Indirect Recognition

Abstract

This chapter evaluates the impact of the declaration of Mount Halimun-Salak as a national park by the Indonesian government on the property and citizenship of the local population. It analyzes government–citizen encounters in West Java and the dynamics of recognition in the fields of government territorialization, taxation, local organization, and identity politics. If direct claims to resources were impossible to pursue, people would instead lodge indirect claims. In everyday situations, indirect recognition can perform important legal and political work. After the authoritarian New Order regime, in particular, claims to citizenship worked as indirect property claims and as pragmatic proxies for formal property rights. The chapter examines how people struggle over the past, negotiating the constraints of social propriety for legitimation and indirect recognition of their claims.