Resisting Anthropocentrism
One Book at a Time
By Shofwan Al Banna Choiruzzad
On August 26, 2020, the customary leader of the Laman Kinipan community, Effendi Buhing was arrested by the Indonesian police. The video of the arrest, showing that the police violently dragged the customary leader to the police vehicle amidst the sound of kentongan (bamboo instrument traditionally used to send warnings to the community), circulated widely in social media and quickly sparked a backlash from the public. Civil society organisations suspect that this arrest is connected to the traditional community’s resistance to the expansion of an oil palm plantation that will convert large swaths of their sacred forests into a commodity producing complex.
Buhing’s case is just a symptom of a persistent trend in Indonesia's political economy. The expansion of the extractive economy is at the core of the state’s ideology of development. This economic model is based on the marginalisation and exploitation of people and non-human nature.
Following the backlash, Buhing was finally released. To appease the angry public, a government-affiliated account circulated a video of him making a statement that his case is not related to land conflict between the community and the palm oil company (the police arrested him for seizing the company’s chainsaw to stop them cutting trees in the traditional community’s forest). Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Politics, Law, and Security, Mahfud MD, published the video on his twitter account. He said that Buhing was not arrested because of his defense of customary land, but due to a criminal case. Civil society activists suspect that Buhing was forced to make the statements under pressure. This suspicion was confirmed when Buhing was interviewed by Indonesian top journalist, Najwa Shihab.
Buhing’s case is just a symptom of a persistent trend in Indonesia's political economy. The expansion of the extractive economy is at the core of the state’s ideology of development. This economic model is based on the marginalisation and exploitation of people and non-human nature. Even the COVID-19 pandemic did not stop this tendency. Amidst the pandemic, politicians in the executive and legislative branches of the state are pushing for an investor-oriented “Omnibus Law” that many experts and civil society organization warn would allow more exploitation with less public scrutiny.
This is not merely an Indonesian issue. The problem is multi-scalar, marked by the unclear distinction between “the domestic” and “the international.” Connected to Buhing’s case, it must be understood that the rapid expansion of the palm oil industry is strongly connected to the neoliberal reforms implemented in late 1990s, following the Asian Crisis. The Letter of Intent between Indonesia and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) even specifically mentioned that the lucrative palm oil sector must be opened for foreign capital. While deregulations under the proposed “Omnibus Law” were pushed by Indonesian politicians, these are strongly related to the expansion of international capital. In Indonesia's extractive model, the elites' sources of wealth (through rent-seeking activities) depended on the flow of international capital to enable the exploitation of “natural resources”.
As a person from Indonesia, which is often invisible in IR literatures despite its vital position in the Earth System, I am convinced that this book’s rich theoretical and empirical discussion will not only open possibilities for non-anthropocentric IR, but also help push policy reform in critical areas such as Indonesia.
It is also important to see this as a symptom of a larger phenomenon: the predominance of an anthropocentric worldview both in policy making and in the way we understand the world. This anthropocentric hegemony is strongly connected, and mutually constitutive, to the logic and pattern of intra-human exploitative relations. Unfortunately, in IR scholarship, as well as in other social studies disciplines, scholars are often confined by the anthropocentric imagination of the "national" and the "international," since the distinction between the two is generally accepted as a crucial element in framing intra-human and human/non-human relationships.
Against this backdrop, I am greatly enthusiastic about the publication of the book Non-Human Nature in World Politics: Theory and Practice. I am also thankful to the editors, Joana and André, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to the book. As a person from Indonesia, which is often invisible in IR literatures despite its vital position in the Earth System, I am convinced that this book’s rich theoretical and empirical discussion will not only open possibilities for non-anthropocentric IR, but also help push policy reform in critical areas such as Indonesia. A comprehensive understanding of reality is a step towards establishing a better reality.
My chapter discusses the ‘anthropocentrisation’ of political–economic governance in Indonesia through the establishment, expansion and evolution of the modern state. By doing so, I attempt to highlight the strong connection between intra-human modes of governance (and exploitation) and the modes of exploitation of non-human nature. While focusing on Indonesia's experience, I do hope that my discussion can be a starting point to look at the inseparability of intra-human and human-nonhuman patterns of governance and exploitation somewhere else or to extrapolate it to the global/planetary level.
To stop destroying ourselves, we need to see the world differently. This book opens a door to do just that. Our duty is to move this intellectual and political agenda forward.
Shofwan Al Banna teaches in the Department of International Relations at the University of Indonesia. He is also a Research Fellow at University of Indonesia's ASEAN Study Center.
This article is original content published under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
