ABSTRACT
Once upon a time, according to a scholarly just-so story supported more by repetition than evidence, land was a resource of little import in the political economies of Southeast Asia (Gullick 1958:125; Geertz 1980:24, 171; Errington 1983; Warren 1993:86; Wiener 1995:44; Schulte-Nordholt 1996: 35). If this were ever true, it is no more. Times have changed and land is now central to many of the most critical conflicts in contemporary Indonesia. 1
