Contested Values in Indonesia: Value Creation and Value Relations in Contemporary Borneo

This Academy of Finland research project proposes to make a contribution to the anthropological theory of value through a study of value creation and value relations. The researchers adopt an action approach to values to illuminate how they are constructed and articulated through social action. The study focuses on a specific empirical context where the question of value is a vital and pressing concern. It is set among a group of indigenous societies of Indonesian Borneo – shifting cultivators with pluralistic value orientations – who occupy sparsely populated frontiers of natural resource extraction which are subject to radical environmental change and associated expansion of state and corporate control. These processes have destabilized the conditions for making a livelihood and sustaining local social and cultural institutions among these populations, and occasioned contestation of associated values. Analysis of this empirical material will enable the research project to examine value creation in change, as well as how different spheres of value and associated transactional orders are articulated in societies with pluralistic value orientations. The research is based on multi-sited participant observation by the members of the research team in three Borneo societies (Bentian, Luangan, and Ngaju), and will be carried out in cooperation with colleagues who form part of their international research network.