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Ikat textiles (kewatek) from Adonara, one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, are still seldom researched by textile specialists (Vatter 1984 [1932]; Barnes 1989). This article is the first account by a descendant from the island that builds on these studies to describe the social and cultural organization and taboos concerning ikat-dyeing and the weaving of kewatek in the twenty-first century. It also discusses recent government intervention and the actions of local NGO s to sustain Adonara textile identification and to stimulate the weaving of these sarongs for economic household purposes.

"The local turn in good governance theory and practice responded to critiques of the ineffectiveness of state management and the inequity of privatization alternatives in natural resource management. Confounding expectations of greater effectiveness from decentralised governance, including community-based natural resource management, however, critics argue that expanded opportunities for elite capture have become widely associated with program failures. This overview of theoretical controversies on leadership, patronage and elite capture is part of a themed section in this issue that challenges assumptions across a wide range of current policy literature. It introduces a set of Indonesian case studies that examine practices of local leaders and elites and seek to account in structural terms for appropriations both by (‘elite capture’) and of (‘captured elites’) these key figures. These studies explore the structural factors and co-governance practices most likely to promote effective participation of the full spectrum of local interests in pursuit of better local natural resource governance."

Resolving contestations over resource management rights around coastal villages remains a focal challenge for co-management initiatives in remote coastal zones. Contemporary socio-political settings increasingly see local people having to negotiate between local long-standing (horizontal) relationships and new emerging (vertical) relationships which involve collaborations with outside actors who try to assume neutral mediating positions. Using two conflicts, this article examines the rise and fall of a participatory coastal resource management program in eastern Indonesia involving a fishing community engaged in a co-management arrangement with a conservation non-government organisation (NGO). An actor-oriented approach is applied to analyse how these conflicts shape, drive and direct collaborations across the community–NGO interface. We discuss how these impact the implementation of the conservation ethics and sustainable natural resource management practices, and show how particular mediating capacities of an NGO may overcome, and even build forth on, conflict in some contexts but fall short in others. We argue that local resource user groups and conservation teams operate according to strong local relationships that are entrenched in cultural–historical hierarchies of power. We moreover note that these local relationships significantly influence the extent of neutrality of external groups in their mediating, coordinating and technical advisory roles. The effectiveness of co-management partnerships hinges on the ability to balance actors’ mediating capacity with their local dependence for operation.

This article takes the existence of power networks of local elites as a social fact of fundamental importance and the starting point for the study of patronage in the governance of the coastal waters of East Kalimantan. We address the question of how to capture the elites for project implementation, rather than assuming the inevitability of elite capture of project funds. We analyze the multiple-scale networks of local power holders (punggawa) and the collaboration and friction between the political-economic interests and historical values of local actors and the scientific motivations of international environmental organizations. We describe how collaboration and friction between members of the elite challenge models that categorically exclude or co-opt local elites in foreign projects. In-depth ethnographic study of these networks shows their resilience through flows of knowledge and power in a highly volatile coastal environment. Results indicate the need for inclusion in decision making of local entrepreneurs, and – indirectly - their dependents in decentralized coastal governance.

Conservation of marine space is a new frontier in environmentalists’ involvement with resource governance in Indonesia. The coastal and marine area of Berau was established as a District Marine Conservation Area (MCA) based on District Head Regulation No. 31/2005. The total MCA of 1.27 million ha was expected to become part of the wider MCA networks of the East Borneo Seascape and the Sulu Sulawesi Marine Ecoregion, as well as of the Coral Triangle international network of conservation areas in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The Berau MCA was developed in collaboration between the Berau district government and international environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). They claimed to use a new concept of partnership with the decentralised district government as the principal institutional partner. However, the governance framework is full of legal disconnects due to decentralisation of resource management, and its implementation faces the real-life challenges of political-economic and historical valuations of the marine environment producing conflicts of interest between the multi-scalar actors involved. Following the very process of establishing the Berau MCA over a five-year period (2005–2010), this paper shows why it is necessary to understand how collaboration and contention are constructed and in turn construct actors' perceptions and perspectives on marine conservation and resource extraction in decentralised coastal governance.

The designation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Indonesia has been accelerated over the past two decades in line with international biodiversity conservation commitments and to secure a basis for decentralised fisheries resources management. The Berau MPA of northeast Kalimantan is one of them. This paper shows how the establishment of the park boundaries and zoning affects local fishers' livelihoods. Particular attention is paid to the position of outsider fishers or andon, who have a legal right to access the resource rich fishing grounds. Decentralised district government legitimises outsider fisheries activities because andon fishing permits bring in fees as a contribution to the regional income (PAD or pendapatan asli daerah), while international environmental organisations and local fishers regard the outsider fishers as illegitimately entering the MPA to access resources they regard as their own. Thus, MPA boundaries appear to be highly permeable, with both local fishers and environmental NGOs seeing the presence of andon as illegitimate and illicit, despite being legal.

This thesis explores how people live amphibiously in dynamic land-sea environments. It is based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork (2011 – 2013) in the Makassar Strait maritime region in Indonesia: a complex and amphibious land-sea interface. In Western science little attention is given to how people live at sea. There is a general land bias, by which people are seen as primarily belonging to the land. Yet people do live at sea, or rather: in these dynamic land-sea environments. Engaging with these mobile and sea-based ways of life of maritime people provides not only a fuller understanding of how people relate to their environment, but , essentially, it also enables a critical reflection of land-biased assumptions in science and society. Anthropology, with its qualitative research methods is particularly suitable to do such in-depth and long-term engagement with other worlds. The research on which the thesis is based was carried out as a mobile ethnography, following people seawards, travelling with them for days to visit close family on faraway islands or joining them on their fishing and diving trips, including illegal fishers using bombs and cyanide poison on coral reefs. Also followed were the practices of marine conservation staff, as they organised field trips to fishing communities. These travels – described in the thesis – show how islands and marine spaces that are remote from the land, turn out to be regional hubs of oversees trade and family relations. From a sea-based perspective the Makassar Strait is a continuity of relations and movements flanked by land masses. This inverts the land-based perspective of the sea as an extension of the land by putting the sea centre stage. The Makassar Strait figures in this thesis as an active and moving world – or worlds – of human-marine relations to learn from and theorise about the notion of ontological flow: fluidity of being and moving in relation. Flow is both movement as a pattern of activity – the flowing – and that what flows; elements, matter and meaning in motion. The notion of worlds in flow has infused recent ontological debates in anthropological theory in which reality is assumed contingent, fluid and multiple – thereby revitalising the philosophical work of earlier thinkers, among whom Michel Serres and Gilles Deleuze. This way of thinking complexity and ontological fluidity is central to literature that has emerged out of the cross-fertilisation of Science and Technology Studies (STS), anthropology and philosophy. Despite differences, these studies share the objective to follow, engage with and translate how, in practice, material and semiotic realities come to be and matter – instead of developing a way to ‘access reality better’. The concept of ‘amphibiousness’ is mobilised to refer to living in and moving between different worlds that can intermingle but that cannot be reduced to each other. The concept is used to describe the human capacity to live in different worlds at the same time. This amphibious capacity is further elaborated 1) in terms of living in a hybrid land-water interface, 2) in terms of being able to move along with different understandings of the world, of reality, and 3) It refers to the methodology of the anthropologist who also needs to move in these worlds bodily and cognitively, to develop a sensitivity to and understanding of these different worlds. Amphibiousness captures the anthropological engagement with flow, multiplicity and otherness by way of moving between worlds in order to explore the moving interface between worlds, realities or ways of life that partly interact. The research question: How to grasp flow – the fluctuations of and between bodies, things or worlds in the making - conceptually and methodologically without reducing its vital mobility and fluidity? is elaborated in a methodological Chapter 2, and three research chapters (Chapter 3, Chapter 4, and Chapter 5) that each focus from a different angle on human-marine relations. The research exposes fundamentally different, and sometimes conflicting, ways in which people understand and experience their relation to the sea. These were not just different perspectives on one maritime reality, or world. These were inherently different understandings of reality, and different ways in which this reality is put into practice, in which worlds – plural – are being created and sustained. In anthropology we speak of ontological difference, because it concerns with (radically) different notions of wat exists, what is real, what matters and what entities participate in the reproduction of the world. Although these worlds are different – they cannot be reduced to each another - they are also not separated in any clear-cut way. They do flow into each other, as people, objects and ideas can amphibiously move in between. It is argued in this thesis that such amphibious translation is essential for more effective and equal collaboration in marine conservation. International environmental organisations insufficiently acknowledge (radically) different ways of doing and thinking human-marine relations. Disregarding these undermines the viability of conservation programs as it repeatedly leads to clashes between different ways in which maritime worlds are understood and organised in practice. To be effective, marine conservation needs to become amphibious; attentive to fundamentally different ways of understanding and experiencing the relationship between people and the sea, as well as the mobile practices of trade, fishing, travel and family affiliations through which these worlds are shaped beyond the borders of marine reserves. Chapter 2 intends to answer the question how to grasp environmental otherness – radically different ways of understanding and experiencing human-marine relations – in and through ethnography. Chapter 3 serves to provide some empirical grounding to show the relevancy and urgency of a paradigmatic shift in conservation thinking, finding ways to engaging mobile maritime people like the Bajau. The solution to the ‘participation problem’ in conservation will not lie in developing ways to make local people participate more in Western conservation schemes. What is needed is an ontological shift in conservation thinking itself. Chapter 4 describes a conservation outreach project that attempts to educate and convert local people into coral protectors. Both coral and the sea-dwelling Bajau people appear to be amphibious beings, moving between a changeable land-water interface, and between different, fluidly interwoven ontological constellations. Failure of conservation organisations to recognise the ontologically ambiguous nature of ‘coral’ and ‘people’ translates to a breakdown of outreach goals. Chapter 5 provides a case study of a dangerous and destructive fishing practice (cyanide fishing) by which fishers dive beyond the limits of what their body can take – and spirits allow, a practice that generates feeling of both fear and enjoyment as they experience a process of becoming permeable to fluids, spirits and currents penetrating or leaking out of their bodies. This chapter exposes how cyanide fishing sustains as a way of life, involving and producing affective relations. In Chapter 6 it is concluded how ontological multiplicity is of a heuristic and political relevance to social science, and anthropology in particular because it allows us to engage with radical difference – or the real on different terms – instead of explaining it away in our own terms. Engaging with such radical different is important because it allows to see the realities that systematically escape (scholarly) attention, yet affect the world nonetheless. This requires translation – the practice of relating different worlds, reals, repertoires or ways of life and bringing them into interaction – which is a process of, and a condition for, dialogue. The notion of amphibiousness has practical and political value, in particular for reconsidering conservation and development outreach and how it may be reframed as a process involving ontological dialogue. Providing room for ambiguity, thinking with amphibiousness furthermore encourages suspension of the (Western) tendency to explain the Other, to fix what does not add up.

This thesis studies collective action and social change in indigenous rural organisations (IRO) in the Bolivian Andes. I focus on the effects and importance that these organisations have in the historical process of regional development as social spaces that encapsulate different projects of social, political and economic modernity. I reconstruct the practices and situations that turn rural indigenous organisations into significant spaces in which individuals and groups of people put into practice their life projects and their aspirations of modernity. The main question of this thesis is: what are indigenous rural organisations in the Bolivian Andes and what are their contributions to regional development? To answer this question, I argue that we need to leave aside social constructivism and rational action present in current studies of indigenous rural organisations in the Andes that use the concept social capital. These organisations are not essences, totalities, nor are they are stable. Also, they are a more complex process than mere rational and technocratic action. IRO are contextual and situational spaces of social life that contain significant elements or objects, which are material and immaterial. These spaces are heterogeneities of humans and objects united by shared significant objects that are emergent, original and intensive. In this sense this organisations represent meshworks that interweave the changeable relationships between entities (humans and objects) and practices, and encompass the possibility of social change. These meshworks have different dimensions (economical, social, cultural, political). In each one of those, the flow of practices, interactions and experiences of individuals and groups of individuals simultaneously unify and break meaning, identity, affect, materiality and also regulation. I study three kindsof indigenous rural organisations fromthe Perisalar (the Bolivian Southern highlands): communities which are based on kinship relationships, ayllus which are ethnic groups and quinoa producer organisations. Communities are social spaces that contain significant elements of modernity, such as the desire for access to State education and to enjoy citizens’ rights, the wish for agricultural machinery and to produce for the global market, the diversity of livelihoods and the affirmation of racial and class identity. Ayllus are made by community assemblages and many comunarios belong to quinoa Producer Organisations. In this sense ayllus and producer organisations are important social spaces as they contain significant elements present in the communities. I present the social life of IRO starting from the intersection of local development practices and experiences with other social spaces: the market, migratory destinations, education, social movements and institutional intervention. In order to better understand the effects of social change and IRO, I chose a long-term historical vision, considering the emerging effects of the intersection of local and external practices and experiences, before and during the quinoa commoditisation process. The study concludes that IRO in the Bolivian Andes, are meshworks made by vibrant humans and objects with social vitality and intensity. They have the capacity to actualise significant elements of an economic, social, cultural and political character, in interaction with the Nation-State and the global market. These organisations increase through global market the vibrant character of significant elements such as quinoa, and by their recognition by the State they provide semi-autonomy to their members, and a space to make recognised their citizenship and their trade union, racial and class identities, and to locally redesign the State. Memory, identity and affect reveal the potential of IRO in repositioning past reminiscences and ancestral properties, and at the same time claim for a future that does not contain the same substance of that which is “the Andean”, “the Aymara” or “the Quechua”, rather incorporates new elements that lead to multiple “(neo)Andeans”, “(neo)Aymaras” and “(neo)Quechuas” forms, present in each and every one of the partial connections. These organisations contain a variety of symbols, discourses and practices that correspond to heterogeneous knowledge and forms of socialisation and thinking of modernity that sometimes result in tension, fissure and conflict without however being fragmented. That is why structuralism, institutionalism and rationalism partially explain the agency in ambiguous and eclectic social spacessuch areIRO, whose limitsare constantly redefined by the flow of experience of its members. Development through these organisations is a social process, experiential and unpredictable, reflexive and corporeal, cognitive and performative, that contains both cohesion and tear. For understanding IRO contribution to rural development we must describe the relational and the imaginative in the wishes and processes of social change and regional developmentand grasp the relevance of its individual members’ experiences and practices in the creation of social ties. Methodologically this leads us to dissolve analytical categories and to follow and observe individuals past and present practices and their intersections with other individuals, groups, structures and significant objects. Our study underlines the significance of human-object relation as a starting point for generating new analytical frameworks in indigenous Andean organizations.