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Workshop ‘New Law, New Villages? Changing rural Indonesia’
19/05/2016 @ 08:00 - 20/05/2016 @ 17:00
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Organized by KITLV in collaboration with Leiden University’s Van Vollenhoven Institute and the Asian Modernities and Traditions program (AMT), and the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights at the University of Oslo (NCHR).
On 19 and 20 May 2016 this workshop will discuss a new type of village studies in Indonesia. The 2014 Village Law will likely cause a considerable change in the character of village governance and leadership in the coming years. KITLV aims to develop a research program that studies this change across Indonesia in a comparative manner: what will be the impact of Indonesia’s Village Law on the character of villages and their role in Indonesia’s economic and political development? The workshop organizers invite papers on empirical research in villages, for example on changing village leadership, the politicization of village life, or state-society relations at village level. The workshop will take place in Leiden and is organized by KITLV in collaboration with Leiden University’s Van Vollenhoven Institute and the Asian Modernities and Traditions program (AMT), and the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights at the University of Oslo (NCHR).
There is a new attention to village studies within anthropology after a long period with favor for more delocalized, and multi- sited studies about mobility and flows. Such a new approach on village studies would focus on different meanings assigned to villages, framed according to a variety of global developments in which they are core units. The new type of village studies “seek the general in the particular, and succeed in offering a view from the village of processes centering on the dynamics of cosmopolitanism and traditionalism, emplacement and mobility, and urbanity and rurality.”(Sorge and Padwe 2015). In a practical sense, in depth village level studies serve as an ideal and strategic site of empirical observation for research on state-society relations. It is the site where the citizens interact with their intermediaries who play an integral role in service accession.
As the character of village governance and leadership stands to change considerably in the coming years, KITLV aims to develop a research program that studies that change across Indonesia in a comparative manner: what will the impact of Indonesia’s Village Law be for the character of villages and their role in Indonesia’s economic and political development?
For that purpose we will organize a one and a half -day workshop in Leiden for researchers working on Indonesia’s villages, to discuss the possible impacts of the new village law in relation to other socio-economic changes currently affecting village life in Indonesia. The workshop’s first aim is to discuss the possible impact of the Village Law in the context of these broader processes of social and economic change affecting rural Indonesia. Secondly, this workshop aims to discuss research design and methodologies for a future research program. The workshop will address the following themes:
-Village Leadership: How has the character of village leadership changed since the fall of the New Order, and how might the Village Law impact the relationship between villagers and their representatives?
-Politicization of village life: To what extent have economic, legal and political changes affected the character of social interaction and class divisions within villages?
-Village-State interaction: What practices, networks and exchanges do village leaders currently employ to gain access to the funds and services controlled by district and provincial governments, and how does or will the Village Law affect this pattern of village-state interaction?
-The villages in national politics: How is the village imagined in national policy making, and what are the politics behind the implementation of the Village Law and the increased responsibilities of the ministry of villages, transmigration, and disadvantaged regions?
MORE INFORMATION CAN BE FOUND ON THE CONFERENCE PAGE: http://www.kitlv.nl/workshop-new-law-new-villages-changing-rural-indonesia/
