Community mapping, local planning and alternative land use strategies in Bali

Abstract

Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography 105(1):29–41, 2005 Participatoiy community mapping has been one of the tools promoted by Non-Government Organizations in Indonesia to increase public participation in decision-making and local control over resources. It has been taken up by communities seeking to restore customary (adat) authority over the local domain following the demise of the authoritarian Suharto regime, and to respond to the growing pressures and opportunities of globalisation. This study analyses the role of participatoiy community mapping in the process of reasserting local control over land use in Bali, and the challenges that alternative development strategies face in their engagement with wider political and economic structures. In one community, local customary rights were effectively exercised over a site whose adat status was contested by the state and they also succeeded in forcing a withdrawal of project permits over privately held land. Another village refused their own private rights to sell land on the open market, except under seriously restrictive collectively determined conditions. Whether these attempts to reverse privatisation and enclo sure processes will prevail remains to be seen, but they indicate that a one-directional movement in the history of property relations and production regimes is not something that Balinese accept unequivocally.