New regimes of commodification and state formation on the resource frontier of Southeast Asia

The research project funded by the Kone Foundation examines the interplay between the commodification of nature, value production, and state formation in Kalimantan, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea (PNG). Currently, Southeast Asian countries are experiencing rapid transformations shaped by new dynamics involving investors from China and from the wealthiest ASEAN countries. The pace of change is fast, with high-tech special economic zones, extractive mining and hydropower enclaves, and large-scale agro-industrial land concessions emerging alongside smallholders or forest-dependent communities whose populations in Southeast Asia still number in tens of millions. New boom and bust cycles of industrial crops such as rubber and oil palm are constantly re-shaping the rural landscapes.

The research examines the states of these countries not as uniform entities but, rather, as fragmented, fluid, and always in the making through top-down as well as bottom-up local practices.The research project hopes to enable new kinds of analysis on the similarities and differences of Southeast Asian resource frontier dynamics that would bring to the fore changing patterns in commodification and state formation processes. In doing so, it will highlight the significance of contingent and context-specific elements that shape how nature is transformed into resources, and how the state and resource-making processes interrelate with each other.