Table of Contents
It is noted that claims over pulau … could not be sustained for reasons that the characteristic of a pulau … is that it is a small pocket of original jungle deliberately preserved by the natives, i.e. … it remains a virgin jungle. To acknowledge native customary rights … would not be consistent with the cardinal principle that for the creation of NCR … a native must clear the land for farming and remain in occupation thereof (Fong 2000: 18).
Current interest in the decentralisation of state and administrative power has provided lessons about state strengths or weaknesses and why the reform process in many countries has met with difficulties. Examining factors contributing to those difficulties by studying state management of natural resources could provide a beginning for understanding the challenges faced by reformists.
Following Dove (1986, 1999), the state is seen here as having its own developmental and environmental agenda, but is not monolithic. A most ambitious social engineering program has been attempted in Sarawak, East Malaysia, since the mid-1990s, with the large-scale redesign of rural life through the introduction of plantation agriculture. This chapter argues that oil palm development from the mid-1990s and continuing into the 21st century is different from that of earlier decades in the systematic targeting of ‘Native Customary Land’, or land claimed under native customary rights.[2] The systematisation is reflected in discourses and practices concerning the management of land and the Dayak peoples of Sarawak.[3] Differing from views that regard this kind of development as merely bringing Dayak peoples into the ‘mainstream’ of economic life, this chapter suggests that oil palm development under Konsep Baru (New Concept) is concerned with expanding state spaces.[4] ‘Contemporary development schemes, whether in Southeast Asia or elsewhere, require the creation of state spaces where the government can reconfigure the society and economy of those who are to be “developed”’(Scott 1998: 185).
The expansion of state spaces involves a range of strategies. One frequent feature of such strategies is that they reflect a normative ‘civilising process’ (Scott 1998: 184). First, the process promotes the depersonalisation of social life and its separation from economic life. Once depersonalised, social life can then be conceived of solely in economic terms.[5] In Sarawak, Dayak groups are frequently warned about their ‘backwardness’ and are regularly informed of their rights as economic citizens; in other words, their ‘right to develop’. Expressions of other rights (such as cultural or political rights) by citizens are regarded as venturing outside the realm of citizenship, or a result of prompting by ‘unscrupulous elements’ or ‘trouble makers’.[6]
A second strategy of state expansion involves territorialisation (Vandergeest 1996). In this process, state power is expanded into local geographies and economies through administration, with legal codes and classification systems put in place to enable the state to take over local property rights. Vandergeest and Peluso (1995: 385) have argued that the state exercises power in actions that ‘include or exclude people within particular geographic boundaries’, which ‘control what people do and their access to natural resources within those boundaries’. The state’s territorial organisation of people and economic activities makes use of abstract space (guided by maps and land use planning) which often does not correspond with people’s lived space (ibid.: 385–6). This takeover process is best exemplified when viewed historically (Peluso and Vandergeest 2001).
This chapter argues that the current attempt in Sarawak at providing economic value to Native Customary Land through a form of land certification is based on what I have termed a fundamental error, arising from a misinterpretation of unoccupied land as ‘idle’ or ‘waste’ land, originating during the Brooke period in the 19th century and continuing into colonial times between 1945 and 1963. This error resulted in serious repercussions for local access and management regimes, and has still not been questioned today. In contemporary times, and in association with Konsep Baru, the introduction of the Land Code Amendment of 2000 further perpetuates this error. It is important to examine the basis and usefulness of the error in order to understand why it has been perpetuated.
However, the state is not monolithic, and in the context of natural resources, although states may have coercive power, complete control cannot be assumed (Rangan 1997). As well, tension emanates from the imperatives for control and the need for state legitimacy. This tension led to the ‘discovery’ of customary rights in colonial times and of ‘development’ today. Because development in Sarawak, as in Peninsular Malaysia, is directed not only towards physical or structural change, but towards cultural transformation as well, contestation in the cultural realm is possible. Living at the frontier as they do, some of the people who are regarded as requiring ‘civilising’ can have a different view of development. For many the creation of state spaces is traumatic; for others the process is tolerable. But for all, some amount of ‘persuasion’ is required. From its inception in the mid-1990s until 2005, only 17 per cent of the Native Customary Land targeted for development under Konsep Baru has been successfully converted, prompting the Sarawak Assistant Minister for Land Development to exclaim that ‘[we] have only five more years to go to achieve our target’ (Daily Express, 7 September 2005).
Focusing on strategies employed by the state in promoting oil palm development, this chapter discusses the methods involved in state ‘persuasion’ processes associated with the introduction and implementation of Konsep Baru, and also the limits of these strategies. Attempts at expanding the public space from below have been treated elsewhere (see Majid Cooke 2003a, 2003b).