<Articles>Indigenous and Anthropological Theories of Ethnic Conflict in Kalimantan

Abstract

This paper analyses indigenous and anthropological attempts to understand several outbreaksof ethnic violence that occurred around the time of the 1998 Indonesian Reform in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. Violence between immigrant Madurese and indigenous Dayaks hadoccurred regularly in the western and central provinces of Kalimantan since the intensification of thetransmigration policy in the 1970s but it increased dramatically with the collapse of Suharto’s NewOrder. Between 1997 and 2001 there were three major outbreaks of communal violence that attracteda great deal of sensationalist media reporting in part because they involved archaic forms of violencesuch as headhunting and cannibalism. This paper is concerned primarily with the different theoriesthat have been put forward to explain the violence, rather than with the ‘facts’ of the conflict aboutThis paper analyses indigenous and anthropological attempts to understand several outbreaksof ethnic violence that occurred around the time of the 1998 Indonesian Reform in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. Violence between immigrant Madurese and indigenous Dayaks hadoccurred regularly in the western and central provinces of Kalimantan since the intensification of thetransmigration policy in the 1970s but it increased dramatically with the collapse of Suharto’s NewOrder. Between 1997 and 2001 there were three major outbreaks of communal violence that attracteda great deal of sensationalist media reporting in part because they involved archaic forms of violencesuch as headhunting and cannibalism. This paper is concerned primarily with the different theoriesthat have been put forward to explain the violence, rather than with the ‘facts’ of the conflict aboutwhich a number of reports have already been written. Social scientists who have worked in the areagenerally reduce the ethnic conflict to economic competition over resources between two marginalisedgroups. This interpretation of the conflict has been ‘fed back’ into the society by the media and isvehemently rejected by the Dayaks themselves, who have not only developed an alternative theoryof the conflict but also a critique of anthropological interpretations. They interpret the conflict as a‘clash of cultures’ between Madurese and Dayak traditions (adat) and dismiss the reduction of culturaldifferences to economic factors as yet another form of cultural imperialism in a long history of misrepresentationof Dayak society in which outsiders have imposed their categories of understandingon Dayak culture. They argue that the conflict can only be resolved if it is understood through thecategories of Dayak culture itself and managed within the framework of conflict resolution methodsavailable in Dayak culture.which a number of reports have already been written. Social scientists who have worked in the areagenerally reduce the ethnic conflict to economic competition over resources between two marginalisedgroups. This interpretation of the conflict has been ‘fed back’ into the society by the media and isvehemently rejected by the Dayaks themselves, who have not only developed an alternative theoryof the conflict but also a critique of anthropological interpretations. They interpret the conflict as a‘clash of cultures’ between Madurese and Dayak traditions (adat) and dismiss the reduction of culturaldifferences to economic factors as yet another form of cultural imperialism in a long history of misrepresentationof Dayak society in which outsiders have imposed their categories of understandingon Dayak culture. They argue that the conflict can only be resolved if it is understood through the categories of Dayak culture itself and managed within the framework of conflict resolution methods available in Dayak culture.