ظرفیت های محلی، اداره امور روستا، و اقتصاد سیاسی توسعه روستایی در اندونزی

This paper develops a framework for conceptualizing local capacity to address village level livelihood and governance problems. The framework is based on an analysis of asset distribution, combined with an explicit analysis of the links between processes of state formation, state-business linkages and local forms of social capital. The framework is used to discuss findings from recent research on village capacity in rural Indonesia. The discussion suggests that it is possible to link a political, economic approach to rural development with recent conceptualizations of social capital. Such an analysis can illuminate the forms taken by and the effectiveness of village level collective action in ways that either purely political economy or social capital approaches do not.

The idea that local citizens and institutions are best placed to address and resolve local problems is a recurrent one. It has appeared in the guise of the community development approaches of the mid-20th century, the discussions of participation and indigenous knowledge of the 1970s and 1980s, and more recently in discussions of social capital and local institutional capacity. The idea is, of course, appealing and eminently sensible—compared to outsiders, villagers have more nuanced knowledge of their needs and concerns, of the environment in which they operate, and of the local conditions that would need to be taken into account in any effort to foster improvements in their quality of life. Indeed, such is the appeal of these ideas that any effort to question them runs the risk of invoking the criticism that the skeptic is a technocrat, blinded by “expert” knowledge, and complicit (if unwittingly so) in indulging arguments that lend themselves once again to the centralization of power. Still, it is surely important to consider the ways in which the possibilities for, and potential of, local participation are structured by the particular forms taken by the intersecting processes of state formation and economic development in specific places. For in the absence of sensitivities to such structuring effects, it becomes more than possible for activists to push for forms of local participation that might invoke repression rather than empowerment, foster a proliferation of interest group specific demands1 rather than democratization, or lead to creeping and accumulating local frustrations (when political participation yields no fruit) that can ultimately spill over into violence.

Villagers in Central Java and Jambi respond to livelihood problems at different levels. Most frequently and obviously, these responses are at individual and household levels. Such responses include changes in crop choice, decisions to migrate, engaging in patronage relations, foot-dragging, silent resistance (c.f. Scott, 1985) and so on. But the villagers can also respond collectively. These collective responses reflect the different types of relationships in the village (which might be referred to as bonding, bridging and linking social capital; Woolcock, 1998 and Woolcock and Narayan, 2000) as well as local political economies of rural development and processes of state formation. The most frequent form of group capacity encountered in the study sites involves collective initiatives to share resources and risks in what is an overall resource constrained environment. The most common manifestation of this has been through rotating savings and loans groups, known as arisan.33 The social relationships undergirding these groups are generally grounded in geographical proximity (the neighborhood) and religious institutions (the Mosque), though some are mediated by the most local forms of the state (as in the case of arisan linked to women’s groups, for instance). This type of organized resource pooling practice was long ago reported by Clifford Geertz (1962), and significantly Geertz’s analysis of the forms of reciprocity and reciprocal social control that made such groups function was central to Putnam’s (1993, pp. 163–185) arguments about the links between social capital, democracy, and economic performance. Yet, in the villages studied here, although arisan is a ubiquitous institution it is not one that resolves many problems of livelihood and governance. Its persistence over time is clearly indicative of its importance in local livelihoods. However, rather than catalyze local development or good governance, the role of the arisan is primarily one of safety net.34