Autonomy dispute: between glitter of gold and conservation (special study on traditional gold mining in kaili custom community at Poboya, Palu City

Abstract

The presence of conflict involving the custom community, the government and the corporation is caused by a different understanding of seeing the natural resources. This different understanding has caused a different management and utilization of natural resources. This often leads to a conflict of interest among the government, corporation, and local community. According to the macro perspective, this research actually aims to explore the question about the management conflict of Poboya HRD, actors involved in getting access and control of HRD, the group that get impacts of benefits and loss from the relation between the existing authority and custom people‟s representatives in the middle of it. To give direction and clarity of methodology in this research, multi-paradigms, that is critical paradigm and constructive paradigm, are used. To overcome the conflict, the researcher looked at Marx‟ views on class conflict and the presence of opposing actions: Dahrendorf‟s views on domination of the government power towards public domain; and Randall Collin‟s views on the control of a group of people on resources. By using the conflict perspectives coated with ecology-politic perspective, this research shows that the conflict happening in Poboya is a dispute among the actors of different ideologies. Those who act on behalf of “custom”, together with a number of local ORNOP (ecopopulism) build community power to dominate and get an access to HRD in Poboya. This cannot be separated from the presence of a group of ideologists and custom community, and “shared authority” in the local political elites due to double interests. On the other hand, the custom community, which should have become the final “shelter” for natural resource conservation, has, in fact, become involved in the dispute itself. If this did not manage well, Poboya would be trapped in “natural resources curse”: a country that is rich in natural resources (gold), but its people live in poverty. (Auty, 1993)