序 (<特集>アブラヤシ農園拡大の政治経済学 --アクター, 言説, 制度の視点から--)

Abstract

This special issue aims to analyze the dynamism of the rapid expansion of oil palm plantation in Southeast Asia from three perspectives: actors, discourse, and institutions. The expansion of oil palm plantation has been phenomenal since the 1970s in Malaysia, Indonesia, and, to a lesser extent, Thailand. The expansion has been criticized quite severely, mainly by global and local environmental NGOs, for the loss of ecological biodiversity and rich communal life it has caused. However, the worldwide criticism has not greatly discouraged the expansion of plantation. The global demand for palm oil keeps rising, so much so that oil palm plantation has expanded even to West Africa and Latin America. In that context, it is urgent and important to analyze the driving force behind this expansion from different perspectives. There are a few edited books and special issues on this expansion with an interdisciplinary approach. This special issue follows these works, but each paper tackles the above three aspects in far more detail. The issue as a whole shows how important a matter palm oil is—not only for the Malaysian and Indonesian governments, but also for plantation companies and smallholders—in order to achieve higher economic development and profit, and therefore how meticulously and thoroughly created and constructed the discourse and institutions to support the expansion have been. The issue starts with a paper on the strategic transformation of Malaysian palm oil business actors and then moves on to one analyzing how the Malaysian government and companies created a discourse to support the expansion of oil palm plantation. The next three papers are on the institutional dynamism to promote oil palm plantation in Indonesia. The third paper is on the historical transformation of plantation business permits, and the fourth is on the historical development of the unique smallholder support scheme called the PIR system. The fifth paper is on the program to encourage smallholders to replace age-old oil palm trees. The sixth and seventh papers are on the communities' views and behaviors on oil palm plantation in Indonesia and Thailand. The sixth paper is on how swiddeners in East Kalimantan have gradually recontextualized and accepted the oil palm. The seventh describes the rise of middle-class " white-collar" oil palm farmers in Southern Thailand. The final paper discusses the results of in-depth research on the formation and growth of oil palm plantation enterprises in postcolonial Indonesia by the end of the twentieth century. This special issue is the first comprehensive analysis written in Japanese on oil palm plantation expansion in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.