Isolation as Social Protection: Stories from Ranah Kemumu

Isolated location was commonly assumed as one of the main obstacles in disaster management approaches. The assumption, consequently, always tend to mobilize external supplies to recover or reconstruct an isolated area which is affected by a disaster. This is an excerpt of field research report shows a different one. In case of disaster in a remote village inside the Kerinci Seblat National Park in Sumatra, on the contrary, isolated location became a 'blessing in distance' for local community to revitalize their own local resources and, in turn, their own resilience.

Escape from Village: Sketch of Social Change in Flores Island

One of the most obvious social phenomenon of Indonesia in the last three decades is huge flow of villagers went out to seek new and better livelihood. They became migrant workers in towns and cities throughout the country or even in abroad. There are a lot of analysis have been made trying to explain the reasons why such migration continously increasing. Ami Priwardhani --who is currently doing a grounded research on local community resilience in Flores Island-- wrote a sketch of the issue in two coastal villages of the island. Her short story was clearly indicates that development program so far have failed to maintain villages as favourable living space and main sources of livelihood, especially for local young people. It was means that one of big challenges for building local community resilience is not coming only from natural disasters or climate change but also closely related with structural problems in economic system and development policies as a whole.    

Story From Geneva

 I was very interested in what Yoka Brandt had conveyed. Because we have felt there are enough serious problems for a long time associated with global economic policies that made poor countries and developing countries become more vulnerable. Therefore I emphasize and continue what Ms. Brandt has conveyed: "we need a new world economic order that is fairer. This issue is very relevant and structural especially for developing countries like Indonesia that are always trapped in debt bondage. "Although I am fully aware of this problem will be the theme of North-South issues, with a completion time frame is also long and not easy.

A Coffee House Democracy

Stopping by an old coffee house in Donggala, once the busiest port town in Central Sulawesi, offered not only delicious morning coffee. It also allow us to peek into some stories and hot issues of the town, including its politics.

Travel Notes from Sumba Island

Sumba is one of the most exotic tropical small islands in Indonesia. Famously for its huge savannah, wild horses, unique handwoven fabrics, traditional architecture, and ancient funeral rites, Sumba has frequently appeared in many novels, poems, photographs, movies, and travelling stories. Here is a different angel of view about this dried and rocky island, a sketch of social and ecological changes...

Living on Dangerous Slope

To what extent climate change involved in the making of a disaster? Based on field experience in two neighboring South Sulawesi villages, which was trumped by a landslide in June 2006, this paper --originally prepared and presented for Intenational Symposium on Geography: Application of Interdiciplinary Sciences To Deal with Climate Change, held in Gajah Mada University of Yogyakarta, May 6, 2012-- argues that a combination of government policies and global market mechanism serve as main factors that shape villagers’ vulnerability. Signs of climate change like higher rainfall intensity, uncertain or anomaly of season or high activity of crop pests and diseases should not be overestimated as contributor to disaster.

Unchanged Melody of the State to Alter the Natives

What happen when a resettlement project that brings a modernity package, bended along the way by elites in every corner, and imposed to peoples with different world view? After many failures and criticism, the government in Indonesia still stubbornly enforcing resettlement schemes to the traditional local communities in the name of 'development' and 'progress'...

Moral Hazard in Economic Development

A farmer credit scheme dispatched by the Government of Indonesia during the height of crisis in 1999 turned into something close to an inferno: low repayment, missallocation, dirty poltical intrigue, and jailed corruption cases.      

Demistifying Food Issues

Almost no politicians, government officials, even intellectuals in Indonesia today who are seriously talking about national policy on foods. They are very busy with power politics towards next national election in 2014. While, in fact, millions of people in this country still and more desperately facing a continous increasing prices of foods, decreasing agricultural subsidies and lesser protection for local farmers and, of course, flooding influx of importing foods even to simple items --such as salt or chillies-- that actually can be sufficiently produced by local farmers. Government policies is still trapping in an old myths of big scale and market oriented agroindustrial complex that food issues can be simply solved with increasing production and market mechanism...

Mad!... Even salt and cassava already imported!!

Breakthrough Against Corruption

Huge money game come into politics through two main 'entrance doors': electoral campaign and legislation processes. That kind of dirty practices already part --an 'inherent failure'-- of representatives or electoral democracy. To close the doors, is needed a radical change in the present and dominant belief and assumptions about political system and democracy itself.