Sustaining livelihoods in a palm oil enclave: Differentiated gendered responses in East Kalimantan, Indonesia

Abstract

With large tracts of forested land planned for, or already converted to, industrial palm oil concessions, there is a need to better understand the gendered implications for, and responses by, communities affected by such landscape change. This paper examines the differentiated gendered responses and livelihood strategies of Dayak Modang women and men in a hamlet in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, surrounded by industrial palm oil plantations. Informed by feminist political ecology, we investigate how the compounding impact of industrial oil palm – the basis and outcome of enclavement – curtails livelihood options and reinforces gender differentiation in terms of access to and use of customary resources. Gendered inequalities and food insecurity dynamics emerge as a result. We show how, however, that despite gendered exclusions, Dayak Modang women use their own knowledge and practices to diversify livelihoods to negotiate emerging constraints over resource access and use. Our paper demonstrates that ways in which Dayak women ‘sustain livelihoods’ reflects forms of everyday negotiations and resistance to intensifying constraints over life and livelihood.

The strategy of shifting cultivators in West Kalimantan in adapting to the market economy: empirical evidence behind gaps in interdisciplinary communication

“…The cultural ecology perspective has contributed to the viewpoint that shifting cultivation is a material response to meeting livelihood needs, as well as the implementation of a subsistence economic strategy that evolves with local culture, knowledge, and technology (Dove 2015;Geertz 2016;McCullough 2019;Scott 1976). The political ecology perspective places greater attention on structural, multiscale issues including policy effects and politics, historical change, social networks and gender, injustices and vulnerability, economic-political pressures, and concerns over climate change issues (Elmhirst et al 2017;Friedmann 2015;Li 2015;Mathevet et al 2015;Ndamani and Watanabe 2015;Olsson and Jerneck 2010;Peluso 1992Peluso , 2005Ring 2020;Sima et al 2015;Thung 2018;Toumbourou and Dressler 2020;Willow and Wylie 2014;Zanotti et al 2020;Zimmerer and Bassett 2003). A synergy of the two perspectives is crucial in order to reestablish an integrated understanding on the correlation between economic political struggle for environmental resources, the cultural meanings attached to an environment, and the changing dynamics of ecology-environment (Benjaminsen and Svarstad 2019;Nygren and Rikoon 2008;Peterson 2000;Quandt 2016).…”

“…Today, they respond to fluctuating commodity prices, with rubber being more established than oil palm as commercial crops. The transformation of subsistence farming is driven by the pressures imposed on it, and by new opportunities for cash income and paid labor, as occurs elsewhere in Indonesia (Santika et al 2019;Toumbourou and Dressler 2020;Wibowo et al 2019). Buying rice, corn, CGPRT, and vegetables at the market has started to develop in the study villages, using cash earned by labor and commercial sales.…”

“…The cultural core element includes organization of livelihoods, the economic system, social organization, and technology at community level (Dove 2015;Geertz 2016;McCullough 2019;Siahaya et al 2016). 12 Political ecologists ___________________________________________________________________________________ recognize that agrarian societies are laden with the effects of politics, the expression of power by elites and corporate actors, and injustices (Friedmann 2015;Li 2015;Mathevet et al 2015;Peluso 2005;Ring 2020;Toumbourou and Dressler 2020;Willow and Wylie 2014;Zanotti et al 2020;Zimmerer and Bassett 2003). A point of convergence, linking the conceptual interests of cultural and political ecology, is to interrogate how shifting cultivation as a strategy for ecological-economic adaptation operates, but it is constantly affected by national policies, global-national politico-economic interests, rights to natural resources, and issues of global climate change (Ndamani and Watanabe 2015;Sima et al 2015;Thaler and Anandi 2017;Thung 2018).…”

“…These communities also need to understand the social-economic-political realities they face, and their implications. To strengthen their position, the political ecology of the forces affecting their region can inform them (Li 2015;Peluso 2005;Toumbourou and Dressler 2020). Research, but also the perspectives underlying these two approaches, can help to reestablish an integrated understanding of the links between economic-political struggle for natural resources, the cultural meanings attached to the environment, and the changing dynamics of ecology-environment (Benjaminsen and Svarstad 2019;Nygren and Rikoon 2008;Peterson 2000;Quandt 2016).…”

“…Communities maintain local wisdom and technology that can prevent land and forest fires (Dove 2015;Li et al 2014). Despite these disagreements, shifting cultivation is facing significant challenges from external economic and political pressures, with the conversion of land into large scale industrial plantations areas for forestry and plantation crops (Li 2015(Li , 2016Toumbourou and Dressler 2020). This is the context for shifting cultivation in Indonesia, continuing amid conflictual and powerful interests (Meilasari-Sugiana 2018).…”