E NABLING AND CONSTRAINING EFFECTS OF DISCOURSES AND THEIR STRUCTURES

The spiritualist discourse was enabling for communities as a whole. Especially in their relationship with other communities, an agreement that had been negotiated with the spirits inhabiting a particular natural environment could be used to make and legitimise claims. The notion of ‘tradition’ was here of major importance. Whoever could convincingly claim that his communities’ ancestors had negotiated such an agreement could outlaw or at least constrain competing claims. But also within communities, individuals could use the discourse in a similar way, for instance when claiming or ‘reserving’ particular trees.

The subjugate-and-rule discourse intended to enable another individual actor: a person with the ambition to rule over others. Showing the power to subjugate nature and the spirits living therein would demonstrate that the power claims of such a person were supported by some other super-power and thus legitimise them in the eyes of others. Here, a key term was thus not ‘tradition’ but ‘religion’ as this super-power was presented as some deity. However, in many cases the circumstances, including that the new discourse still had to compete with the spiritualist discourse and that a ruler himself had to compete with other persons with equal power claims, obliged such rulers to listen to the needs of their subjects very carefully.

The discourses that followed enabled theVOC and later on the colonial

and post-colonial state to allocate territories and resources either to production or other purposes. This time, to legitimise this power the state used neither tradition nor religion, but ‘science’, which was opposed to both tradition and religion.

The use of tradition, religion and science has enabled other categories of actors as well. In the context of the spiritualist discourse those directly related to the founding fathers of a community have always been given more respect and influence than those lacking such ties. In addition, in some contextsdukuns

have played a role in interpreting natural phenomena and in defining rules to restore harmony between man and nature. In the context of the subjugate- and-rule discourse, religious scholars have increasingly taken over this role. In the following discourses, finally, scientists were attributed a significant role. They became the ones to create categories, to define ‘good management’ or ‘good protection’ and to define the present and future of nature. As benefi- ciaries scientists differ from religious scholars and those with ancestral ties

Chapter 16 163

in that they have been claiming specific, exclusive rights of access to nature for research.

Obviously, whenever a new source of legitimacy gained dominance in a certain context, old sources of legitimacy became disadvantageous for actors. After all, referring to one’s family ties to support resource claims clashed with the ideas of religious scholars and their kings, and of scientists who were, for instance, convinced of the merits of forest protection against human exploita- tion. The fact that the legitimacy of tradition has been challenged by religion and science explains why one category of actors – traditional communities – that has been constrained by most of the discourses.

As we will see in the following paragraph on participants, stories, argu- ments and strategies used in debates about nature conservation, there were also other actors who tried to either benefit from reproducing arguments of the dominant discourses or from transforming or rejecting them.

However, before turning to this it is important to note that unspecific discourses have been enabling for many more actors than specific ones. ‘Sustainable development’, for instance, a discourse that the Indonesian govern- ment as well as its critics readily adopted, was enabling for many actors because – as a transformation of the existing dominant Indonesian discourse ofpembangunan– it allowed all actors to pursue their various strategic object- ives.

For the oppositional IndonesianNGOs, the fact that the discourse was linked

topembangunan meant space in the authoritarian environment of the New Order. The vocabulary belonging topembangunancould also effectively be used for sustainable development orpembangunan yang berkelanjutan. In addition, as it was an international discourse it enabled theNGOs to direct international attention to what they perceived as the government’s poor performance. As a result, the government’s strategy to keep pembangunan a highly specific discourse increasingly failed.

For all governments under both the New Order and Reformasi, the sustainable development discourse has been attractive because it allowed the government to continue its approach and simultaneously gain international legitimacy and support. Adopting the discourse thus strengthened the govern- ment’s position vis-à-vis the international community in the sense that it could use the discourse to create obligations for the developed world to help Indo- nesia financially. That this was one of Indonesia’s objectives was also expli- cated. In 2003, the Secretary General of the Forestry Department Wahjudi Wardono, for instance, closed his speech in Bonn by saying

‘Ongoing international assistance will make a vital contribution to the achievement of sustainable forest management in Indonesia. I look forward to continuing success in our co-operation.’1

164 Conclusion part II: Continuity and Change

Simultaneously, the concept of ‘sustainable development’ also kept strengthen- ing the position of the government vis-à-vis the population since it legitimised to some extent its top-down and paternalistic treatment: the government used it to position itself in the role of the one who defines norms and how to realise them.

Having said that, the question of why the Indonesian government actually also institutionalised the conservation elements of sustainable development remains. As noted above, one explanation is that conservationists increasingly used developmentalist and later human rights related arguments to sell their ideas and instruments. It was thus a transformation of the existing Indonesian discourse that was appealing to Indonesian politicians such as Salim who strove for development, human rights and poverty alleviation.

However, in addition to this substantive and to the above mentioned strategic reasons of money, legitimacy and power there seem to have been two more strategic reasons for the Indonesian government and bureaucracy to embrace the discourse. These have been on the one hand respect and status, as Indonesia could manifest itself as a nation that was not inferior to industrialised nations and on the other hand, especially for the Forestry Depart- ment, information about forests that could be used for the future exploitation of forests.

In sum, the unspecificity of sustainable development has enabled both the government and most IndonesianNGOs to support conservation for strategic purposes. Not surprisingly, this has added to an omnipresent suspicion among various actors: no one can ever be sure that someone else means what he says. It could merely be his or her strategy to use a certain argument, which will be switched to a completely different argument as soon as an objective has been achieved. This is an important point to which I will return in part IV. Because unspecific discourses are enabling for many actors, they are attractive. One strategy in the struggle about discourse hegemony has therefore been to find stories that were able to persuade actors with different objectives to enter into a loose coalition. However, not all actors have succeeded in finding such a story.