Reformasi in a Javanese (de)forest(ed) Village: Moving Toward Greater Social Differentiation?

After massive teak looting in early 2000, Perhutani, state-owned forest company introduced a joint forest managemen program in Java. Unlike previous forest management policy, this program gives a legal foundation for forest villages to gain access both to timber and non-timber resources. Overall, this program aims to improve community's welfare and encourage their participation in forest management. However, looking at the practice of the program in a Javanese village in Jepara, the implementation of the program proved to serve different purposes. Instead of realizing those aims, the program practice does not really mark a shift from previous security paradigm to prosperity paradigm as it claims. It tends to extract more villagers' labours for the sake of timber/hardwood growth than share responsibilities for forest sustainability and economic development. Plan of distributing sprofit sharing from the joint forest management will also likely deepen the existing social differentiation from Javanese agrarian since it no longer extract landless villagers' labour for one particular patrons but also for village elites and state enterprise.