The production of rightlessness: palm oil companies and land dispossession in Indonesia

Abstract

Addressing the comparative study of global land grabbing, this article seeks to explain the relative ease with which palm oil companies dispossess rural Indonesians of their land. Employing detailed documentation of 150 conflicts between rural communities and palm oil companies, we analyse both the actual processes through which companies acquire land as well as the legal provisions that facilitate these processes. We argue that palm oil companies are succeeding in dispossessing rural Indonesians because of the ways in which formal regulations and informal machinations have produced rightlessness. This rightlessness has three main sources: curtailed land rights, ‘backdoored’ legal protections, and collusive business–politics relationships which enable companies to evade regulations. We draw attention to the varying role of the state in processes of dispossession: compared to ‘regimes of dispossession’ elsewhere, companies rather than the state organize the actual land dispossession. This smaller role of the state disadvantages affected communities.