Land Control And Ideological Struggle: Competing Articulations Of "The Owner Of Land" .

Abstract

The implementation of large scale industrial forming investment involves land deals that are not only. being navigated through regulated practices, but state and non-state actors also employ a strategy to 'grip the minds of the masses' to enable the deals. 'Gripping the minds' involves articulatolJ practices within the terrain of ideological struggle, which put land deals always in process. This paper argues that 'the owner of land' as a cultuNI identity thift was constructed historically by de!enniningjorces, and not confined merely as form of rights, is articttlated in three competing positionings toward land deals: rejection, renegotiation a::d acceptance. The state and non-state actors or NGOs broker the pr:Jcess of identifo:ation toward modernism by constructing representations of capital as the good and bad Other. These ;epresentations of capital provide 'logit:' which connected meanings of modernism with 'the owner of land' identity. 'Gripping the mind of the masses' to smoothen land deals involves correspondences _as well as non-correspondences between modernism and the Marind identity of Anim-ha that render connected chain of meanings unstable. © 2013 Journal of Rural Indonesia URI] IPB. All rights reserved