in the seizure of local communities

in the seizure of local communities’ land and led to a significant number of land usurpation by the Indonesian state, as well as peaceful or forced relocation of local communities; 2. State forest demarcation is followed by a centralized forest policy. State adopted forest management policies that encourage in-migration, timber extraction, expansion of wood industries, and forest conversion to tree crop plantation. Thus, it is widely argued that land usurpation occurring to local communities’ was done for the benefit of business interests as well as to facilitate the implementation of the state’s development policy. Nevertheless, if one look at the processes of land usurpation and the mechanisms by which state appropriated local communities’ land, one can find something more than a simple explanation of the conflict arising between the state and society due to state’s income-seeking policy. Commoditization of forest lands and resources is only one dimension of the process of land dispossession. I argue that in the Indonesian context, there are three dimensions in this process; 1) land dispossession is the result of the assertion of the state’s territorial authority and control, 2) land dispossession is a function of the creation of national community and the expansion of state’s bureaucracy, and 3) land dispossession is the result of state forest management policy that prioritizes income generation from forest exploitation. These three dimensions combined with particularity context of Indonesian state as a post- colonial state, and the modernity notion embedded in its national model, make me believe that land dispossession in Indonesia is a function of the process of state-building.