THE INTERFACE OF CUSTOMARY AND NATIONAL LAND LAW IN EAST KALIMANTAN, INDONESIA (DAYAK, LEGAL PLURALISM)

This dissertation incorporates methods from cultural anthropology and the anthropology of law to analyze the interface of customary and national land law in a Dayak village in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. It is shown that arriving at legal principles, derived from concrete cases isolated by using Pospisil's cross-culturally valid definition of law, is the first step in illuminating legal sensibilities. The imminglement of legal sensibilities, a phrase used by Geertz to characterize legal pluralism, can best be understood when the multiplicity of legal systems and the nature of legal levels within a society are used as the framework for discussion.;The Indonesian government's policy of granting concessions to timber companies and allocating land for development projects ignores the Dayaks' right to land. Under Dayak customary law, individuals have the right to plant trees on their land, to lend or give it to a co-villager, to farm it at their discretion, and to dispose of it in a testamentary transaction. Provisions in the Basic Agrarian Law of Indonesia stating that agrarian law is based on customary law do not, according to interpretations by government officials in East Kalimantan, apply to the customary law of shifting cultivators such as the Dayaks. Scholars of Indonesian law have obscured the rights of the individual to land by emphasizing the village right of disposal, confusing political and economic rights to land.;Legal cases collected during fifteen months of fieldwork in Dayak villages in East Kalimantan illuminate Dayak land tenure and the critical role of the headman in the adat (customary law) process of reaching a consensus through directed discussion. The headman, who is the consensus maker within the village, attempted to have a national government representative, the sub-district official, act as the consensus maker between the villagers and government officials, thus illustrating how power shifts between legal levels.