Rethinking Power Relations in Indonesia by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies
ISBN: 9781317333319
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016-07-15T04:00:00+00:00

5

Nested sovereignties

Autonomy and authority in the Indonesian borderlands

Michael Eilenberg

Introduction1

This chapter examines how, since the onset of decentralisation in 1999, ethnic border elites have struggled to create small zones of semi-autonomy at the territorial fringes of the Indonesian state. The chapter discusses how these creative practices simultaneously transform, challenge and accommodate the idea of the ‘sovereign state’ by juggling the power relations between the centre and periphery. Borderland zones are often seen as the raison d’être of state sovereignty. However, states are frequently unable to make their claims stick when the borderlands lack infrastructure, are covered in forest and are sparsely populated. Hence, the consolidation of territorial sovereignty, i.e. ‘the recognition of the claim by a state to exercise supreme authority over a clearly defined territory’ (the Westphalian ideal) (Zaum 2007: 3), is high on government agendas. In its role as a key symbol of state sovereignty, the borderland is often a place where central state authorities are most eager to govern and exercise power. However, the borderland is also a place where state sovereignty is most likely to be challenged, questioned and manipulated because of various transnational economic links that transcend state borders and contradict imaginations of the state as guardians of national sovereignty (van Schendel and de Maaker 2014). The classical definition of sovereignty, which presupposes a strong ‘unitary’ state imposing unlimited control on a clearly defined territory, is widely questioned by scholars who have taken up the challenge of conceptualising the state as fragmented rather than an a priori, homogenous whole. Here de facto state sovereignty is less clear-cut than its classical definitions entail and the existence of overlapping, nested and competing sovereignties within and across borders are increasingly recognised (Hansen and Stepputat 2005, 2006; Lund 2011; Peluso and Lund 2011).

By analysing an ongoing claim for border autonomy in the border province of West Kalimantan, I illustrate how local border elites within the legal (but fuzzy) framework of administrative decentralisation reforms attempt to create their own administrative border regency. The case illuminates how the ‘state’ is understood creatively and how national loyalties are claimed at the state fringes by appropriating the state rhetoric of development and good citizenship. It is argued that, because of their contested nature, the Indonesian borderlands provide an exceptionally important site for investigating these paradoxes of state sovereignty, the changing dynamics of state–periphery relations and the kind of governance that Indonesia has experienced since decentralisation.

Since the early 1990s, the border population of the Kapuas Hulu regency (kabupaten), a remote and underdeveloped corner of the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan, has pushed for border development and increased local autonomy. Previously, during the New Order regime, ethnic border elites began formulating ideas about how to deal with the chronic underdevelopment of the border area. However, until the fall of President Suharto, this movement remained rather inactive, as efforts to increase local autonomy were not given much leeway under the highly authoritarian New Order regime. The rhetoric of this emerging movement was, therefore, mostly centred on practical questions of development, while issues of increased autonomy were largely downplayed (Kuyah 1992).

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