The egalitarian turn? Mentawaian’ animism, forest extraction, and politic redistribution on Siberut Island, Indonesia

0564158 - OÚ 2023 FR eng A - Abstract
Darmanto, Darmanto
The egalitarian turn? Mentawaian’ animism, forest extraction, and politic redistribution on Siberut Island, Indonesia.
Paris: The Euroseas Conference, 2022.
[EuroSEAS Conference /12./. Paris, 28.06.2022-01.07.2022]
Method of presentation: Přednáška
Event organizer: European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS) + École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
URL events: https://euroseas2022.org/ 
Institutional support: RVO:68378009
Keywords : the Mentawai * animism * sabulungan * egalitarianism * forest * redistribution * Siberut
OECD category: 5.9 Other social sciences; 5. Social Sciences (OU-W)

Siberut Island (West Sumatra, Indonesia) has been continuously targeted for logging, forest estate, plantation, and other large-scale resource extraction platform. These extractive activities have reconfigured the relationship between the Mentawai, the indigenous inhabitant of Siberut, and their nature, especially the forest. In Mentawai's animism (sabulungan) ontology, humans and the spirits have a primordial pact in which the spirits occupy the forest and are invisible to humans. They are living in separate domains and constantly maintaining reciprocal relations where no parties feel dominated. The egalitarian principle of sabulungan generates an ambivalent attitude toward and compels the living Mentawai to have both respect and fear of, the spirits in the forest. Half-century large-scale logging operations intensified the idea that forest is a just commodity and marginalized the traditional view. However, experiencing forest transformation and the introduction of environmentalism and indigeneity discourse have reified the concept of the forest and revitalized the fundamental aspect of sabulungan politic: egalitarian ethic and equal share of forest extraction. The Mentawai do not overtly reject large forest exploitation but continuously protest, accuse, and resent timber companies because they do not provide an equal share of fortune and, instead, generate social differentiation. I argue that the egalitarian ethic of sabulungan serves a political-economy discourse for the Mentawai in the struggle to gain equal redistribution and shapes their attempt to maintain autonomy and political equality amidst hierarchal social relations brought by a new mode of accumulation. I claim that the Mentawai animism poses an egalitarian ethic which is important in the discussion of political redistribution.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0336235