Several centuries of interaction across ethnic and religious difference in the Indonesian archipelago have been accompanied by the evolution of local ways of resolving communal disputes and violence. We term the resulting norms and practices ‘local conflict resolution’. The development of these ways of mediating across difference has itself sometimes been violent, yet the accompanying local conflict resolution processes are dynamic and pluralist. They are open to revision and adaptation, including to the input of outside and new forces and actors. For this reason our use of the term ‘local’ does not connote a bounded space that excludes outsiders. Rather, we want to emphasise that processes have evolved in a particular time and place. While this particular context is necessary for concrete social interaction leading to the development of conflict resolution processes, it is not exclusive of other places and locations, as the term ‘Indigenous’ can sometimes imply.
Our pluralist approach to culture explores the characteristics and efficacy of Indonesian local conflict resolution in the context of long-standing local interaction across difference and more recent nation-state–building projects. The chapter begins by discussing long-term interactions and intergroup adjustments that shape how people deal with disagreement and threat in many local Indonesian settings. Here diversity has more to do with relatedness than with difference that distances or excludes. Such relatedness among diverse cultures is dynamic and is sometimes sustained through conflictual and violent relation. Yet it also results in the emergence of social norms that bind the groups in common practices at neighbourhood, village, subdistrict, and district levels. These take the form of sets of prohibitions and the promotion of certain attitudes and behaviors that strengthen peaceful relations and dictate the importance of tolerant ways of life.
The second section discusses two frequently noted practices, Pela Gandong and Motambu Tana. Dynamic, pluralist, and situated in multicultural locality, the norms and rites of these practices provide a way of understanding Indonesian local conflict resolution practices. We contextualise these practices within both long-term interactions across difference and their recent revival to address intercommunal ethnic conflict.
The final section examines the impact of four decades of nation-state-building on local conflict resolution. We highlight some of the negative impacts of the nation-building project in order to emphasise the importance of vibrant local cultures and continued interactions across difference at the local level. The chapter concludes by recapping key themes and emphasising the importance of drawing upon local approaches to conflict resolution in contemporary conflict resolution and peacebuilding processes.
Frans Djalong, Chapter 9, Book Mediating Across Difference: Oceanic and Asian Approaches to Conflict Resolution, Postcolonial Series, 2011, University of Hawai’i Press, pp 185-204 , (co-author Muhadi Sugiono), link https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wqfzw