Abstrack:
The idea of land rights within statutory law are often reduced to ownership rights; however, as Schlager and Ostrom (1992) point out in their ?bundle of rights? approach to land tenure, rights to access, use, manage, exclude and alienate other users are all equally important. Adat, or customary law, within West Java?s Kesepuhan communities often accounts for these other forms of land tenure. The semi-nomadic status of some Kesepuhan communities has therefore not been a problem under adat land management. In the past year, adat communities have been forced to confront the differences in customary and statutory perceptions of land tenure when a 2013 Constitutional Court ruling overturned the Indonesian state?s claim to ownership of adat forests and granted it to local communities. As land reform slowly moves forward in the country, how is shifting land tenure to be accounted for in the coming years of Indonesia?s statutory laws on land? This paper explores the multiplicity of land tenure rights and how ethnic minority communities struggle to navigate the levels of land laws controlling their rights to ownership, use, management, exclusion and alienation of land they view as their own. This paper presents the West Java Kesepuhan communities as a case study for the interaction between statutory and customary laws within land reform movements in Indonesia.
Full Text: