Carol Warren

This article addresses the importance of understanding informal and customary arrangements to comprehend social security in the contemporary Indonesian context. Highlighting the work of K. von Benda-Beckmann, the focus is on how people foster circles of solidarity to deal with vulnerability, and needs for food, shelter and care, while creating their social security mixes, in which state provisions and community arrangements are combined. We argue that – since there is no welfare state capable of providing for all aspects of social security – people will depend on informal provisions that belong to the realm of moral economy. Based on both authors’ field research, the article explains how this social security mix functions in practice, with examples from the Indonesian islands of Bali and Sumba. We explore to what extent such a moral economy persists, and how moral economy arrangements for mutual support differ from state welfare, in particular from normative and relational perspectives, and how people shape articulations between the two support systems. We argue, in line with the von Benda-Beckmann approach, that it is crucial to understand social security practices as a mixture resulting from Indonesia’s economic and legal pluralism.

Background: As a Hindu-majority province in Indonesia, Bali presents a unique and distinctive culture. Patrilocal (purusa) marriage and patrilineal inheritance as a continuation of the patriarchal system puts a man in the key role as a family successor. Having a son is a priority for a married couple in Balinese society. As a consequence, Balinese women experience several constraints related to their economic productive, reproductive, and adat (ritual) roles. When a family does not have a male heir, their daughter is pressed to find a spouse willing to accept sentana (matrilocal) marriage. This secondary form of marriage brings another complication for Balinese-Hindu women and does not necessarily relieve their submissive position.

This research analyzes Balinese-Hindu women’s perspectives on their marriage experiences and fertility decisions.
Methods: The data was collected in two areas representing rural (Banjar Tumbakasa in Gianyar) and urban (Banjar Biaung in Denpasar) locations in Bali Province, Indonesia from November 2019 to February 2020. Primary data was based on in-depth interviews of six rural and six urban married Balinese-Hindu women.

Results: This qualitative inquiry into Balinese women's experience of the marriage system and fertility options in urban and rural Bali revealed varying degrees of social expectation to provide male descendants for their families. At the same time, economic burdens still haunt them in this development era, and have conflicting implications for family size. Their stories of purusa (patrilocal) and sentana (matrilocal) marriage were complex, being strongly associated with customary law (adat) in traditional society. Paradoxically, however, it was rural women in the study sample who disproportionately opted for the sentana arrangement and limitation of family size.

Conclusions: This study explores women's fertility aspirations, notably regarding son precedence. It problematizes the sentana marriage alternative as a solution to lighten the expectations and burdens affecting women.

As a Hindu-majority province in Indonesia, Bali presents a unique and distinctive culture. Patrilocal (purusa) marriage and patrilineal inheritance as a continuation of the patriarchal system puts a male in the key role of family representative and successor. Having a son is a priority for a married couple in Balinese society. As a consequence, Balinese women experience several constraints related to their economic productive, reproductive, and adat (ritual) roles. When a family does not have a male heir, their daughter is pressed to find a spouse willing to accept sentana (daughter succession) marriage. This secondary form of marriage brings another complication for Balinese-Hindu women and does not necessarily relieve their submissive position. This study analyzes Balinese-Hindu women’s perspectives on their marriage experiences and fertility decisions in patrilineal society in changing rural and urban conditions.

The data was collected in two areas representing rural (Gianyar) and urban (Denpasar) locations in Bali Province, Indonesia from November 2019 to February 2020. Primary data was based on in-depth interviews of six rural and six urban married Balinese-Hindu women.

This qualitative inquiry into Balinese women's experience of the marriage system and fertility options in urban and rural Bali revealed varying degrees of social expectation to provide male descendants for their families. At the same time, economic burdens still haunted them in this development era and manifested conflicting implications for family size. Their stories of purusa and sentana marriage were complex because it has strongly associated with customary law (adat) in traditional society. Paradoxically, this study found that it was predominantly rural women who opted for the sentana arrangement and expressed a preference for smaller family sizes.

This study explores women's fertility aspirations, notably regarding son precedence. It problematizes the sentana marriage alternative as a potential solution to alleviate the expectations and burdens placed on women.

Weber’s theory of formal and substantive rationality (WFSR) explains the range of people’s motivations when engaging in different forms of economic activity. Human rationality is driven by formal rationality, which focuses on economic gains, and substantive rationality which considers non-economic factors such as power, trust, and cultural values that could offset the shortcomings of social exchange theory (SET). The study used the exploratory sequential mixed method including semi-structured interviews with key tourism stakeholders and follow-up survey. Most stakeholders from both groups agreed that tourism brings about economic benefits and employment opportunities; however, tourism results in adverse environmental and cultural impacts. Sapa stakeholders generally support tourism development for both economic and non-economic reasons. The findings of this study do support that the SET and Weber’s theory explain the contradictory perspectives of multiple ethnic groups in the community. Specifically, in this study, the perspectives of Kinh respondents regarding impacts of tourism development were found to be quite contradictory compared to those of the ethnic minority groups. Such contradictions could present a challenge to the application of participatory approaches in tourism development and the development of a “shared vision” among tourism stakeholders. Implications for tourism planners and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

Small-scale fisheries (SSF) provide crucial contributions to livelihoods, food and nutrition security, and the well-being of coastal communities worldwide. In Indonesia, 2.5 million households are involved in SSF production, yet these households are characterised by high poverty rates and vulnerability due to declining ecosystem health and climatic change. In this study we applied the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework to analyse the characteristics and immediate and longer-term outcomes of 20 SSF livelihood-focused intervention programs implemented in coastal communities across the Indonesian Archipelago over the last two decades. Projects covered a wide range of spatial scales, funding providers and key participants. Factors supporting positive program outcomes included application of inclusive and holistic approaches to sustainable livelihoods, implemented and supported over appropriate time frames; use of participatory capacity development methodologies and locally-situated project facilitators; and collaborative engagement with local government, non-government organisations and private-sector actors. However, it was impossible to identify evidenced successes from a longer-term sustainability perspective. Short project timeframes, absence of baseline or monitoring data, pressure for satisfactory reports to donors, and limited post-project evaluation, together with invisibility of women’s work and non-commercial exchanges, affected the adequacy of assessments. Given the lack of post-project assessment among projects studied, a thorough review of longer-term project impacts is recommended, guided by the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, to evaluate sustained improvements in livelihoods outcomes and environmental sustainability. This would support best-practice design and implementation of SSF livelihood-focused interventions, disseminated beyond academia, to influence policy and development to achieve socio-economic equity and environmental goals.

This study investigates the social and environmental impacts of the rise and decline of the fishing industry in an Indonesian coastal community as a case study of the conflicted role of governance in marine resource management. It analyses the relationship between two distinct but intersecting fisheries in west Bali: the traditional small-scale artisanal fishery targeting diverse near shore species for the local market, and the large-scale commercial purse seine fleet that exploits the once rich Bali Strait sardine fishery. The recent collapse of the sardine fishery has had a marked impact on the livelihoods of fishers in both the artisanal and commercial sectors. A significant issue for the future of fisheries dependent communities is the need to raise the priority of equity and sustainability in resource governance. The failure of regulatory regimes to control overfishing is found to be a key factor in the unravelling of the local economy and presents an instructive case for analysing the wider implications of a fundamental conflict in the political economy of the global system between unevenly matched market-driven resource use and sustainable development practices. Methodologically, the research combines qualitative and quantitative approaches to compensate for the dearth of data available for the artisanal and commercial fishery sectors respectively. Catch statistics on the rise and decline of the commercial sardine fishery are linked to qualitative information from a longitudinal study on the livelihood impacts of resource decline in a community engaged in both fisheries. In connecting interview data on village level livelihood issues with commercial fishery data, the study highlights the imperative of good governance across scales for policy makers and development practitioners concerned with equity and sustainability of fisheries as a critically important component of global food security.

In recent decades, there have been considerable efforts to enhance, diversify, or implement alternative livelihood activities in marginalized coastal communities, to ease reliance on deteriorating coastal resources, reduce poverty and improve well-being outcomes. To date, gender has been notably absent from the literature on small-scale fisheries and associated livelihood improvement programs, despite increasing evidence of the importance of gender equality and women’s empowerment in achieving such outcomes in other contexts. In this paper, drawing from an evaluation of the effectiveness of 20 livelihood development projects implemented in coastal communities in Indonesia since 1998, we report on how gender was considered in these projects. We assessed whether and how gender was included in project rationales, and how men and women were included in project activities. We found that, despite the women being reached by many project activities, particularly efforts to increase women’s productive capacity through training and group-based livelihoods enterprises, 40% of the projects had no discernible gender approach and only two of the 20 projects (10%) applied a gender transformative approach that sought to challenge local gender norms and gender relations and empower women beneficiaries. Our assessment suggests the need for greater understanding of the role of gender in reducing poverty and increasing well-being outcomes in coastal communities. Lessons from comparable agricultural settings suggest that this may be facilitated by locally situated gender social relations analysis, integration of gender throughout livelihood improvement project cycles, gendered capacity building activities and shared learning from the evaluation of the gendered outcomes of project activities.

We examine collaborative arrangements for resource management between communities and external agencies, with a particular interest in how community-based interventions are integrated into local contexts. This timely inquiry comes in a period when participatory resource management approaches are increasingly being applied to overcome the perpetual cycles of poverty in which poor resource-dependent people find themselves, i.e., social-ecological traps. Much of the literature on social-ecological traps has focused on identifying conditions, factors, and responses that are important in, for example, alleviating systemic poverty or developing sustainable resource management systems. However, insufficient focus has been placed on understanding the practical processes by which strategies are implemented, and how these can reflexively affect the system itself. Drawing from a case study of a locally managed marine area in Indonesia, we examine the interactions between a nongovernment organization and a target community during the implementation of a fisheries management plan. Applying insights from rural development studies, we show how external interventions, designed to pull people out of social-ecological traps, are operationalized into forms that make them locally familiar and appropriate through actions of community brokers and processes of “institutional bricolage.” We argue that as a consequence of implementing processes, such interventions should be expected to diverge from their initial science-based justification.

Bali faces serious environmental crises arising from overdevelopment of the tourism and real estate industry, including water shortage, rapid conversion of agricultural land, pollution, and economic and cultural displacement. This article traces continuities and discontinuities in the role of Indonesian environmental impact assessment (EIA) during and since the authoritarian ‘New Order’ period. Following the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998, the ‘Reform Era’ brought dramatic changes, democratizing and decentralizing Indonesia's governing institutions. Focusing on case studies of resort development projects in Bali from the 1990s to the present, this study examines the ongoing capture of legal processes by vested interests at the expense of prospects for sustainable development. Two particularly controversial projects in Benoa Bay, proposed in the different historical and structural settings of the two eras—the Bali Turtle Island Development (BTID) at Serangan Island in the Suharto era and the Tirta Wahana Bali Internasional (TWBI) proposal for the other side of Benoa in the ‘Reform Era’—enable instructive comparison. The study finds that despite significant changes in the environmental law regime, the EIA process still finds itself a tool of powerful interests in the efforts of political and economic elites to maintain control of decision-making and to displace popular opposition forces to the margins.

For over two decades, Indonesia has reported higher average shark landings than any other nation, but very little local information exists on the fishery and life histories of targeted species. This poses severe challenges to shark sustainability and conservation in this vast archipelago. We draw on diverse sources of data to evaluate the sustainability of the shark fishery in eastern Indonesia, a particularly data-poor region where sharks are primarily targeted for their fins. Shark fishers from three coastal communities were interviewed on their perceptions of catch trends over the past twenty years and asked to collect fishing data during fishing trips in the Seram, Arafura and Timor Seas. For the most frequently harvested species, we estimated maximum intrinsic rates of increase (rmax) to predict their resilience to fishing pressure. Our results indicate that shark fishing practices in the region are likely to be unsustainable. The catches of several species largely comprised of immature individuals and most fishers attributed observed declines in shark numbers, size and species diversity to overfishing. Hammerhead sharks have relatively high intrinsic resilience but are nevertheless at risk of local extinction due to their availability to the fishery and the value of their fins. Sandbar, dusky and grey reef sharks have lower resilience and are frequently caught but not managed. We recommend a composite management approach, including consistent implementation of existing trade restrictions, fisheries research and opportunities for fishers' livelihood diversification, to stem shark harvests in eastern Indonesia.