233 research outputs found
A time to change direction
No full textColfer and Prabhu build on concerns highlighted in the Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forests and Land Use, recognizing the ‘wickedness’ of climate change and other problems bedeviling the Earth and its peoples. This chapter, in response, argues for the use of collaborative, bottom-up approaches where learning and adaptation are central features. These authors build on the longitudinal experience – some of two decades or more – of multiple teams of researchers who have worked at the community level using the ACM approach and highlighting their many enduring accomplishments. After a brief history of the collection’s development, Colfer and Prabhu argue for expanding these same kinds of processes (collaboration, learning) upward and outward. Rather than urging a substitution of large-scale action over community work, they argue for stronger links among micro, meso, and macro levels. The chapter also weaves an introduction to the book’s chapters into four topics of great importance in addressing environmental issues: (1) multiple scales and the exercise of power, (2) the value of excellent facilitation and learning, (3) collaboration in multistakeholder forums, and (4) inclusivity and intersectionality. The chapter concludes by identifying ways forward at the community and broader scales
(Afterword) Riska: memories of a Dayak girlhood
No full textThis brief afterward discusses Riska’s experiences in the context of Colfer’s ethnographic knowledge of gender and lifestyle changes among the dayaks of Kalimantan. It discusses the burgeoning literature reflecting women’s voices, a genre to which Riska contributes. Building on her own ethnographic experience, Colfer highlights important changes that have affected women’s lives, such as increasing wage labour opportunities for men, new technological devices for men, negative stereotypes of dayaks on the part of outsiders, and agricultural extension programs that focus on men. The problems that dayaks often encounter when they try to join mainstream Indonesian life are briefly discussed. She concludes by recounting some of the important positive values represented by dayak ways of life: a sense of humor and equanimity in the face of disaster; unusual generosity; recognition of differing strengths; acceptance of responsibility of reach other’s welfare;and a value placed on hard work, initiative and creativity
Revisiting gender and forestry in Long Segar, East Kalimantan, Indonesia: oil palm and divided aspirations
No full textDramatic and devastating changes in East Kalimantan's forest landscape over recent decades reflect the impact of intensified resource extraction through timber concessions, transmigration settlement and the expansion of agri-business, including oil palm. This chapter revisits a Dayak community that was subject to extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the 1980s to examine the gendered impacts of oil palm expansion. Findings show that whilst some aspects of gender norms remain resilient (e.g. women's responsibility for rice cultivation), oil palm has opened up substantial differences between those able to capitalize on the oil palm boom, and those for whom oil palm constitutes a signficant threat. Changes associated with oil palm in Long Segar reflect the interplay between resource histories, gender, class, generation and ethnicity, opening up divisions in a once relatively egalitarian forest-based community
Beadlore of the Uma' Jalan Kenyah
No full textThis is a brief article, built on the knowledge of “Pui Pelibut” with whom Colfer stayed when she lived in Long Segar, East Kalimantan in 1979-80 (and from time to time since then). The article examines the beads in two necklaces, identifying their probable ultimate sources in Europe or China, and providing the Kenyah name for the particular bead. The Kenyah have an elaborate knowledge system (which is currently dying) pertaining to their beads, including gender, economic value, names, and connections with the soul
Fire in East Kalimantan: a panoply of practices, views and (discouraging) effects
No full textThis paper describes 1999 research intended to shed light on the causes and effects of the devastating 1997-98 forest fires in East Kalimantan. The author visited six communities and interviewed representatives of several other stakeholders (oil palm plantations, industrial timber plantations, timber companies, local government officials) about the causes and effects of the fires. She describes the traditional fire management techniques known by the Kenyah (a dayak group) in several locations. The fires varied considerably in intensity and damage done, among the communities. But some sustained very severe damage to their environment and suffered serious health consequences (both physical and psychological). The paper concludes by estimating the relevance of ten propositions relating to the likelihood of fire danger to each of the six villages visited
Beyond slash and burn: building on indigenous knowledge in managing Borneo’s tropical rain forests
No full textThis book contains contributions from a variety of authors including forest dwellers themselves, describes the natural resource management system of the Uma’ Jalan Kenyah people of East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Colfer and her co-authors seek to present the knowledge of the local people about their surrounding forest and its sustainable management in a way that trained scientists will understand and use. The people and their knowledge of the forest are seen as an integral part of the biodiversity of the forest. The rapid loss and degradation of humid tropical rain forests over recent years has meant that the unique ways of life of those people who live in and from these forests are threatened. The urban and agricultural settings that usually succeed forest clearing are not conducive to preserving the knowledge and cultures that have developed over centuries. By introducing the ways in which the Uma’ Jalan perceive their natural resources, then focussing on their agroforestry system from this viewpoint, the subsistence base of these forest dwellers is explored. The role of money in such a system is defined and options available to the people for survival described. In the final chapter the ramifications of these findings for forest management in the tropics is discussed with emphasis on how Uma’ Jalan customs might be adapted to preserve at least part of the forest environment for conservation, for biodiversity, improved subsistence for small populations and sustainable timber extraction
- …
