Kokoda People: Mobilization, Marginalization and Their Economic Lives in Sorong, Southwest Papua

Abstract

This qualitative study uses Oberschall's Theory of Resource Mobilization (RMT) and Allport's theory of social prejudice, to describe the situation of the Kokoda people in Sorong. The data come from oral sources, interviews, observation and documents. The findings show that the mobilization of the Kokoda people in land of Tarof in Sorong, Southwest Papua was not merely a matter of becoming workers but was rather a political interest ahead of the 1969 PEPERA, Act of Free Choice, as a form of integration of Papua into the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia. However, this study also shows that the work carried out by most of the Kokoda people in Sorong, as rock diggers and sellers of mangi-mangi (mangrove) wood and peat, has marginalized them. This ‘entity economy’ has led to racism against the already marginalized Kokoda clan because the community views that they destroy nature by cutting down mangrove forests and digging rocks from now-dead coral reef.