Livelihood strategies of the landless : three cases from Blitar, East Java

Abstract

The view of the passive and submissive Javanese peasant is so common in the literature that it seems that there must be some truth in it. My argument is that it describes one of the strategies for survival used by Javanese peasants in responding to their situation. A key question concerns the different aspects of this strategy for survival chosen by different groups and why these aspects are chosen. This study focuses on three major types of community within the same cultural and historical setting in the Blitar regency of East Java: Pari, a community based on wetrice agriculture; Saratemen, a plantation-based community; and Jati, a forestry-based community. In describing these three communities, I have examined in detail their different conditions: their economic activities, social and cultural institutions, historical experiences, and their political and administrative organization. I conclude that there are basically similar elements of a survival strategy in the three communities. For example, in all three communities, peasants are involved in a wide range of activities and peasant household mobilize as many of their members as possible in these activities. These two elements of a basic strategy for survival are an integral part of being a peasant subsistence-producer. Although the basic elements of this strategy are similar, the ways in which the three communities apply this strategy are very different. The distinction between the survival strategies of the three communities are less of substance and more, at the margin, in their approach to this basic strategy. The specific conditions in which individuals live can affect the ways in which they develop their strategies. Looking at the studies of these three communities, I suggest two features that stand out as contributing to the differences between them. The first is the communities’s historical experience, especially the peasants’s own perceptions of it. The second is the peasantry’s role in the local economic system, and related to this, the extent of socioeconomic differences and of social cohesion within the community. Show more