ABSTRACT
Dramatic and devastating changes in East Kalimantan’s forest landscape over recent decades reflect the impact of intensified resource extraction through timber concessions, transmigration settlement and the expansion of agri-business in this part of Indonesia. A number of studies have noted how the intersection of landscape change with shifting politics of forest access and the emergence of new forms of employment beyond the forest are bringing about changes in people-forest relationships and a re-spatialization of livelihood strategies that take shape in specific ways in particular places across Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia (Dewi et al. 2005; McCarthy 2010; Li 2011; Peluso 1992; Obidzinski et al. 2012; Bullinger and Haug 2012; Cramb and Curry 2012; Cramb 2013; Kesaulija et al. 2014). To date, much less is understood about the role played by gender: How men and women within forest communities may experience and respond in different ways, and how gender norms are being reworked or perhaps reinforced in the face of such changes (Colfer 2010). With respect to the changes wrought by large-scale investment in oil palm, an emerging literature sets out some of the gendered impacts in Indonesia. Thus far, contributions by Julia and White (2012) and Li (2015) in West Kalimantan, Elmhirst and Darmastuti (2015) in Lampung, and Elmhirst et al. (2015) in East Kalimantan indicate some common gendered experiences. Differences between sites remain apparent, depending on how communities have been incorporated into the oil palm sector and the extent to which diverse livelihoods remain a possibility.
