15 - Global Spread and Local Fractioning: Indigenous Knowledge and the Commoditization of Livelihood Resources in the Growth Triangle

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In this era of revolutionary changes, processes of transnationalization are seen as re-structuring spatial relations to form a borderless world or “space of flows” (Castells 1989; 1993; 1996). Such processes have led to innumerable political choices and state decisions to embark on respective development programmes so designed as to facilitate an entry into what is perceived as the modern, larger and better transnational order.

Until recently, Asia's response to such a challenge has been towards the execution of development programmes which have emphasized the setting up of global market and export-led industries. However, a major lesson has emerged from the recent Asian economic crisis. It is now clear that, although the global market and export-led industries are important in development programmes for the transnational order, these programmes require a major rethinking of whom the beneficiaries of such programmes should be if sustainable development is to be achieved. As Asia searches for ways to recover from the crisis, it is timely that a new and holistic paradigm for development towards the transnational order be tailored to incorporate synergistic partnerships among the state, businesses, civil society and the very peoples whose lives are infringed upon by such development policies.

This paper focuses on the Orang Suku Laut in the Riau Archipelago as an example of an indigenous people affected by development policies. The term “Orang Suku Laut” when translated means “Tribe of Sea People”. The Orang Suku Laut are also the indigenous Malays of the Riau archipelago in Indonesia. For centuries, the sea and coastal areas have formed both home and workplace for them. They live in an area which has in recent times been undergoing accelerated changes in the name of economic development and modernization for a transnational order.

THEORETICAL ARGUMENT AND AIMS

Contemporary development policies have so far been based on ideologies that are jointly shaped by multi- and transnationals as well as local state powers to generate unsurpassed revenues through the fastest and shortest route possible. Agendas for economic growth have thus given rise to new challenges as accelerated flows of commodity demands, human resources, capital, technologies, communications, images and knowledge move beyond national boundaries. On the local level, lives of the local inhabitants have been transformed according to presumed Utopian plans of high economic growth in the transnational order.