Emergent forest and private land regimes in Java

Abstract

Forests are important components of agrarian environments and household livelihoods, but as broad political economies and agrarian environments change, how important is land control? Forest villagers in Java during Indonesia's New Order (1966–1998) were highly dependent on access to state forests for their livelihoods. In the teak forests, long reserved and enclosed lands were guarded closely by foresters in the State Forestry Corporation. Most villagers' income was locally earned and both land and forest dependent. By 2010, this highly localized and forest and agricultural land-dependent situation had changed dramatically. In Singget, a hamlet I studied in the mid-1980s, I found that nearly all local families derived some income from urban and distant industrial or rural work sites by 2010. Most hamlet residents, however, do not move away permanently to work, but migrate for periods of several months to several years. As in other parts of rural Java, these other sources of income are transforming household livelihood portfolios. Unlike many other parts of Java, the new practices affect villagers' relations to state forest and to their private agricultural lands. This essay examines these transformations in land control and labor dynamics, focusing on the changing importance of teak forest land to villagers' livelihoods over the last thirty-plus years.