Participatory action research, learning in small peasant resistance and the politics of rural dispossession in Indonesia

• Author / Creator

  Masalam, Hasriadi

• The agro-extractive regime pursued by the corporatized state and the pervasive expansion of capital accumulation has turned the rural frontier of Indonesia into an agrarian war zone. This is marked by the proliferation of serious challenges by small peasants and indigenous peoples who are ‘in the way’ of the neoliberal state apparatus and market imperatives being imposed by a globalizing colonial capitalism. It would therefore be a political if not ethical oversight to remain oblivious to the perseverance of small peasant and indigenous ways of learning in resistance to the violence of development dispossession (DD) by the postcolonial development state and the market.
  This study sought to contribute towards organizing, networking and learning in social action in anti-dispossession struggles addressing agro-extractive related DD in Sulawesi through Participatory Action Research (PAR), while engaging in and seeking to understand the multiple modes of small peasant and indigenous learning and knowledge production processes embedded in resistance to DD in rural Indonesia. The study derives its’ primary significance from practical PAR interventions in anti-land dispossession struggles in Sulawesi in the face of agro-extractive expansionism addressing DD in the ‘post colony’ and especially in relation to learning and knowledge production and networking in and around these struggles. PAR collaborations were made in this regard with small peasant struggles to address palm oil and coconut plantation DD in Sulawesi between May 2015 – February 2016 and is ongoing. The theoretical and conceptual significance of the study is in relation to, both, the development of movement-relevant knowledge and theoretical conversations with Marxist and anti-colonial perspectives, including the potential for cross-pollination of ideas between these perspectives.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Participatory action research
  • Peasant resistance
  • Learning in social action
  • Politics of rural dispossession
  • Indonesia

• Graduation date

  Fall 2018

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3VH5D071

• License

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