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Impediments to Establishing Adat Villages: A Socio-Legal Examination of the Indonesian Village Law

2019; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 21; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14442213.2019.1670240

1740-9314

Tody Sasmitha Jiwa Utama,

Indonesian Legal and Regulatory Studies

As adat revivalism has begun to influence regulatory, legal and administrative outcomes in Indonesia, adat (tradition or custom) has also found a place in one of the largest policy reforms reshaping Indonesia's local governance systems: the Village Law. The 2014 Village Law includes a specific mechanism for villages to be recognised as 'adat villages'. However, five years after promulgating this law, no adat villages have yet been completely established. In this article I take a socio-legal approach to examine the challenges of adat village establishment. A case study in South Kalimantan illustrates how the district government utilised the flaws in the legislation to undermine a customary community's demand for recognition and to justify the stagnation of adat village establishment in their area. In a broader context, adat recognition through the 2014 Village Law tends to incorporate adat into the existing administrative village, instead of empowering the adat communities.