logging, plantation, or mining (Harwell and Lynch 2002, 30-1). Thus, resettlement projects were often seen as an effort to empty forestlands in order for business interests to step in and exploit the forest. Furthermore, Peluso and Harwell argue that the discourse of “development deficit” was used to justify the state’s management plan in West Kalimantan, “Political and economic motives underlay the Indonesian government’s
construction of Dayaks a primitive, undeveloped, and predisposed to violence.
Once the “development deficit” was established through the use of these labels,
the “solutions” easily followed – “efficient” forest exploitation of their “under-
utilized” lands, large-scale export production, forced resettlement from
longhouses to villages, and the development of wet-rice agriculture (even though
the environment was not always conducive to it) and perennial plantations of oil
palm and rubber. These terms were not only a government discourse but also
became “common knowledge”.” (Peluso and Harwell 2001, 100) From this literature, I believe the relation between development and territorialization is two fold. On the one hand, the state expands its authority and control over a territory (forest lands) and resources (forest resources) to ensure the exploitation of these resources to boost economic development. The state territorializes its control over the forests by claiming ownership and managerial rights over ‘empty’ forestland, giving itself exclusive managerial rights over the land and resources contained within it. The control over the access to forests and forest products ensure the accumulation of an income from the commoditization of these natural resources. This accumulation and the potentially resulting benefits from economic development are supporting the process of state- building and serving the New Order’s regime legitimating means. One the other hand, the discourse of development has been used to facilitate state’s territorialization strategy. Having put development as a top national objective, the state justifies its managerial decision as essential for the progress of the nation and its development. The state resettles “traditional” communities residing inside “state forests”, claiming that they need to be helped through governmental programs in order to overcome their “backwardness”. In the meantime, the village lands which were “under- utilized” by communities’ “primitive” land-use practices can be re-assigned for a more “efficient” or development-oriented land use