Village politics, culture and community-driven development: insights from Indonesia

Abstract

Local governance arrangements often reflect culturally charged struggles for power as well as culturally motivated efforts to gain access to power. Yet current discussions around community-driven and decentralized development pay little attention to this nexus, at best reducing power to questions of material difference but overlooking the ways in which governance arrangements are contested. On the basis of research across three sites in Indonesia, this paper explores ways in which tensions between different cultural forms at a village level affect local governance arrangements. The conclusions explore implications for so-called community-driven approaches to development.

Service delivery on the cheap? Community-based workers in development interventions

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Bridging, Linking, and Bonding Social Capital in Collective Action: The Case of Kalahan Forest Reserve in the Philippines

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Special issue editorial: creating inclusive communities

“…This special issue will seek to attract a wide-ranging liberal and progressive debate around the conceptualisation of concerns without reading down on traditions that have engaged us so strongly in this contest. This issue will attract and attend to the intellectualising of such issues as community education, empowerment, sustainable and community-focused development, post-colonialism, citizenship, village politics, social movements, collective action and political education embedded within an array of minority discourses (Bebbington et al 2004). The liberating aspect of having 'inclusive communities' is fundamental in the understanding of society (Hunt et al 2000).…”