ABSTRACT
In this chapter I examine a range of forms and processes of resistance at the local level in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. This resistance aims to challenge aspects of the agrarian transition currently under way in Southeast Asia, notably agricultural intensification and the greater intrusion than ever before of the global market into local agricultural systems. The cases under examination concern the replacement of the traditional swidden-based mixed farming of the indigenous Dayak1 population with large oil palm plantations, on which the Dayak sometimes become smallholders. One of the plantations and associated communities selected for detailed study is part of Sime Darby Berhad, Malaysia’s leading multinational company; others are government parastatal organizations or private corporations. For the Dayak these cases partly fit two of Rigg’s (2005: 3) categories of livelihood change: the transition from subsistence to market, and from self-reliance to dependency. Yet because human agency is important, there is considerable variability in the extent to which local farmers become involved with the plantations or become dependent on them as their only source of income. Farmers deploy a range of tactics and forms of resistance when confronted with new challenges and threats that vary according to their own understandings as well as the context of political opportunities. In constructing a repertoire of forms of resistance, collective frames such as ethnicity and identity become key elements. These farmers are not unfamiliar with the market since they and their forebears have grown rubber for several generations, and they are willing to try new cash crops such as pepper or cocoa. However, oil palm plantations are an entirely foreign type of enterprise, which may reduce them to the status of labourers or smallholder out-growers on tiny plots. Their capacity for independent decision-making is then restricted for several years until they have paid off their holdings, during which time their financial returns remain unclear and partly beyond their control.
