 sugar palm, 169, 173–74, 182 Suharto, 9, 12, 14–15, 18, 239, 247–48 Sukarno, 7 Sulawesi, 2, 12, 35, 144, 158, 161n1, 162n4; north, 166–84 Sumba, 12 Sundanese, 84–85, 114, 119, 135 Sunderlin, W., 11, 126 Supit, B., 175 sustainable development, 1 Sutherland, W., 14 swidden cultivation, 9, 29, 34, 146–50, 153–56, 159–60, 162, 164, 185, 188, 191–200, 202–3, 206–7, 209–14, 215n3, 215n5, 215nn8–9, 216n13, 229–31, 235n15, 249, 258n26 Baduy, 112–33, 135–38 Kasepuhan, 84–85, 88, 91, 96 sustainability of, 136 and world view, 84–85, 95–96, 224

Swift, J., 23 synaesthesia, 102 Talbott, K., 14 Tandon, Y., 190 tara bandu, 31, 220–35 Taussig, M., 256n6 Taylor, J., 224 temperature extremes, 16 Ternate, 144 Tetum, 227, 234n5 Thailand, 109n6 Thrupp, S., 185 Tikopia, 24 Timor, 4, 25, 32, 34, 161n1, 220–35, 229–30, 235n15 See also East Timor Tobacco (Nicotiana tobaccum), 171 tobe, 220–35 Tomagola, T., 154 Tomohon, 168–69, 173 Tondano, 168, 173 trade regional and long-distance, 147 regional systems as buffers against uncertainty, 31–32 wildlife, 17 See also exchange tradition of change, 35 Triyoga, L., 245, 257n14 Tsing, A., 256n2 tsunami, 16, 18, 21, 25, 36 Turton, A., 9 uncertainty, 15 ecological, 149, 161 economic and socio-political distinguished, 15 management of, 107 See also market Utrecht, E., 8 van der Crab, P., 162n9 van Dijk, K., 12 van Fraassen, C., 162n9 van Klinken, G., 12 van Steenis, C., 3, 251 vanilla (Vanilla planifolia), 178–80 Vayda, A., 15, 57 Vedwan, N., 22 Vel, J., 12 Venturello, M., 187 Villiers, J., 222

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272 | Index violence, communal, 12–13, 17, 19, 27, 29, 37n1, 143, 153–62, 220, 225 See also resource conflict Vitug, M., 201, 209 volcanic eruption, 4, 16, 20, 32, 239–43, 245–46, 248, 251, 253–56, 256n1, 258n24, 258n30, 259n32 von Benda-Beckmann, F., 27, 31, 147, 227 von Benda-Beckmann, K., 31, 147, 227 Waddell, E., 57 Walker, D., 140 Walker, P., 1 Ward, R., 232 Warren, C., 233n3 Warren, C.P, 187 Warren, D., 1, 15, 238 Watts, M., 58, 70 Watuseke, F., 175 ‘weapons of the weak’, 139 weather forecasting, 47, 51, 61, 67, 77 weed control, 17 Weissner, P., 55 Wertheim, W., 7, 107 Wessel, I., 12

Wessing, R., 257n13 Wharton, C., 108 White, B., 7, 9, 13, 108n1 Whitten, A., 4, 18, 140 Wigboldus, J., 171, 174 Wilkins, E., 24 Wilmsen, E., 19 Wimhöfer, G., 12 Winarto, Y., 108n2, 109n4 wind damage, 16, 23–24, 37n1, 119 Wiradi, G., 9, 13 Wirawan, N., 11 Wisner, B., 258n24 Wolpert, L., 140 women, status of, 8 Wulff, X., 10 Xuan,V.-T., 163n11 Yogyakarta, 33, 239–40, 242 court of, 245–47, 257 Zent, S., 10 Zerner, C., 14, 31, 227, 232 Zhang Xi, 222 Zinyama, L., 24