T. M. Li

Compromising Power: Development, Culture, and Rule in Indonesia Author(s): Tania Murray Li Source: Cultural Anthropology, Vol.
14, No. 3 (Aug., 1999), pp. 295-322 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656653 . Accessed: 04/01/2011 23:31
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Compromising Power: Development, Culture, and Rule in Indonesia

Tania Murray Li Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology Dalhousie University Key questions then become NOT who rules but how is rule accomplished. -Philip Corrigan,State Formation
COMPROMISE v.t. to settle by mutual concession;
or danger;to expose to risk of disgrace.
to place in a position of difficulty
-The New Elizabethan Reference Dictionary Relations of rule are cultural relations, formed and reformed in the context of specific discourses, practices, rituals, and struggles. They offer a rich and important field for ethnographic analysis.1 In this article I examine the set of relations framed through the discourse and practice of "development," critically engaging the work of Arturo Escobar (1992, 1995), James Ferguson (1994), and others inspired in various ways by Foucault.2 My argument is that a Foucauldian understanding of governmentality (the attempt to constitute governable subjects) is an accurate guide to development as a project of rule, but that the actual accomplishment of rule owes as much to the understandings and practices worked out in the contingent and compromised space of cultural intimacy as it does to the imposition of development schemes and related forms of disciplinary power.3 My study is grounded ethnographically in an analysis of Indonesia's official program for the resettlement of isolated people. Resettlement programs are familiar enough as objects of anthropological study and critique, and there are many important accounts of the damage done to indigenous folk by inept bureaucrats and bullying regimes. My focus is rather different, for I seek less to expose the all-too-predictable havoc wreaked by state power in the periphery than to highlight the significance of that periphery, and the activities that go on there, in the constitution of the self-proclaimed center. Just as others have shown that colonialism was critical to the self-fashioning of the West (Cooper and Stoler 1997), "development" is here explored as a modern state's attempt at self-fashioning and rule, considered always as fragile and contingent accomplishments.4
CulturalAnthropology 14(3):295-322. Copyright ? 1999, American Anthropological Association.
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As it turnsout, there is a ratherlarge gap between what programproponents and critics had primed me to expect at Indonesia's resettlement sites and what I encounteredthere. In brief, I found a programto civilize "primitives"performing its operations on ratherordinary folk, changing them very little, but maintained despite its failures and even construed,in some quite specific ways, to be a success. The gap between findings and expectations and the attemptto puzzle out the reasons for it offer the opportunityfor reflections on "how rule is accomplished" and on the compromises integral to rule. To clarify my theoretical concerns and to contextualize my ethnographic material,the following section outlines some of the features of development regimes in general and Indonesia's New Orderin particular. Development Regimes The rationalefor "development"as an activity of nation-statesdraws on the more general logic of governmentality. Governmentality is Foucault's shorthand for the emergence of a distinctive, modern form of power which seeks to govern or regulate the conditions underwhich people live their lives; the rationality that renders the activity of government thinkable to its practitioners and those on whom it is practiced; and the concentrationof government in the (expanded) apparatuswe have come to call "the state"(Foucault 1982, 1991; Gordon 1991). This form of power was operative in late colonial regimes that were concerned with "disabling old forms of life by systematically breaking down their conditions, and with constructingin their place new conditions so as to enable-indeed so as to oblige-new forms of life to come into being" (Scott 1995:193, emphasis in original). In the postcolonial era, concern with welfare and improvement falls under the rubric of "development"and provides many governing regimes with a significant partof their claim to legitimacy. The identification of continuities in modes of rule across the colonial divide (Anderson 1991; Ludden 1992; Scott 1995) highlights the national and governmentaldimensions of development sometimes neglected in critiques that focus on the alien characterof the goals, programs,and proceduresgeneratedin Western nations and internationalagencies and imposed on others (e.g., Sachs 1992). In India, as Chatterjee observes, the processes of the modern (governmental) state have taken hold, and "one does not, unfortunately,have the option of sending this state back to its origins" (1993:227). South Africa under Mandela provides a furthercase in point: the African National Congress, which long eschewed the language of development tainted as it was with segregation and apartheid,soon found itself adopting the " 'pragmatic'language of 'reconstruction and development' " (Crush 1995:xii). In its national dimensions, "development"can be considered one of the more significant "everyday forms of state formation" (Joseph and Nugent 1994), which offers, like education, public administration,and land law, an arenain which "the state"can continuously restate its raison d'etre and become instantiatedin routine processes and events. Development planning has become a normalstate activity and an importantmode throughwhich the state apparatus
DEVELOPMENT AND RULE IN INDONESIA 297
presents itself as serving a "national interest"apparentlyabove politics (Chatterjee 1993). "Development"thus condenses claims by and about"the state"and provides a discursive frameworkfor conceptualizing and managing the relationship between "the state" and citizens. It asserts a separation between state (which does the developing) and populace (which is the object and recipient of development). "Development" authorizes state agencies to engage directly and openly in projects aimed at transformationand "improvement"and provides the immediate context and occasion for many encounters between bureaucratsand those they would constitute as clients. Its science supplies definitions and measures of deficiency, techniques for bringing about change, and the criteria for judging success. To discern the effects of these framings, statements, practices, and claims requires some close investigation. Despite the promising rubricof "encounter," Escobar's (1992, 1995) explorations of the techniques of classification and planning offer little insight into how plans are executed and whether they are imposed coercively or received "on the ground"in the forms or with the effects intended.Ferguson argues that development discourse has the effect of "depoliticizing everything it touches" (1994:xv) by masking the expansion of state bureaucratic power and by insistently "reposing political questions of land, resources, jobs or wages as technical 'problems' responsive to the technical 'development' intervention" (1994:270). But who does the discourse affect in this way? Ferguson demonstratesthatpolitical issues are not raised in the documents producedby internationaldevelopment agencies working in Lesotho but fails to show the depoliticizing effects of "development" discourse on Lesothans. His study of an internationallyfunded rural development programreveals that the Lesothan officials involved with the program were quite clear about the role it could play in strengtheningboth party and state in a rebel region. Moreover, the villagers in the "targetgroup" seemed all too aware that livestock and other apparentlytechnical initiatives had the potential to regulate their lives in ways they found unacceptable, and they feigned compliance, ignored them, or sabotaged them accordingly. Ratherthan depoliticizing the countryside, as Ferguson argues, "development" programsmay become a politically charged arena in which relations of rule are reworked and reassessed. Akhil Gupta (1995) suggests as much in his discussion of Indian contexts in which the claims and promises made by "the state" about development become points of popularleverage, even though people routinely encounter projects that endebt, entrap,and alienate. To grasp such dynamics, it is necessary to explore the ways in which meanings and outcomes are negotiated, albeit within an uneven field of power. Categories that manifestly do not fit, plans that fail, and compliance withheld or withdrawnexpose the fragile naturenot only of the governmentagencies promoting this or that development program but of the very idea of "the state" as knower, arbiter, and providerfor "thepeople." Ferguson (1994) argues that the development apparatus is protectedfrom the implications of failure througha circularlogic in which failure merely serves to confirm the need for better plans and programs, more
institutional capacity, and a more powerful state apparatus.He attributesthis outcome to the totalizing power of development discourse and the capacity of the "machine" to seal itself off from potentially contradictory information. While not denying these discursive effects, I argue that the transformationof failure into more development involves more than a mechanicalprocess internal to the machine. It involves some complex culturalwork at the interface between development projects and those they target. The framing of a "development"intervention is a delicate cultural operation. First, it is necessary to identify a targetgroup with a deficiency to be rectified. Knowledge of another's deficiencies depends on, as it constructs,a boundary between the knower and the object of knowledge. As Stacey Pigg (1992) has observed in Nepal, the condition of being a backwardvillager, ratherthan simply a poor or relatively powerless one, is visible only from afar-to know one, you cannot be one. But maintainingthe necessary boundariesis tense and difficult work (Cooper and Stoler 1997). Bureaucratic schemes for ordering and classifying populations may be secure on paper, but they are fragile in practice. Second, there needs to be an agency tasked with planning and executing the appropriatedevelopment fix. The longevity of such an agency is not guaranteed: there are many national contexts in which persistent failure to accomplish the goals set is a problem, both for the credibility of the regime overall and for the departmentmost directly involved, especially when limited national resources (ratherthan donor funds) are deployed. To defend itself from competing departments, maintainits own definition of a development problem, and proceed with its particulartype of development fix, a government departmentmust therefore find ways to generate some kind of success. Finally, I would suggest that the compliance, if not consent, of the "targetgroup"is needed to distinguish "development"from outrightcoercion. In the direst days of apartheidin South Africa, the idea that the homelands and associated "bettermentschemes" were designed for the "development"of the black population was hardlypersuasive to anyone, and to the target group least of all (Ferguson 1994:261-262). To frame encounters in development terms, some level of compliance must be achieved: it too is an accomplishment, not a given. Seen from this perspective, neither plans unilaterally imposed nor discourses hermetically sealed would be especially effective in framing development encounters. It is less importantthat plans and discourses prevail than that they engage, providing room for maneuver and opportunities for compromise, with all the nuances of that term. As an agreement between two parties, a compromise assumes thatagency is distributed,if unevenly: both sides have a "power to." It also assumes a level of conscious knowledge and understandingof what is being gained and given up. It thus carrieswith it the sense of betrayingor compromising oneself. This is, as Sayer argues, the normal but uncomfortableposiin tion of those subject to rule, who find themselves "participating a ritual,""living a lie," or engaging in other forms of "badfaith," "knowing complicity," and "moral accommodation" (1994:374). He emphasizes that rule does not require agreement but only compliance, a "willingness to conform, to participatein the
established order as if its representationswere reality" (1994:374). I would add that this requirement applies also to state functionaries, similarly obliged to make compromises and live lies, and I would emphasize that relations of rule can also be compromised, or put at risk, in such encounters. "Development"is an especially risky arenain which the pretensions and claims of "the state"may be easily unmasked. Recall though, it is not only the emperor who is embarrassed when it is pointed out that he has no clothes. Compromises enable, but they simultaneously introduce the possibility of exposure and disgrace. They rely on an intimate understandingof one's own people and a competence in "how things are done." They form the uneasy subtext to the political jokes and the cynical reflections on the pomposity of a speech, the tedium of a spectacle, or stupidity of a plan-reflections that, while they criticize another,also implicate the self. Within this general framework,rule and its compromises are enabled and constrained by the sedimented histories, contemporarysocial forces, and internationalresource flows configuring a particularnational arena.In Indonesia, the centrality of "development"to the New Orderregime has a unique and bloody history. The systematic attempt to reorder and regulate the relations between population and resources commenced in the colonial period beginning in Java early in the 19th century (Breman 1980) and was extended to the other islands while deepening its remit under the aegis of the "ethical policy" early this century (Anderson 1983; Schrauwers 1998). The disruptions of the Japaneseoccupation, the independence struggle, regional separatism, and the mass political mobilization of the Sukarnoera cast the bureaucraticsystem, like the economy, into serious disarray, and systematic programs of a governmental kind were stalled (Anderson 1983). Suhartotook power in 1965 in the context of mass killings directed at alleged communists.The New Order'sclaims to legitimacy have always invoked the necessity to prevent a return to chaos, an end pursued through both overtly repressive and more subtle governmentalmeans.5One dimension of rule examined by John Pemberton (1994) and others (Dove 1999; Kahn 1999; Schrauwers 1999) is the insistent reframing of political issues in termsof culturaldiversity.Anotheris theclaim thatdevelopmentshouldbe pursued as the antithesisof, and the antidoteto, an excess of politics (Feith 1981; Langenberg 1990:126). The masses are to stay off the streets and in their orderly vil"Primitives" lages, focusing theirenergieson progressand"development." occupy an ambiguous place in the state discourse on culture (they have yet to be culturized in bureaucraticallyrecognized and displayable forms), but they do play a significant if spectral role in the state discourse on development, in which they havequietlybecomeicons of the archaic disorder represents limitandtest that the of stateorderanddevelopment. Fromtheperspective theelite, "primitives," of unlike communists, not regarded seriouslydangerous rather wildlyunare as but as tutored-somewhatlike ordinary but village farmers, muchmoreso. Disorderly are yet vulnerable, primitives relativelyscarce,andtheirtamingbecomesan exlesson in marginality whichthe moreadvanced rural emplary through poorcanbe nearer center.[Tsing 1993:28] the expectedto positionthemselves
The term for "development"New Order-style is pembangunan,with a particular meaning established by downplaying its nationalist-eraconnotations of awakening (membangun)in favor of construction (also membangun),and further reducing the connotations of the latter from the potentially dynamic project of nation building to the more solidly directive operation of building the nation's infrastructureand physical plant (Heryanto 1988). The alternative term that translates as "develop" (berkembang)refers to naturalgrowth and unfolding and is therefore much less suited to New Orderpurposes (Heryanto 1988). Physical construction and the delivery of physical inputs (seeds, credit, cleared land) to favored clients of the regime have been financed by internationaldonors, by licensing arrangements with transnational corporations, and by oil revenues especially in the "oil decade," 1973-83. These external sources of funding have enabled the regime to reestablish and vastly increase the bureaucratic apparatusand spread state largesse without placing a tax burden on the populace and with minimal domestic accountability (Anderson 1983; Tanter 1990). But, despite the confidence suggested by the claims and proclamations (e.g., declaring Suhartoto be the Fatherof Development), the legitimation supplied by "development"in the New Order has always been fragile (Heryanto 1988, 1990). Between the frustrationsof people unable to access state resources and the anger of those whose land, forest, and other means of livelihood are appropriatedfor state or private schemes, there is much that belies the promise, and exceeds the containment,of New Order-style "development." Indonesia's Program for the Resettlement of Isolated People Since 1950, Indonesia's Department of Social Affairs (known popularly and hereafteras Depsos) has continued the Dutch programof resettling people from isolated regions (mountains,hinterlands,islands, coasts) to locations more accessible to the apparatusof development and rule. The official term for these people is masyarakatterasing. In their English publications (Departmentof Social Affairs 1994-95), Depsos translates this term as "isolated communities," but the term terasing has a richerset of meanings equally integralto the program logic: (1) secluded, separated,isolated and (2) exotic, very strange. Associated
terms are difference, deviation, and alienation (Echols and Shadily 1989). By
1994, Depsos had resettled 160,000 people and estimated in that year that there remained over one million people in need of Depsos attention. In recent years, the programhas been modified to include an in situ option under which people remain in their currentareas but are rearrangedinto more compact and orderly settlements complete with housing and governmentservices such as schools and health clinics. The program'spreamble asserts that the governmenthas an obligation to ensure that all its citizens have the opportunityto participatein, and contributeto, development and it should thereforemake a special effort to reach out to those who, throughaccidents of history or geography,have been excluded from this process. Questions of justice are said to be involved, as well as national pride: Depsos documents note that the existence of masyarakatterasing can
"lessen the success[ful] image of national development" (Departmentof Social Affairs 1994-95:4). Critics have argued that the program destroys indigenous cultures and (sometimes forcibly) removes people from their ancestrallands and livelihoods to herdthem into "camps"characterizedby poverty, ill health, malnutrition,cultural dislocation, dependency, and despair. They note cases in which the land from which people have been removed is promptly reallocated for other uses, such as logging, mining, plantations, or transmigration (Colchester 1986a, 1986b). Officials dismiss foreign critics as romanticswho would allow their fascination with "primitives"to stand in the way of progress for Indonesia's isolated people. They insist that the program's mode of operation is not coercion but, rather,gentle persuasion and education, in keeping with local aspirations. They lament that donors have shown no interest in direct funding or supportfor the program,obliging them to rely on the general pool of funds administeredby the centralplanning agency Bappenas. I am not in a position to evaluate the rights and wrongs of the resettlement program.To do this would require a comprehensive study, with a special focus on Irian, where the culturaldifferences, struggles over resource access, and potential for instances of coercion to go unreportedare at their most extreme. Instead I have a more general observation: in orderfor the programto have either the damaging effects critics identify or the positive effects the program proposes, it would have to actually achieve its goals-removing people from one place to another or reforming their everyday lives according to a prescribed model. Yet it is widely agreed by programcritics, and sometimes acknowledged by its officials, that the program is prone to failure. In the most obvious instances, people abandon the resettlement sites and refuse to return when attempts are made to persuadethem and the houses are left to rot or are taken over by other villagers if the land and location are sufficiently attractive.Recognition of these problems and the desire to reduce waste and embarrassment have led to a reformulationof the approachand the attemptto offer a more flexible arrayof options in tune with the aspirationsand desires of the targetgroup, but even the modified programhas met with limited success. Consistent failure in a program that has continued to operatefor almost fifty years requiresthat the questions be reposed along the lines explored so provocatively by Ferguson (1994): What does the programactually do? What are its effects? What is the relationship between failure and rule? I address these questions throughan analysis of the program logic and my observations at two resettlementsites, one in Kalimantanand the other in Sulawesi.6
The Program Logic
The programlogic defines a projectto normalizebodies, subjectivities, and communities and discipline them to the nth degree. It is a complete attempt at social engineering, governmentality in gross form. The deficiencies of the target group are identified as being nomadic or living in isolated areas, in scattered or impermanent destructive settlements;using limited and environmentally
production techniques, such as shifting cultivation; inadequate housing, nutrition, clothing, and hygiene; being culturally backward,closed, undynamic, and irrational;lacking a government-recognizedreligion; being isolated from interaction with otherpeople; lacking knowledge of nationalaffairs, the nationalideology, and the concepts and obligations of citizenship; and being without access to government services. The programis designed to rectify these deficiencies throughthe provision of some physical inputs: a small wooden housing unit per family on a half-hectarehouse lot; two hectares of farmland,preparedin stages; basic food supply for one year; tool kits, household utensils, seeds, fertilizer, and clothing; housing for field staff; a social activities building; settlement roads and bridges; a clean water system; a religious building (church or mosque); communal radio and television powered by a solar energy system; and a demonstrationfarm plot and other productiveequipment and inputs. The nonphysical inputs are guidance, advice, and supervision from the resident field staff, religious personnel, and district and provincial officials. On the basis of this set of inputs, a sort of "modernitypackage,"the target group is expected to move from isolation and backwardnessto the status of "ordinaryvillagers" culturallynormalizedand enmeshed in the regularsystem of village administration and national development within a period of five years. Numerous programdocuments spell out and confirm the above logic, and there are detailed guidelines for officials at all levels explaining how planning, implementation, and evaluation are to be carried out. There are also long lists stating the number and location of isolated groups already resettled and those still "undeveloped."In themselves, these documents can be seen as assertions about the necessity of the state: they describe a national problem, the existence of backwardtribes, which is large in scale and very complex; they explain that there is a government agency actively working to solve the problem, according to a definite strategy and method; and they assert that progress is being made as reflected in the numberssuccessfully resettled, even though they recognize that much more still needs to be done. These are messages circulated most readily within the state apparatusitself, where their function is self-confirming. They are reiteratedwhenever a nationalor provincial seminaris held on the subject of isolated people or a resettlementsite is opened with the requisite ceremonies and speeches. Throughmedia coverage of these events, they presumablymake their way into the consciousness of the newspaper-readingand television-watching public. A sample of headlines capturesthe tone: "E. KalimantanIsolated Tribesmen Need Serious Handling" (Indonesia Times 1996); "Sulitnya Medan InteraksiMasyarakatTerasing Terbatas"(Because of the Difficult Terrain,the Interaction of Isolated People Is Limited) (Berita Utama 1996); "Masyarakat Terasing di Kaltim Belum TerjangkauPantarlih"(Isolated People in East Kalimantan Have Not Yet Been Reached by the Election Registration Team) (Suara Pembaruan 1996); "33,435 Warga Suku Terasing Belum Dibina" (33,435 Isolated People Have Not Yet Been Reformed) (Berita Utama 1997). Such media events, like the programdocuments, seldom do more than restate the programlogic, reel out numbers,and reiteratethe difficulties involved
in the task of "civilizing" truly "backwardpeople." Rarely do they discuss specific people or places or the substantiveeffects of the programat a particularlocation. When specifics do come out the context is usually negative: a news report that a resettlement site has been abandoned. These occasions greatly embarrassprogramofficials, who feel they are exposed as incompetent or corrupt. In their own defense, they argue that critics, including officials of other government departments,have no understandingof the difficulties involved in working with "primitives."Some officials explained to me that the journalists who write or threaten to write such stories, or the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that claim to be advocates for the people, are simply being mischievous, trying to show the governmentin a bad light or angling for bribes from programofficials. These were intimate exposures about their own national culture that were also intended, I assume, to impress on me how difficult it is for a well-intended program to make headway. Exposures of programfailure do not normally threatenthe programlogic. As Ferguson has primed us to expect, proponents and critics alike generally interpretthe failures as evidence thatmore resources and honest effort are needed to overcome the problems of backwardness. Nevertheless, there are signs of stress and strain here, ample confirmation that rule is hard work. Regional officials who fear the criticism of superiors, counterpartsin other ministries, the media, and the public find themselves defending a flawed program.Fear of failure and critique are not just personal matters, however. They contribute to some rathersignificant compromises in how the programis delivered and what it becomes on the ground, beginning with the identification of appropriate"targets." Identifyingthe TargetGroup The literatureon colonial rule in India and Africa (e.g., Cohn 1996; Dirks 1992; Ludden 1992) indicates that the effort to discipline colonial subjects required the production of a very detailed system of knowledge. The British in particularwere vigorous about surveying, mapping, listing, classifying, and anthropologizing. Regardless of their elaboration, the schemes that assumed (as they produced)proliferatingsubdivisions of tribe and caste were never adequate for the "real"social complexity of the subject populations. Nonetheless, it appears that an effort to know what and who was "out there" was considered crucial to the project of rule: facts were taken seriously; competent colonial officers were expected to speak local languages and to understandnative mentalities. The Indonesian programfor isolated people shows evidence of a significantly different approachto knowledge. There has never been an accuratecensus of the relevant population. According to Colchester (1986b:91) the figure of about 200,000 used in the early 1970s was laterrevised upwardto about 1.5 million. The official number, which states that there are 1,033,107 isolated people still unreformed, is arrived at simply by subtractingthe number that has been "takenin hand"(ditangani) by the official resettlementscheme from the number acknowledged earlier. The inadequacies of the available data on this and other topics could be viewed as a sign of weakness in Indonesia's planning system.
Undoubtedly, it greatly frustratesforeign experts. Under the dev-speak rubricof "institutional strengthening,"foreign advisors assigned to various government agencies have producedlong and detailed lists of social indicatorsin an effort to pin down the targets and tasks of development more precisely and have also financed or undertakenmajormappingefforts. But there is anotherpossible interpretation of the state of Indonesia's official data system: as a component of a culture of rule that is, like the British system described by Corriganand Sayer (1985), sui generis. The "knowledge" available on the subject of Indonesia's isolated people establishes all the conditions needed to maintain the program(a problem, a target group, a plan, some evidence of progress). But in place of India's multitudes of closely specified subgroups,the Indonesianprogramoperates on the basis of a rathergeneric primitive, defined in vague terms by broad and potentially contradictory criteria.7Understood in terms of governmentality, this vagueness is no accident. Colchester (1986b:91) notes that in the period after independence, many different ethnic and tribal groups were named and recognized by the agency then responsible for them. It was underthe New Order's "development" regime and the commencement of five-year plans in 1968-69 that tribal people came to be classified according to their overriding shared cultural trait-their primitiveness-and a larger-scale,standardizedprogramto transformthem was designed accordingly. I would like to point out anotherconsequence of vagueness: the space it opens for compromise. Shifting cultivation, one of the criteria used to define "primitives,"is currentlypracticed by tens of millions of Indonesians across the archipelago, for it is the most practical means of farming the hilly interior. Which of these people will actually be identified as targets for the program, become the recipients of the standardpackage of inputs, and permit Depsos to show that its numbers are changing in a positive direction is determined by a process that gives some room for maneuver on both sides.8 Further, I would suggest that this room for maneuver does not indicate the absence or weakness of rule but signals, rather,one of the ways in which it is accomplished. The pressures and opportunitiessurroundingthe on-the-groundpractice of targetgroup selection are many. There are reportsof powerful interestspressing for the removal of people from valuable land and resources (Colchester 1986a, 1986b), but vigorous action in this regard is usually left to other departments with a stronger mandate to "develop" the nation's naturalresources: forestry, transmigration,mining, estate crops. The mandate of Depsos is seen to be primarily social, taking care of the weak and deprived.9Because coordination between departmentsis not high either in Jakartaor in the provinces andregencies, where each government departmenthas an office and staff, Depsos works according to its own rhythmsratherthan being broughtin, as one might expect, to take care of the people displaced by other "developments."Indeed, it is sometimes a competitor with other programsscrambling for land to convert to one or another "development"purpose. Some of the terrain inhabited by the populations designated masyarakatterasing is simply too poor or inaccessible to be of much interest to other parties. There is little pressure on Depsos to reconstitute
marginal populations as a labor force, in view of the huge numbersof impoverished and compliant Javanese willing to work anywhere in the archipelago under the transmigrationprogramor other more spontaneous arrangements.It is therefore possible to take the Depsos program at its word and recognize that often, if not always, it is primarilya programabout "development"and the constitution of governable subjects, ratherthan the seizure of resources or the capture of labor. If this is the project, it becomes especially significant that some sections of the ruralpopulationare much more easily "developed"and governed than others. The element of feasibility, or likely success, looms large for program officials, for the reasons discussed earlier:they do not want to fail. This is the beginning of my answerto the first and most prominentpuzzle I encountered in the program:the absence of "primitives"among the recruits at Depsos resettlement sites. Officials charged with delivering the program and making it a "success" have an interest in identifying potential programrecipients who are sufficiently isolated, culturally distinct, or "primitive"to meet the programcriteria,but they avoid the most extreme or difficult cases. True nomads, really isolated people of the kind that might conceivably be unfamiliar with living in houses, wearing clothes, or cooking in a pot or who might run away in fear of strangers, are highly unlikely to stay put in a resettlement site. The programhas no examples of success with such people. They are, however, precisely the kinds of people imagined in the program logic and those for whom the "modernitypackage," with its pots and plates, sarongs and seeds, is designed. So long as primitives exist-in the specter of the urbanimagination and in the pages of programdocuments-they enable "the state" to make the statements about the necessity for development and rule contained in the programlogic. In practice, any group of ratherordinaryshifting cultivatorswill do, especially if they have some colorful artifacts that signal their "difference." As a Depsos official confirmed, "We have not so far tackled the truly nomadic people because that is very difficult and we have limited resources; most of the people we work with are only seminomadic or living in temporarysettlements."The key, from the point of view of the Depsos staff, is thatthe people selected should be keen and willing to participate, interested in receiving what the program has to offer, and ready to play their part in making the program a success. This means avoiding people who might approximatethe "primitives"for whom the programwas designed and selecting others to fill the primitive slot, an enabling but somewhat risky compromise.10 Senior regional administratorshave a different set of concerns. They need to ensure thatthe projectsof the various technical agencies (and the construction contracts and other associated bounties) are spread across the districts, as evidence that the government is taking care of the people and bringing development, and they need to bring in the vote for the ruling party. To the chagrin of officials in Depsos and other agencies, such "political"concerns regularlyinterfere with theircapacityto carryout their"technical" programsin the most suitable locations and in the mannerintended. Once the site is selected, morejockeying
occurs over who will be selected as "candidates"for the resettlement program (candidate is the termused, calon warga binaan). It might seem odd thatpeople would volunteer to be labeled primitives, but one must recall that the inputs being offered through the program are valued goods: free houses, a year of free food, two hectares of land, and some other, less consequential items. These goods can be used, sold, or abandoned when the deal is no longer attractive (often after the rice rationends). Selecting candidatesinvolves, therefore,the allocation of state largesse to groups and individuals who need to be rewardedfor past loyalty and service (formergovernment officials sometimes appearamong the recruits), as well as those the regional authorities hope to transform into grateful subjects and loyal voters for the ruling party. This is the second part of my answer to why the candidates are not "primitives":truly isolated people are of limited political significance and also lack the clout to insert themselves into the channels of state patronagethat are established and maintainedthrough"development" (Hart 1989). The implications of selection practices for rule therefore seem clear enough. To explore furtherthe compromises, I turnto some examples. Half of the recruits for the site in Sulawesi were mountain people, living scattered in tiny bamboo houses, shifting cultivators, Christianized in the past decade, few of whom spoke Indonesian, and none of whom had been to school. They therefore fit the programcriteria ratherwell. The other half were Muslim coastal villagers, who made no claim to be masyarakatterasing.I was told by officials that the coastal people had been included in the project at the request of the mountain people, who favored a joint settlement ratherthan one for themselves alone. If this was true, they later changed their opinion, for the social and religious tensions between the two groups turnedout to be overwhelming. The mountainpeople did not adjustwell to conditions in the hot, dry, coastal site and found the economic provisions made for them unviable. Within a couple of years almost all of them had returnedto the hills. Their houses were then taken over by more coastal villagers with the agreement of Depsos officials that they too were needy people and the government's money should not be wasted. This was a compromise, enabling but uncomfortable.The local Depsos officials recognized that their goal of reaching the mountainpeople had been a total failure, although the official record in Jakartastill shows "success" in the form of one hundred more households "handled"by the department.Coastal villagers felt awkward about profiting from the mistakes and misfortunes of others, officials and mountainfolk alike, and were anxious thatan attemptmight be made by one party or the other to take back the houses. Those who had returnedto the hills duly acknowledged their gratitudeto the governmentfor trying to help them and made few critiques of the program,focusing, instead, on their own inability, as mountain folk, to adapt to coastal conditions-a self-essentializing move intended, perhaps,to dissuade Depsos from trying again. In the Kalimantan site, the issues surroundingidentification were quite complex. The official project-planning document provides an account of the project's target group.1 It names four distinct ethnolinguistic groups of
masyarakatterasing present in the vicinity of the proposed project but then ignores such distinctions in the descriptive text, mixing up the characteristicsof the groups to present an image of people who were scatteredin groups of five to ten households, living in a longhouse, without access to schools, adherentsof a ratherexotic set of traditionalcultural practices, and in urgent need of Depsos guidance and development. In reality, only one group, the Punan, were really scattered, and only a few members of another group lived in a longhouse; the great majority of those who became "candidates"were living in a concentrated and rather well equipped village settlement, complete with both primary and secondary schools, located just across the river. The confusions and inaccuracies of the data served to produce the generic "primitives"with the requisite deficiencies thatrationalize and legitimate the programin general and this project in particular.As Ferguson (1994) has, once again, primedus to expect, the numbers and images are fanciful, but the natureof the fantasy is no surprise. In the final selection of 75 candidatesfor the project, the Punan, locally acknowledged to be the true masyarakat terasing-forest dwelling, allegedly timid, often hungry, ignorant enough to be easily tricked and exploited-were mostly excluded. From the 68 Punan names that were appended to the projectplanning document, only four moved into the site, and they soon left. There is some doubt that the others were ever informed that their names had appearedon the official list. Ten additionalhouseholds from the neighboringvillage were included at the last moment, displacing other candidates, because they had contested the construction of the project houses on land to which they had customary rights (this issue is further discussed below). These people continued to reside in their much more substantial village homes, visiting their Depsos houses on occasion to keep up the appearanceof habitation under threat that their membership in the project would be withdrawn. Some used the project houses as convenient farm huts. To appreciatewhy such compromises in candidateselection did not detract from the officially recognized "success" of the project, it is necessary to understandhow success is envisaged and constructed.I visited the site in the company of some senior Depsos officials, and their reactions upon our arrival will serve to illustrate.As we turnedoff the main road, the officials remarkedfavorably on the carved and brightly painted sign at the gate of the settlement which declared that it was a guidance center for masyarakatterasing. The houses were arranged neatly along the unpaved project road. Some had fences and gardens, again a subject for positive comment, although the numberof houses we passed (50 percent by my count) that showed no evidence of habitationwent unremarked(but not, perhaps,unobserved). When we reachedthe house of the Depsos field staff, the first question the senior official put to him was, "Are the people here?" [Warga ada?]; he then ordered that they be gathered (suruh kumpul), to which the response was, "Ready!"[Siap!]. In these moments, many importantcriteria for success were established: the houses had been built as budgeted; the recipients had recognized their subject position, confirmed their exotic origins, and shown evidence of a (presumed to be new) capacity to work on voluntary
collective projects (the painted sign); they were beginning to make their environment orderly (the fences); they were in place (had not run away); and when needed to greet official visitors and show evidence of deference and gratitude, they were there on command.12 During our stay, I discussed with the officials my doubts over whether the people recruitedinto the project from the nearbyvillage could really be considered masyarakatterasing. I pointed out that I had discovered that many of them had secondary school education and undoubtedly had long been familiar with money, clothes, cooking pots, and the government.For reasons I have begun to illuminate, the officials were unused to thinking about the characteristics of their "targetgroup"in this kind of detail, but they replied, on reflection, that the villagers in question were, after all, natives of Kalimantanand thereforedifferent in terms of culture (terasing dari segi kebudayaan). Furthermore, they
lacked decent houses. That is, they met enough of the criteria to be considered rightfulrecipients of the program,even if they were not especially poor or physically or socially isolated. Moreover, their most obvious deficiency, housing, is one that the programis guaranteedto be able to remedy. The regional official who had planned the program was similarly undisturbed by my observations, arguing that the more advanced villagers (though still classifiable as masyarakatterasing) had been included in orderto set an example for the more backwardpeople who were the true targets of the program. But, as I have already noted, the Punanone might have expected to find as the "true targets"were actually excluded. A local field staff member explained to me that the Punanwere "reallytoo different, not the kind of people who can adjust to living in the heat outside the forest, not interested in eating rice, and not accustomed to farming." For these reasons, he had been unsurprisedand even sympathetic when the four Punanfamilies thatresided briefly at the site had decided to leave. He had tried to persuadethem to return,tracking them down in their forest homes, but faced criticism from other settlers who argued that, according to the rules, the Punanshould be expelled for prolonged absence and for failing to participate in the weekly communal work groups. He also observed that his superiors would judge him on the criteria of whether or not the houses were inhabited(are the people here?) and would be much less concerned, or perhaps not concerned at all, about who exactly filled the slots. Here, then, is a further working out of the selection compromise. Not only were the quintessential "primitives,"those in whose name and on whose behalf the programis designed, excluded from it or allowed to go their own way, but their absence was explained in terms of their "primitive"nature, different culture, and inability to adapt-precisely the characteristics the program is supposed to work on and transform. The headman of the neighboring village, part of whose population had moved into the resettlement site (only a ten-minute walk from the village center), had yet anotherperspective on the selection question. He reportedthat the village had been the recipient of a (free) government housing project in 1983 and had applied in 1990 for an extension of the project to accommodate newly
marriedcouples and others who did not have good houses, including the few remaining in an old longhouse. They were all rathersurprisedwhen they were informed that the housing would be supplied underthe auspices of the programfor masyarakatterasing. "We thought it was ratherstrange [aneh]," he said, "anda bit embarrassing,but, then, it is only a name, so it does not mattertoo much. We that understand this is the nameof theirprogram,so we just have to put up with it."
Program Implementation
The Depsos resettlementprogramis designed to be implemented in stages. By the end of year one, the settlers should begin to be familiar with the purpose and properuse of their new houses and public facilities; begin to understandthe importanceof remaining settled in one location so thatchildren can go to school; understandtransportationsystems; and understandthe importance and usefulness of the guidance and instructionthey are receiving. By years two to three, they should have learnedpermanentagriculture,including tree crop production; be able to subsist on the productsof their land; and have acquirednew and positive values in relation to religion, health, andeducation. By year four, household productionis to be increased anddiversified; appropriate technology employed; the quality and variety of consumption improved;cooperative ventures started; communication with neighboring groups enhanced;capacity for rational thinking and collective decision making throughdiscussion and consensus increased; and consciousness of the need for national peace and order implanted, together with increased understandingof, and love for, the nation and observance of national laws and regulations. One difficulty that might be expected in the implementationof the program is its superfluous nature:many of the recruits already have at the outset the attributes expected as the end products of the transformationprocess. This is the compromise that averts failure and virtually guaranteesthat the programwill be declared a success when the time comes for evaluation, a consideration already present in the identification/selection process I have described. But only a dogmatic outsider, lacking or refusing cultural intimacy, unattuned to the ways things are said and done, would insist on pointing this out. The official monitoring and evaluation process focuses on whetherthe inputs were delivered:houses built, goodies handed out, guidance lectures presented. Evaluation documents do not refer to a specific set of baseline data but simply repeat the standardnarrative about isolated folk who needed to be, and have successfully been, developed. In any case the planning documents, if they could be located, would not disrupt the story line. The paper trail is thin on details, and many local government offices, including Depsos, are remarkablypaperfree.13 The programrecipients in both sites, when I asked them, were not willing to pass judgment on the programas a whole. Indeed, they could not, for they had not been made privy to its conceptual logic and were not informed about all the deficiencies they were supposed to have had nor the radical ways in which the programinputs were supposed to transformthem. Recognition by programofficials that this information would be offensive might account for the lack of
detail, as could the considerationthatthe so-called primitives arenot themselves the most importantaudience for statementsabout state capacities to bring about transformationand development."4 evaluations the recipients were able and The willing to make referredto specific components of the project of importanceto them, namely, whether they were in fact given the inputs promised to them and how useful, or useless, these inputs turned out to be. In these cases and others that I have seen or which have been reported(e.g., Suparlan 1995) there was a gap, sometimes a chasm, between promise and delivery which potentially compromised the individuals who delivered the program and the program as a whole, exposing its self-proclaimed competence and generosity to a grounded critique of its empty words, silly advice, poor quality, and shortmeasure. Complaints I heard were that the hoes broke on first use, the full food ration was not provided, the young and inexperienced field staff needed constant guidance from those they were supposed to guide, and the tasks residents were requiredto performfor the collective good and theirown self-improvement(fence building, sign painting, path clearing, attendinglectures, and greeting guests) were timeconsuming distractionsthatkept them from making a living. In the Sumatranresettlement site studied by ParsudiSuparlan(1995) the settlers understoodtheir compliance with the program'slabor and attendancerequirementsto be just return for the gifts they had received, but their sense of obligation diminished as the ration period ended. Field staff informed me that withholding rice rations was their standardrecourse when persuasion failed, the right to exercise direct to discipline being the counterpart paternalisticgenerosity.'5Such forms of discipline are thin, however, and after the rationperiod ended the field staff both in Suparlan's study and in the two sites I describe here found themselves without a reliable audience for instructionor command. In a different Kalimantansite, settlers described for me in detail the deficiencies in the package they received when compared to that given to Javanese transmigrantsin a neighboring settlement. They attributedthe difference to the association of Depsos with charityratherthan "development"and to the logic of the program title: "Everythingabout this programis poor quality because they think we are worthless; that's what it means to be called masyarakatterasing. The government loves the Javanese,but they despise us." These comments indicate that the label the settlers acceptedin orderto obtain access to the goods they wanted nevertheless hurt and compromised them. They also reveal the risks posed by the compromise, which selects as project recipients people who are more than capable of launching articulateand well-informed critiques.'6Under these conditions, the usual response to criticism-"They need more guidance; they do not yet fully understand"-is unpersuasive, even perhaps to a listener fully implicated in the culturalintimacies of compromise and rule. Model Livelihoodsand ProjectLand The livelihood model promoted by the programis the two-hectare family farm. This is the model assumed to be "normal" Indonesia's ruralpopulation for and is associated in government rhetoric not only with pragmaticsof food and
market production but with the moral goodness of routinized work in orderly fields and villages. In practice the two hectares of land allocated to the settlers is seldom capable of providing an adequateliving, let alone an improvementover the diverse array of activities, such as swidden farming, tree crop production, forest product collection, and wage labor in the timber sector, that sustain the target populations. Because the project resources do not provide a viable alternative, the settlers have no option but to continue with these practices, including cycles of seasonal or longer-termmobility, dooming from the outset the project of "settling them down." Field staff, who must live at the site, soon recognize its ecological limits. They thereforeaccommodateexisting patternsof resource use to avoid impoverishing the settlers and hope that they will find ways to stay in place, at least until the five-year project cycle is completed and the evaluation signed off. As a result, a programthat sets out to accomplish a total transformation in lives and livelihoods makes few changes to people's materialconditions, except for the provision of houses. The settlers continue to survive and prosper as a result of their own sweat and initiative, unimpressedby empty claims about agricultural improvement: "An extensionist visited once and gave us each a handful of seeds and half a bag of fertilizer-what use is that?"However, wise to the limits of their environmentand inclined to be skeptical, they are not especially surprisedby this aspect of programfailure. They weigh programdeficiencies against the gains, which include some genuinely useful gifts. In terms of livelihoods, the hill people who moved into the resettlementsite on the Sulawesi coast found themselves in an impossible situation. The coastal strip is very narrow,and the only cultivable land belongs to others, so they were allocated a barrenarea in the dry foothills. This was an areaused by coastal villagers to graze cattle and goats. The coastal people are not primarilyfarmersbut survive on wage labor in the coconut sector or furtherafield, petty trade, lowtech fishing, and some seasonal farming of food and cash crops in the hills. The main difference between them and the hill people is that the latteraremore committed farmers-contrary to the programlogic, which assumes that the "primitive" hill folk need to be taught this skill. The hill people maintainedtheir hill farms while living in the coastal resettlement site, hiking up and down daily, and it was to their reasonably successful hillside farmingventuresthat they returned when their rice rations ended and the "demonstrationplot," together with the few heads of corn they had agreed to plant on their program-designatedplots, were eaten by goats or shriveled up in the heat. When quizzed about this situation, the regional Depsos official responsible for the programstatedthat he had been aware that the designated land was not great, but he felt so sorryfor the hill people who were unable to send their children to school that he had decided to go ahead with the project anyway. The layers of compromise in this statement were not furtherrevealed, although some of them can be surmised. In the Kalimantansite, the contentious issue was not land suitability but land allocation. The project-design document has appendedto it five neat diagrams showing the boundariesof the 462.5 hectares of contiguous land designated for the project and details of its slope, elevation, potential for flooding,
and currentland use. The currentvegetation is shown as scrub. The document notes that it is state land in use by local residents for shifting cultivation (ladangs) and held undercustomary tenure.It does not mention how or whether rights to this land would be reallocated or redefined in order to allocate the standardtwo-hectare plot to each new project resident. When the project was proposed, there was a meeting of the village committee (the LKMD) in the main village site, and an agreement was signed to the effect that the land to the right and left of the road would be given up for the purpose of building the settlement without claims for compensation. The document mentions nothing about farmland. The context in which this document was producedmay have included, besides the usual compromises, some coercion or perhapsconfusion. The implications of the project design for the distribution of farmlandmay not have been fully understoodby the village committee, for what they had in mind, as I noted earlier, was simply a housing project. The villagers upon whose land the settlement houses were built were, in the end, compensatedthroughthe decision to include them in the project and give them the standardpackage of goods (house, rice ration, and so on)-a compromise much resented by others who felt they betterdeserved, but did not receive, such charity.Therewas no movement, however, on the allocation of the farmland, and some residents of the settlement claimed that they had even been forbidden by the customary landowners from making use of the quarter-hectaregarden plots surroundingtheir project-built houses. In particular,they were preventedfrom planting fruit trees, a customary sign of ownership. There were various perspectives on this situation among the Depsos staff associated with the project. One view was that the resettlement site was a government project, approved by the governor, under which the residents had the right to the two-hectare plot of land promised in the project design. The land is owned by the government, and any customary rights that pertain are overruled when the government decides to reallocate the land in the national interest and for the purpose of development."7 Therefore, the residents should go ahead and use the land, ignoring what the customaryowners say. This is a strong statement about the natureand rights of "the state," but the detailed picture reveals compromises and contradictions:Why, if it was already government land, was the village committee asked to sign a statementreleasing the land to the government for the purposes of the project?There is a gap here between official talk and the actions of officials trying to get a project under way. These are not only local compromises. A Depsos official in Jakartaconfirmedthat one of the reasons for the slow progress of the resettlementprogramhas been the difficulty in identifying empty land-this in a nation in which 76 percent of the terrainis legally defined as "forest" and stated to belong to the government (Peluso 1992). The document signed by the villagers could be seen as a way of making them acknowledge the legitimacy of the state's claim, but the fact that such confirmation was deemed necessary hints at a recognition of the rights of the customary users to "stateland"or, at the very least, a desire on the partof Depsos to avoid trouble.
Another official suggested that the land allocation problem should be settled througha compromise thatdoes not cause too much loss of livelihood or income (tidak terlalu merugikan)to either the customarylandholdersor the settlement residents, perhapsby reducing the areaof land designated for the projectto about one hundredhectares. He also observed, correctly, that the allocation of land anticipated in the project blueprintwas not especially importantfor many of the residents of this particularsite because they were from the area anyway and had their own customary land both within and outside the (nominal) boundariesso neatly outlined on the planning map. In proposing a compromise to settle a problem between squabbling villagers, he confirmed the necessity of the state's guiding hand. The scenario is more remarkable if one recalls the source of the conflict: in this case a governmentprogramthat was designed, apparently, in ignorance of the local understandingsabout rights and claims that would both cause the initial fuss and be invoked by both villagers and officials in its resolution. Development.Giving Generouslyor TakingAway? There is clearly a complex economy of rights and claims at work in the allocation of land for this program,much less singularor definitive than indicated by legal codes, officials statements, or NGO critics pressing for the recognition of customary land rights (see Li in press; Peluso 1995). There are many instances in which one or anotherbranchof the state apparatus,backed by military support,has acted in a draconianfashion to force people off land they consider their own (Colchester 1986a, 1986b; Dove 1999; White 1999). But the fact that there are, according to NGO sources (Lynch and Talbott 1995), up to 65 million people currently living "illegally" on land classified as "state"forest indicates that, most of the time, "the state" either cannot, or elects not to, implement its own laws. This situation could be seen, again, as a weakness of the state system, a failure of "the state"to assert effective control over the relation between population and resources. It could also be seen as an approachto rule that balances state claims to ownership (which legitimate the naked power sometimes asserted) with claims about state generosity in permitting people to make use of state land for the purposes of gaining a livelihood (so long as they do not occupy space immediately required for "development").I heard officials speaking in these terms on more than one occasion, although I doubt it is an "official" position. As individuals, it is understandablethat officials would prefer an interpretation that stresses their humane concern for struggling villagers over one that highlights their own incompetence. A different land conflict involving the same set of villagers, this time united, erupted in violence, showing the limits of state generosity as a mode of rule. The village lies within a massive area allocated to the parastatalforestry conglomerate Inhutani. Villagers were enraged when industrial tree seedlings were plantedin the middle of their tidal paddy lands. There was a heateddispute, intervened.Two sides were taken:officials arguing andpolice andotherauthorities the preeminenceof national law, and residents emphasizing theircustomaryand
moral rights both to the land and to "survive and feed their families" as citizens of Indonesia, which, they argued,are strongerthan Inhutani's "rightson paper." The coercive enforcement of rules produced not order but chaos, to which the exercise of brute power was an unsatisfactory but apparently inevitable response. Officials were charged with responsibility for "settling down" the people, a task they explained in the paternalisticlanguage well honed on masyarakat terasing but applied more generally to unruly villagers: the need to "impartunderstanding"(memberipengertian) to people whose mental capacities and grasp of the concept of development were still sadly deficient (Dove 1999). This language allows little room for compromise among those who are its targets, for it is all too obvious that the development state was, in this instance, not giving but taking away. On an everyday basis, however, generous giving serves as an important component of New Order"development"in general and the Depsos programin particular.18 Needy people are being given assistance by a generous state thatunderstandsthe aspirations of its citizens. All of the Depsos inputs are framed as gifts, and they are ritualized accordingly: there are ceremonies to hand over the keys to the houses, to open public buildings, and so on. The idiom is reinforced every time senior officials visit a site. The format of the visits I observed included a meeting with the assembled residents during which the officials asked, "Whatelse do you need here, to make your lives better?"The reply was a list of goods or government services: "We are still lacking in electricity," "We could use a new pressurelamp," "Ourschool building has no furnitureyet." To ensure that the impact of a generous state is immediately felt, Jakartaofficials have a special budget for bahan pendekatan (literally, "goods to make you closer" or perhaps better rendered as "contactgoods," evoking efforts to coax very timid and primitive folk). In practice, these are gifts that senior officials purchasespecially so that they have something to hand over when they visit resettlement sites, to "makethe people feel happy"-and grateful. When I discussed with an official the annoyance that settlers were expressing about the insulting label "masyarakatterasing," he replied, "It is true, we hear that all the time, they do not want the label. But if we ask them whether they want all the things we give them, they say yes!" The logic of gifts is especially importantin relations of rule if it precludes an alternative framing in terms of rights and entitlements. Such containmentis precarious,however, as the conflict with Inhutaniclearly shows. Reflections on Development, Culture, and Rule The resettlement programexamined in this article is a clear and probably extreme example of an attemptto reformsubjectivities and reorderspace for the bettermentof the population and for ease of rule. The argumentI have made is that the Foucauldian concept of governmentalityprovides a better guide to the
project of rule than it does to an understanding of how rule is accomplished. To
appreciatethe latter, one needs to understandthe culturalframings embeddedin the ethnographicdetails: how objects of planning are defined, selected, and arrayed;the forms of interactionbetween officials and those they would constitute
as clients; the approach taken to deviations from the plan; whether "the rules" are vigorously enforced or generously, paternalistically ignored to better enmesh, indeed to compromise, the objects of planning. These should be considered, moreover, not as exceptions or oversights but as partof how rule is accomplished. By this I do not mean to suggest that compromise is planned or preconfiguredin the plan, engineered by an omniscient and very subtle state for the purpose of rule. Its consequences for rule are, instead, the unintendedoutcome of culturally informed action, the result of people's intimateknowledge of their own state system, which includes the knowledge of "how to go on" in a variety of contexts, including when up against a problematic plan or rule. I would emphasize also that it is sharedculturalknowledge, reproducedand revised under changing conditions, not simply the ad hoc invention of strategic actors striving to make their own lives and tasks easier. The implication of my analysis is that attempts to reconfigure the conditions under which people live their lives, if too vigorously pursued, would be rathervulnerable to failure. No plan could anticipateevery contingency or fully transform the social world because "disciplinary effects confront not docile bodies but situated cultural practices and sedimented histories of people and place" (Moore in press). Unilaterally imposed, a development plan might simply miss its mark or invite hostile reactions, in either case revealing its political dimension and foregroundingpower ratherthan embedding it seamlessly in the everyday. Similarly, a development apparatushermetically sealed within a discursive regime that fails to connect with its presumedsubjects would soon break down. Instead, longevity and a modicum of "success" in development programs and other projects of rule are secured throughtheir failures and the gaps and fissures that yield not only room for maneuverbut the possibility of the culturally intimate-but often uncomfortable-forms of engagement I have explored throughthe term compromise. Attention to the "how" of rule has become prominent in historical studies grounded in political economy (e.g., Abrams 1988; Cohn and Dirks 1988; Corrigan and Sayer 1985; Joseph and Nugent 1994) that argue that the state system, throughits rituals and routine operations,produces (and disguises) the relations of power on which the reified idea of "the state"is based. The Foucauldianconcept of governmentality takes one, via a somewhat different route, to a similar place: to an understandingof the ways rule is embedded in mundanepractices and procedures so that "the state" appears increasingly abstract,apparentlyremoved from daily life just at the point when relations of rule are at their most intense (Mitchell 1991). Reviewing these argumentsfrom the perspective of my ethnographic study, I find their general thrust persuasive, but they sometimes overestimate the capacity of "the state"to fashion or present itself in its chosen terms and to implement the projectsthatare designed to embed relations of rule. While the abstractidea of "the state"is often present in everyday discourse and practice, there is a gap between the state idea and the reality of more or less contradictoryprograms, initiatives, and statements that people encounter directly (Gupta 1995). The ethnographer, like her or his subjects, is left wondering
whether these fragmentary,local, personalized, and frequently unsatisfactory encounters can really be "it"-reinforcing the perceptionthatthe powerful state exists but is somewhere else, probablyin an office in the capital city. These experiences offer a clueto the processes throughwhich the idea of "thestate"takes in hold andis instantiated local settings,even as they threaten expose its conceit. to rather than the more familiar binaries acBy emphasizing compromise, commodation and resistance, I have sought to build on Sayer's insight that it is "very rarely a question of 'the state' here and resistance there" (1994:376, emphasis in original), although such conjuncturescan arise. Resettlement sites designed as units of orderlyadministrationfor compliant citizens may become the locus of a different kind of community as people forge collective identities mobilized throughhistorical struggles, as agents capable of making claims on-or opposing the claims of-others, "the state" included. This is a capacity for action or agency constituted not outside but within the frameworkof state institutions and relations of rule.'9I gave one example in which the separationof state and society produced throughthe exercise of planning enabled a community to find new and strongerways to define "itself' and contest state plans that threatened to appropriatecrucial resources. As Sayer remindsus, "ruleis accomplished, dominationis secured much of the time" (1994:373, emphasis in original). How does this happen?My contribution to this well-established line of inquiry has been to argue that the reified "up there" state, or state project, would be even more vulnerable to exposure without the everyday compromises that characterize the relationship between state functionaries and citizens. Critique is muted by an intimate, sometimes cynical knowledge of the limits of state capacity to deliver on promises and the recognition that governmentofficials must also live lies and adaptif they are to get things done. It is this intimateknowledge, ratherthanignoranceor false consciousness, that facilitates rule and draws people into compromising positions and relationships. My discussion veers thereforetoward a Gramsciannotion of politics as the locus "where forces and relations, in the economy, in society, in culture, have to be actively worked on to produce particularforms of power, forms of domination"(Hall 1991:124, cited in Moore in press, emphasis added). It implies an understandingof hegemony not as consent, nor as the project of a singular and coherent state, but as a terrainof struggle and, more prosaically, as the routine and intimate compromises through which relations of domination and subordinationare lived.20 Notes PaulineBarAcknowledgments.I thankVictorLi, DonaldMoore,TimBabcock, of ber,Lindsay DuBois,andDonnaYoungfor criticalreadings anearlydraftof thisarticle. Thanksalso go to Dan Segal and four reviewersfor Cultural for Anthropology that incisivecommentary contributed to significantly thefinalversion. 1. See Corrigan Sayer1985,Dove 1999,Herzfeld1997a. and 2. See, for example, contributions Crush1995andSachs1992. the in 3. Michael Herzfeld the to (1997b)usesthetermcultural intimacy explore paradox thatloyaltyto one'snation, love forone'sfamily,stemsfromanintimate like knowledge
of its flaws and imperfections. I take this insight in a slightly different direction by leaving the question of love and loyalty open and considering the compromises implied by such sharedknowledge. 4. Much of the discussion in Cooper and Stoler's introduction to the Tensions of Empire (1997) is relevant to my project here, especially their emphasis on the fragility and contingency of rule and the continuous effort requiredto produce and maintain the necessary social boundaries. 5. Hefner (1990:250) poignantly describes the continuing agony of both the families of victims and the villagers active or complicit in this violence, clarifying the terrible backdrop against which "order"might be a populardesire, as well as an imposition. 6. For reasons of confidentiality and diplomacy, I am deliberately vague about the location of the two sites and the ethnolinguistic groups involved. I am also unable to give details about the conditions under which I visited them. I can confirm that my analysis draws on more than ten years of research and writing on topics related to Indonesia's more isolated people and their relations to the Indonesian state system, although my visits to the two sites discussed here were of a "rapidappraisal"variety. I have visited five resettlement sites in addition to these two and found broadly similar conditions. 7. Compare this with Trouillot's (1991) argumentabout the "savage slot" and its role in the constitution of anthropology as a discipline. 8. For a fascinating discussion of "room for maneuver"in relations between developers and tribes in Indonesia, see Tsing 1999. 9. In addition to "primitives,"Depsos is responsible for orphans, prostitutes, unruly children, and other wayward folk. 10. People not interested in becoming "candidates"for the programhave their own strategies of avoidance. According to Tsing (1993:93, 96), some residents of the Meratus mountains line up their own houses so that it "looks good when the government comes to visit" and serve good food to importantvisitors so thatthey will be satisfied and go away. As in the cases I describe here, people who stayed on in resettlementsites were those who already lived in the area, while those who were from far away eventually "went home" (Tsing 1993:176). 11. To preserve confidentiality I do not give references for these documents. 12. Peluso (1992) describes the compromises made to meet the criteria of success in a social forestry project in Java-in that case, the requirementthat seedlings be in the ground on the eve of a forest manager's visit. 13. Much of the exemplary work on state formation and rule has been historical in focus and relies on the archival record, for example, Corrigan and Sayer 1985, Joseph and Nugent 1994, and Nugent 1994, as well as the work on "colonialism's culture" (Thomas 1994), the "tensions of empire" (Cooper and Stoler 1997), and colonial rule (Chatterjee 1993; Cohn 1996; Dirks 1992). As these scholars recognize, reliance on archival sources carries the risk of exaggerating the coherence of state plans, projects, and procedures and falling prey to the specter of a unified "state"with a singular rationality and purpose. The everyday practice of compromise leaves few traces. In the case I have presented here, the archival record offers considerable insight on the project to civilize "primitives"but a fantastical version of the histories, livelihoods, and aspirations of the people touched by it. These are precisely the kinds of details the project documents and the project itself, with its concern to perform standardizedoperationson generic "primitives," are designed to obscure. Indeed, officials were surprisedby my dogged attempts to unearththese documents in project offices, for they themselves set little store by them as a source of information: the documents' functions are to record a project process
unfolding as it should, keep superiors happy, and maintainthe flow of funds. As one official told me, "Thereis no point in reading those things, one is just like another;when we write them we just copy a previous one and change a few bits of informationhere and there."Informationon local details is conveyed, when needed, in verbal form. This approach to knowledge is, as I have argued, quite compatible with rule, but it would be quite incompatible with a research process in which the archive was the sole or major source of information. 14. In conversations among themselves or with me, some officials made disparaging comments about "primitives,"which indicates that they had absorbed the program rhetoric or else elected to mouth it in bad faith. In direct encounters with the (not very "primitive")people in my study sites, officials were generally diplomatic and polite. 15. This form of punishment of course compromises the project goal of settling mobile folk in one place, for without their rice rationthey are obliged to seek work elsewhere. 16. Tsing (1993) has shown that people in an out-of-the-way place may have quite subversive critiques of the government, but some of the styles in which theircritiques are articulated seem to require an interpretive effort beyond the reach of a casual visitor, making their audience select. 17. There arelegal provisions for compensating customarylandowners whose land is appropriated "development,"but these are not invoked by Depsos because the profor gram is assumed to bring benefits to the community outweighing any individual loss. 18. The centrality of gifts to the rhetoricand practice of development has also been observed in Sri Lankan contexts. See Brow 1990 and Woost 1994. For a discussion of the limits of gifts as an instrumentof rule in Thailand, see Vandergeest 1991. 19. On the problem of pure spaces of resistance, see Mitchell 1990 and Moore 1998. For a study of the constitution of community in the context of resource struggles and development interventions, see Li 1996. 20. For a discussion of hegemony as a state project and as a terrainof struggle, see Roseberry 1994; for dissident remarkson this subject, see Sayer 1994; and on hegemony as the way domination is lived, see Williams 1977. References Cited Abrams,Philip 1988 Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State. Journalof Historical Sociology 1(1):58-89. Anderson,Benedict 1983 Old State, New Society: Indonesia's New Order in Comparative Historical Perspective. Journalof Asian Studies 42(3):477-496. 1991 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spreadof Nationalism. London: Verso. BeritaUtama 1996 Sulitnya medan interaksi masyarakatterasing terbatas (Because of the difficult terrain,the interactionof isolated people is limited). Berita Utama, 23 October. 1997 33,435 warga suku terasing belum dibina (33,435 isolated people have not yet been reformed). Berita Utama, 15 August. Breman,Jan 1980 The Village on Java and the Early-Colonial State. Rotterdam,the Netherlands: ComparativeAsian Studies Program,ErasmusUniversity.
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Compromising Power: Development, Culture, and Rule in Indonesia Author(s): Tania Murray Li Source: Cultural Anthropology, Vol.

Compromising Power: Development, Culture, and Rule in Indonesia

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