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“The impulse is cartographic” : counter-mapping Indonesia’s resource frontiers in the context of coloniality

Tilley, Lisa (2020) “The impulse is cartographic” : counter-mapping Indonesia’s resource frontiers in the context of coloniality. Antipode 52 (5), pp. 1434-1454. ISSN 0066-4812.

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Abstract

Resource frontiers continue to expand globally across Indigenous lands as states and corporations enact forms of expropriation redolent of the formal colonial era for the sake of extraction. In the face of this expansion, the burden remains largely on frontline communities to defend their ecologies using the tools available to them. Across Indonesia’s resource frontiers, the ‘cartographic impulse’ Edward Said once named to describe anticolonial struggles is apparent in the form of counter-mapping, which seeks to secure adat (customary) rights and defend Indigenous lands against extractivist expansion. This article revisits this practice and argues that the counter-map and its goals remain tenuous – mapping in its scalable form risks processing complex and multi-dimensional ways of relating to land into two-dimensional representations appropriate for a liberal property regime, while adat itself is a contingent and mutable legal goal. Ultimately, the article echoes emerging calls for the burden to be shifted away from frontline communities through the pursuit of just transitions to post-extractivism.

Metadata

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This is the peer reviewed version of the article, which has been published in final form at the link above. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences
Depositing User: Lisa Tilley
Date Deposited: 23 Mar 2020 11:22
Last Modified: 15 Jul 2025 19:02
URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/31424

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