The borders within: Mobility and enclosure in the Riau Islands1

Abstract: The border studies literature makes a strong case against claims for unfettered transnationalism and ‘borderlessness’ in our ‘globalising world’. However, its focus on movement across borders means that it fails to address bordering practices that occur within the nation‐state as a result of transnational activity. In this paper, we extend Cunningham and Heyman’s concepts ‘enclosure’ and ‘mobility’ to confront the different layers of bordering (both physical and non‐physical) that have occurred in Indonesia’s Riau Islands since they became part of the Indonesia–Malaysia–Singapore Growth Triangle.     

In the gateway's shadow: Interactions between Singapore's Hinterlands

During the 1990s, Singapore, the Malaysian state of Johor and the Riau Islands in Indonesia marketed themselves as a single investment destination. Due to its capital, technology, and superior logistics, Singapore was the “gateway”; Johor and the Riau Islands were the hinterland—supplying land, labour, and resources. Since then, production networks between the three territories have deepened. Interactions with Singapore have also catalysed connections between Johor and the Riau Islands. To date, research has focussed on the city‐state as the gateway and/or linkages between it and one of the two hinterlands. This emphasis is inherent in the “Gateway City” framework, which focusses on the primary city at the expense of its hinterlands and also overlooks mediating influences such as borders and border regimes. This article proposes complementing the Gateway City with the Cross‐Border Region framework to gain stronger purchase on the unit of analysis and focusing on inter‐hinterland dynamics to gain a more complete picture of how gateway cities affect their surrounding areas. Through applying this expanded theoretical framework to study the interactions of Johor and the Riau Islands, this article seeks to shed light on an under‐theorised and under‐studied aspect of gateway cities.     

Fixing flammable Forest: The scalar politics of peatland governance and restoration in Indonesia

Peatland fires and the impact of transboundary haze are often intertwined with socio‐environmental externalities of neoliberal forest governance and overlapping systems of resource property rights in Indonesia. New peatland governance strategies are emerging to address fires and haze by reorganising peatland management using a more ecologically relevant scale that territorialises peatland according to its hydrological characteristics. Employing the concept of the eco‐scalar fix, this paper interrogates rescaling peatland governance as a strategy to address the socio‐ecological crisis associated with the conversion of peatland into mono‐agricultural land. However, rescaling peatland governance entails the risk of merely displacing socio‐environmental crises to areas considered less ecologically important rather than addressing them. Drawing on a case study of a peatland restoration in Riau, Indonesia, this paper shows how emerging hybrid forms of peatland governance can address the environmental externalities that have unintentionally been created. This hybrid form of peatland governance has pressured actors across multiple types of property to rework the ways that environmental commons are controlled and accessed.     

Organising AIDS in the borderless world: A case study from the Indonesia–Malaysia–Singapore Growth Triangle*

Abstract: Tropes of borderlessness are pervasive both in discourses concerning the spread of HIV/AIDS and the Growth Triangle, a transnational economic zone that ideally binds together the Indonesian island of Batam, the Malaysian province of Johor and Singapore. This paper considers how the emergence of HIV as a problem in the Growth Triangle, and on Batam in particular, has been framed as a problem to be addressed in context of the nation‐state rather than as a transnational problem that demands cooperation across borders. In conjunction with this, it focuses on further attempts to create boundaries around HIV, through the identification of risk groups, the localisation of prostitutes and the distribution of condoms. The paper focuses particular attention on the relationship between Batam and Singapore, and how non‐governmental organisations and governments have dealt with HIV/AIDS issues in both places. Furthermore, it problematises these activities by paying ethnographic attention to other forms of cultural and economic logics that often are odds with prevention models. This raises important questions concerning, most specifically, the problems of HIV prevention and cross‐border cooperation, and, more generally, the regulation and formation of new kinds of borders in a ‘borderless world’.     

Popular discourse on identity politics and decentralisation in Tanjung Pinang public schools

Abstract: This paper explores the discrepancies between the official rhetoric on Malayness and the emerging discourse on national identity among the urban Malay (Melayu) youth of the Indonesian province Kepri. The population of the Riau Archipelago is multiethnic, with Malays as the majority and Kepulauan Riau represents an important historical centre for the whole Malay World. Because of this, local leaders have engaged this newly formed province in a series of attempts to revitalise a transnational ethnic awareness based on an inclusive Malay identity framework. However, most of the students I met during my recent fieldwork in Tanjung Pinang’s public schools tend to reject most ideas of reinforcing the bridge with the Malays of neighbouring nations, and prefer to perceive themselves primarily as Indonesian. This should not come as a surprise. Since 1998, the popular culture scene has been largely influenced by reformasi movements all over Indonesia. For the Tanjung Pinang youth, urban Indonesia, represented especially by Jakarta, is synonymous with dynamism and democratisation, while Malaysia and Singapore are regarded as moralistic and patronising.     

Comparative genomics of Brassicaceae crops

The family Brassicaceae is one of the major groups of the plant kingdom and comprises diverse species of great economic, agronomic and scientific importance, including the model plant Arabidopsis. The sequencing of the Arabidopsis genome has revolutionized our knowledge in the field of plant biology and provides a foundation in genomics and comparative biology. Genomic resources have been utilized in Brassica for diversity analyses, construction of genetic maps and identification of agronomic traits. In Brassicaceae, comparative sequence analysis across the species has been utilized to understand genome structure, evolution and the detection of conserved genomic segments. In this review, we focus on the progress made in genetic resource development, genome sequencing and comparative mapping in Brassica and related species. The utilization of genomic resources and next-generation sequencing approaches in improvement of Brassica crops is also discussed.     

Comparative genome analysis between several tropical grasses

The availability of molecular markers allowed comparing genetic maps between distinct taxa. Among the Poaceae (grasses) family, species as divergent as rice, wheat and maize show collinearity within wide regions along the whole genome. This opens the way for the integration of knowledge across all grasses and the development of molecular tools of general interest using the simple genome of rice. Many agronomically important tropical grasses belong to two major sub-families. Comparisons between maize, sorghum and sugarcane, three members of the Andropogoneae tribe, are briefly reviewed. One example of a particular genome region is used for extending the comparison to rice and illustrating various applications of comparative genome mapping. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

New Polynesian Triangle: Rethinking Polynesian migration and development in the Pacific

For many Polynesians migration is still framed within a particular spatial context, although on an enlarged scale – one that we have termed the New Polynesian Triangle. With its apexes in the North American continent to the east, Australia in the west and New Zealand in the south, this New Polynesian Triangle encompasses a particular field through which ongoing Polynesian migration and movement continues to occur. Movement within this New Polynesian Triangle is both multidimensional and multidirectional. While it is the movement of economic resources, particularly remittances, that has captured the interest of many agencies operating in the region, we argue that such economic flows are integrally linked with other flows – of goods, ideas, skills and culture – to form a single dynamic system of movement. Importantly, such flows are not uni‐directional (from ‘rich’ to ‘poor’ countries) as was assumed in times past. In developing ideas on the New Polynesian Triangle, we wish to move away from the dominant Western discourse of the Pacific Ocean as a barrier to development and movement and towards the reclamation of the ocean as a conduit and source of connection and movement for Pacific peoples.     

Participatory natural resource management in rural China: Making and unmaking environmental narratives

Environmental and development discourses in China can be categorised into three narrative motifs framing human–nature relationships: peasant, indigenous, and community. Indigenous and community narratives have been widely adopted by environmental NGOs (eNGOs) in China in promoting community‐based natural resource management projects, but there has been very limited critical research on such phenomena. Analysis of socio‐economic change in two ethnic minority communities in Yunnan shows that neither narrative theme is fully internalised by the relevant communities. Instead narratives may be strategically modified or even rejected by local communities. This is due to different agendas being held by local communities and eNGOs, and two factors pertinent to rural China: the incompatibility of concepts of ‘community’ in Chinese and international contexts results in confusion, and a lack of recent territorial and cultural claims by rural communities since the collectivist era makes it difficult to construct the identity of a community. It remains challenging for eNGOs in China to advocate either community or indigenous narratives in contexts of rapid socio‐economic change.     

甜瓜基因组学研究进展

甜瓜是一种世界性的园艺作物.随着现代生物技术的迅速发展,甜瓜基因组学研究越来越深入,国际葫芦科基因组计划也已经筹备完成即将启动.目前已构建有14张甜瓜遗传图谱,多个重要性状的分子标记及数量性状位点已找到并定位在图中,并开始在葫芦科作物之间进行比较基因组图谱方面的研究.已克隆出枯萎病抗性基因Fom-2,其它农艺性状基因的克隆工作也在陆续开展.本文在甜瓜遗传连锁图谱的构建、重要性状分子标记及OTL定位、比较基因组学及基因克隆等方面分别对其研究进展进行了探讨,以期为我国的甜瓜基因组学研究提供有益的参考.     

Business networks,social capital and the economic performance of creative and cultural industries: The case of Indonesia

This study examines the ways in which networking characteristics and practices influence the economic performance of creative and cultural industries. The notion of social capital is used to conceptualise the complex nature of networks, including both professional and social relationships that occur on multiple levels. This qualitative study is set in the context of Indonesia, in which two cases are examined: creative apparel entrepreneurs in Bandung and batik producers in Surakarta. The results show that regional environments provide opportunities for creative industries to find specialist suppliers, to gather market information and, importantly, to find and cross‐fertilise new ideas. Although regions provide these opportunities, the firms’ internal social capital is crucial in being able to internalise and transform the knowledge from the environment into innovative values embodied in their products.     

Borderland livelihood strategies: The socio‐economic significance of ethnicity in cross‐border labour migration,West Kalimantan,Indonesia

This paper explores cross‐border ethnic relations as an important socio‐economic strategy for the borderland Iban population in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Iban seeking more lucrative wage work have long used their ethnic identity to facilitate circular labour migration across the international border into Sarawak, Malaysia, a strategy which has also compromised their claims to Indonesian citizenship. Drawing on long‐term field research among the West Kalimantan Iban, we examine the close interconnections among cross‐border labour migration, ethnicity, identity, and citizenship, and how this plays into contemporary issues related to Indonesian political and economic change.     

Creative Industries and Regional Productivity Growth in the Developing Economy: Evidence from Indonesia

This paper examines the degree to which creative industries stimulate regional productivity growth in a developing country, Indonesia. The Indonesian government promotes long‐established “traditional” craft businesses as creative industries, but they pay less attention to new knowledge creation and focus on highlighting heritage values as selling points. Our findings show that the “real” creative industries are still scarce and found mostly in fairly advanced urban regions. These industries are more likely to be an indicator than a driver of regional economic development. Meanwhile, those traditional businesses are much larger than creative industries and potentially contribute to regional productivity through consumption activities, thereby requiring different policy strategies.     

Introduction to special issue: Meeting the challenges of HIV/AIDS in Southeast and East Asia

Out of a total of 38 million people living with HIV/AIDS globally today, the Asia‐Pacific is home to about 7.4 million – a figure which constitutes a sharp rise to previous years. In absolute numbers, infections in Asia are projected to exceed African figures within a decade. This has largely to do with economic changes towards market‐based capitalism, widening socioeconomic disparities and increased levels of mobility (internal and cross‐border), as for instance in China and Indonesia. Overall, the epidemic in Asia has been described as more complex than in Africa involving a multiplicity of transmission modes. The case studies presented in the contributions to this special issue discuss the connections between issues of mobility, gender, (trans)nationalism and sexuality in understanding the HIV/AIDS challenge in the region. The various ways in meeting the challenges of HIV/AIDS in Southeast and East Asia are analysed, whereby non‐governmental and community‐based responses often emerge as more effective than state interventions.     

Maori1 commercial fisheries governance in Aotearoa2/New Zealand within the bounds of a neoliberal fisheries management regime

Recent literature on natural resource governance has highlighted the consequences of a strong imprint of neoliberal political ideologies on current environmental policies. A parallel theme in the recent literature relates to claims pertaining to ownership and management of natural resources by indigenous minorities in post‐colonial Western democracies who have been historically marginalised and impoverished by the aftermath of European colonisation. Recently, in order to respond to indigenous demands to settle long‐standing grievances for the return of their ancestral lands and natural resources, some post‐colonial governments have encouraged the development of indigenous self‐governance and co‐management initiatives to manage natural resources such as fisheries and forests. Based on a study of the recent Maori fisheries restitution policy initiatives in Aotearoa/New Zealand, this paper presents a preliminary interrogation of the new hybrid indigenous fisheries governance spaces within the bounds of a neoliberal fisheries management regime.     

The geographically variegated connections of the Jakarta metropolitan area as produced by manufacturing firms

Connectivity in urban networks is often deemed to be an important feature of economically vibrant cities. Under conditions of contemporary globalization, the importance and geographies of these connections are increasingly variegated. Accordingly, various attempts have been made to analyse the external relations of cities and metropolitan regions, often through the lens of multilocational firms. Our purpose in this paper is to address the to‐date limited empirical knowledge about whether firms originating from different regions (i.e., firms with different headquarter [HQ] locations) create different patterns of inter‐urban relations. Drawing on the interlocking network model and using the Jakarta metropolitan area (JMA) as a case study, this paper explores how manufacturing firms with HQs either inside (further differentiating between the JMA and other cities) or outside (further differentiating between East Asian and non‐East Asian countries) Indonesia produce different patterns of external relations. Our findings indicate that each category of firms generates unique configurations of interurban relations for the JMA at the global and national scales. We argue that these variegated networks patterns not only reflect different locational strategies of firms, but also Indonesia's evolving policy orientations which have complex relations with evolving patterns of economic globalization.     

Comparative studies on the status of Indonesian coral reefs

Coral reefs are of great economic importance for Indonesia. Unfortunately these resources are suffering from increasing human pressure. Several factors may cause the degradation of coral reefs, including the consequences of several human activities. Activities indirectly affecting the quality of the reefs are land-based activities such as deforestation, agriculture intensification, industrialization and domestic waste disposal. Direct use of the reefs, e.g. by coral mining, fish blasting and other fishing and collecting activities, is of greater and more widespread importance. Therefore, a rational management of the reef resources is urgently needed.Management is impossible without simple means of monitoring the status of reefs. One factor, living coral cover, has been determined for several years in many areas, including those studied during the Snellius-II Expedition. This allowed a comparative study of several different areas, which showed that coral cover is often very useful as an indication of the quality of reefs. It was found that the diversity of reef fishes is correlated with the condition of reefs as determined by the percentage cover of living coral.     

Development prospects in Eastern Indonesia: Learning from Oelua's diverse economy

This paper explores the effects of different representations of informal economies in Third World settings. Both the neoclassical and political economy approaches have represented the informal economy as a transient entity, and the non‐capitalist practices it comprises as being remnant economic forms, or as already capitalist. Mainstream development discourse (that reflects the neoliberal paradigm) continues to ignore the value and potential of non‐capitalist practices and to represent them as inconsequential to development outcomes. Meanwhile contemporary livelihood studies across the social sciences have documented the continuing vibrancy of different and hybrid economic forms in the Asia Pacific. In this paper, I use a diverse‐economies approach to explore the complexities of the village economy of Oelua in Rote, in the so‐called lagging region of Eastern Indonesia. Drawing on anti‐essentialist Marxist theory in economic geography, I describe the multiple, locally specific and coexisting practices that comprise Oelua's diverse economy, which include distributions of surplus labour to promote social and economic well‐being. I argue that recognising informal village economies as an important development resource could begin a process of building diverse development trajectories in Eastern Indonesia, complementing mainstream development proposals to attract foreign direct investment, shore up development assistance and source out‐migration.     

Political contestation,resource control and conservation in an era of decentralisation at Indonesia's Kerinci Seblat National Park

Since the fall of long‐time strongman Suharto and his authoritarian ‘New Order’ government in 1998, Indonesia has embarked upon a series of decentralisation and democratisation reforms. This new era of decentralised politics has come to be known as Reformasi and has significantly altered the political landscape of the archipelago as national and subnational levels of administration continue to contest the balance of power. Indonesia's national parks, which remain under the authority of the national government, have become arenas for negotiated encounters between local resource users, aspiring district elites and the national government. This essay explores three legacies of incomplete and unfinished decentralisation as they related to national‐park‐based conservation, using Sumatra's Kerinci Seblat National Park as a case study.     

籼型水稻SSR标记遗传连锁图谱的构建及偏分离分析

水稻是禾本科植物研究的模式植物,水稻分子标记连锁图谱是开展水稻分子生物学研究的重要前提.本研究利用两个优良的籼型水稻恢复系T219和T226衍生的202个重组自交系(RILs)作为作图群体,构建了水稻全基因组连锁图谱.图谱共包括181个简单重复序列(SSR)分子标记,图谱总长1 559.6 cM.该图谱与多数已经发表的图谱相比具有较好的一致性.同时检测到偏分离标记有33个,除第4、第7和第9染色体没有偏分离标记外,其余染色体都存在偏分离标记,绝大多数偏分离标记偏向于T226.