This article explores the mobilization of local resources to reconstruct devastated villages in Lombok after the earthquake of 2018. Local leadership and NGOs managed to mobilize survivors and their communities to rebuild their devastated built environment by evincing the principle of gotong royong. They made an effort to include the survivors in the reconstruction effort, enabling them to begin their recovery trajectory and creating bonds of friendship and trust between various religious groups and villages. In other disaster aftermath situations, such as Aceh after the tsunami of 2004, NGOs and the Indonesian government did not succeed in mobilizing survivors by evoking the principle of gotong royong and, in some cases, even paralyzed the communities they tried to help. On the basis of qualitative data collected immediately after the earthquakes in 2018 and in the following year, I argue that local leaders and NGOs managed to mobilize these groups through effective leadership, transparency about funds and goals, stakeholder participation, an understanding of local legislature and explicit roles of accountability.
<p>This research proposal aims to contribute to the body of knowledge about smallholder farmers&#8217; anthropogenic climate change perceptions, and how said perceptions shape adaptability and resilience, resulting in adopting new and old strategies grounded in local knowledge. 86% of farms in Indonesia are owned and cultivated by smallholders. This group is among the poorest and most vulnerable in Indonesia while contributing the most considerable part to the available food production in the entire country. Smallholder farmers from Lombok are, in particular, among the most vulnerable due to their socio-economic status and the high exposure of the region to climate-related hazards. The group&#8217;s perceptions and discourse of anthropogenic change are shaped by local knowledge and the social environment, and top-down initiatives from the government and NGOs. The interplay of both factors has yet to be researched. This research is ethnographic and qualitative and will be conducted during three field-site visits of 6 months each. In apprentice anthropology, the notion that the farmer is the expert on local knowledge and new strategies as a means to adapt will be included wherein the researcher is the student and the respondent the teacher. The choice for this type of methodology is made because the majority of research on the intersection of agriculture, climate change, and social science is quantitative and does not consider local farmers as experts in their own field. Therefore, participant observation, semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and group discussions will be used.</p>
<div> <div> <div> <p>The Lombok earthquake of August 2018 killed approximately 555, injured 1400, and displaced 353.000 people. With Indonesia being vulnerable to natural disaster due to its geographic location, events like these are not uncommon. However, this event was significantly different from the majority of disasters in the Indonesian archipelago. The difference pertains to how the communities researched in this thesis, coped with the adversity they had experienced and how they showed resilience in a unique way.</p> <p>A disaster drastically ushers in a liminal period wherein its victims are forced to rethink certain aspects of social life, give meaning to what has happened, and determine how to rebuild society sustainably.</p> <p>This thesis argues that going back to a pre-disaster state of society is not possible, due to the lived experiences during the disaster and aftermath. Instead of going back, the culture of response of the Indonesian government (and the NGOs and communities) on which this thesis is focused, started a process towards Dyer&#8217;s Phoenix Effect.</p> <p>This thesis explores the cultural, social, and organizational changes in post-disaster Lombok, which make the occurrence of the Phoenix Effect likely. (1) Cultural changes constitute the explanations for the earthquake from different religious perspectives and the resurgence of traditionally embedded building strategies. (2) Social changes equate to the reinvention of gotong royong from being a state-philosophy to an embedded set of mutual help. (3) Organizational changes, signify biopolitics of disaster management of the Indonesian government, the role of NGOs, and the emergence of peoples&#8217; initiatives in order to become more resilient.</p> <p>This thesis concludes that the possibility of the Phoenix Effect is likely, if the involved communities can maintain their cultural, organizational, and social changes sustainably.</p> </div> </div> </div>
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