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ABEL, Benlie
Visiting Research Fellow
Area Studeis I

Research Interests

The clash between the Dayak and the Madurese in early 2001 in Central Kalimantan has been undertood as a case of extreme ethnic conflict. Thinking about the underlying causes of this violent outbreak has prompted me to develop a hypothesis about the impact of physical development within Central Kalimantan, especially the impact of new roads connecting many towns, villages, and the provincial capital in Kalimantan. Evidence so far suggests that human resources required for building these roads came mainly from the island of Madura. New roads provided new access to land that was quickly occupied by immigrant workers, while new jobs in transportation, market, gold mining, and plantation sector again were filled mainly by non-indigenous residents. With the erosion of their exclusive land rights, indigenous residents, who lived by traditional farming activities, suffered a loss of livelihood security that was not fully compensated by new income derived from traditional collecting rattan, and rubber, or working in the logging companies.

The research I propose will examine the way the presence of new roads also contributed to a growing tension between the indigenous and immigrant residents by the role they have played in re-directing the cultural orientation of local Dayak villagers toward urban life. Drawing from existing demographic, anthropological, and sociological studies, government data, oral histories, interviews, as well as some field work, I would like to show how Dayak communities that once looked to rivers as the center of their cultural and economic life became increasingly “road-centered” with government supported development. I will pay particular attention to the proliferation of Dayak shanty towns along the new roads, examining the growing interaction and contact between the indigenous residents and the “newcomer” ex-road workers, or the new migrants in search of economic opportunities on the Kalimantan resource extraction and plantation frontier. I would like to show how assumptions among Dayak natives about native rights over local resources conflict with immigrant understandings of the legitimate opportunities available to them as newly established residents. Finally, I would like to examine how Dayak ideas about native land use rights shifted and changed to place greater emphasis on the value of land as property.

Academic Career

Publications

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