South East Asia Research

Adopting the ‘Burmese Way to Socialism’ as a guiding principle, the military-led Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) government tried to restructure, among other things, the country's economic system and business community. However, due to its limited technical, financial and human resources – the resources needed to meet the needs of the public and to allow local state organs to function – the BSPP government failed to expand the state's share of the economy and to prevent the emergence of private business people, especially illegal ones, as dominant economic actors. This situation was compounded by the way party-state officials were elected, the domination of the party-state apparatus by corrupt opportunistic cadres, and the emergence of the three ma principles as the guidelines by which party-state officials carried out their duties. All these factors led local state officials to set aside the anti-business policies and regulations laid down by the central state, and to maintain the legal and illegal business people who had taken advantage of the state's failure to meet the public's needs as alternative providers of those basic needs, and as sources of additional income and finance for the state-sponsored ceremonies in their area. In the late 1980s, the BSPP government tried to reassert its control over the economy by opting for a head-on confrontation aimed at emasculating hmaung-kho (illegal) traders through demonetization. Taking tough action against the hmaung-kho sector, without the necessary political, social and economic power, was a disaster for the state. The party-state was then nearly bankrupt and politically very unpopular. Not surprisingly, the party-state's demonetization measures against hmaung-kho activities backfired, and the economy was plunged into even greater difficulty. Eventually, public disorder born from popular grievance paralysed the state, and the implementation of the ‘Burmese Way to Socialism’ ended in disarray.

Of the many cases of regional strife in post-Suharto Indonesia, few match the complexity of West Kalimantan, an outlying province rich in ethnic heterogeneity and natural resources. Forms of violence in West Kalimantan fit neither the category of massive regional violence: non-separatist strife that first exploded in the post-Suharto state (Maluku Islands, Poso and Central Kalimantan) nor separatist-related violence suffered over the course of the New Order (Aceh, Papua and Timor), which, not incidentally, then intensified following Suharto's fall. Only West Kalimantan experienced sustained, non-separatist violence that traversed the entirety of the New Order. In this way, this case complicates claims that Indonesia's current regional violence is merely an outcome of the instability of the incipient post-Suharto state, or that regional bloodshed under the New Order was but a by-product of separatism. In particular, this article examines the rise of ethno-political movements in West Kalimantan that grew out of two recent incidents of widespread civilian violence: the 1997 Madurese–Dayak riots and the Malay (and later Dayak)–Madurese episode of 1999. In this analysis, three interlocking mechanisms come to the fore. The first two are the specificity of local historical trajectories and the politicization of ethnicity. The third mechanism is the complex interplay between élites, with the routinization of violence among belligerents in the sparking of upheaval. Although these ethno-political revitalizations purport ‘local’ orientations, broader, national processes have also provided the opportunities and space essential for their dynamism to flourish.

The history of internal territorialization in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, reveals the interplay between state and local concepts of territory. Both colonial and national authorities sought to divide natural resources and ethnic groups through boundary making, and local peoples have accommodated and challenged state concepts of territory in their competition over natural resources. This history highlights a common situation in which local people incorporate state boundary concepts in order to make claims on resources in a way the state recognizes. Yet indigenous concepts of territory and resource claims persist as local people seek multiple, practical ways of securing rights to resources, and as the power of the state fluctuates over time.