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terms such as ‘illegal loggers’ and ‘subversive’ to draw equivalence between
the villagers’ land occupation and organised crime. It also brings out specific bureaucratic legitimation practices, most notably the villagers’ request
(which was granted) for new ID cards from the Village Office as the official local territorial administration, which rendered their settlements official sub-villages within the territorial area claimed by the State Forest
Corporation. Technocratic legitimation is also in evidence in the 1978
transfer of nearly one million hectares of official forestland in West Java to
the State Forest Corporation—centralising authority away from the province—and in the latter’s formal use of the language and protocols associated with national security to evict villagers as ‘forest security disturbances’.
Finally, practices of financial legitimation surface in the provisory system of
payment (10,000 Rupiah per month) by villagers to the Sundanese
Peasant’s Movement instead of paying a third of their rice production as
rent illegally demanded by the State Forest Corporation. They are also
visible in the annual contributions of a million Rupiah by each sub-village
to the Village Office, in essence a tax which established the villagers’ claim
as landholders.
Lund’s fine-grained study of conflicts over land in remote tracts not
only offers striking instances of practices of legitimation along all four
registers, but also points to clear arenas that require attention for sustainable energy transitions. These arenas include the relations between people
and institutions at multiple scales, and the necessity to allow for the desire
for change to express itself in democratic politics. In his case, both the
top- down use of force and popular resistance are opportunistic. Each seeks
to recognise and establish specific relations between people and institutions in order to cement land claims in their favour. This reading of the
shaping of accountability relations casts new light on the social contract
and on authority and subjecthood.
9.2.3 For Håvard Haarstad
The case is how Norwegian cities set climate mitigation targets construed
as reductions in carbon emissions at the urban scale. While these targets
are seemingly ambitious and commendable, they encounter challenges of
commensurability across cities, and often lack concrete strategies for operationalisation. Haarstad identifies an accountability crisis that the very
presence of decarbonisation targets can serve to justify prolonged delay on
actual climate mitigation, as targets allow cities to channel the discursive
S. SAREEN
terms such as ‘illegal loggers’ and ‘subversive’ to draw equivalence between
the villagers’ land occupation and organised crime. It also brings out specific bureaucratic legitimation practices, most notably the villagers’ request
(which was granted) for new ID cards from the Village Office as the official local territorial administration, which rendered their settlements official sub-villages within the territorial area claimed by the State Forest
Corporation. Technocratic legitimation is also in evidence in the 1978
transfer of nearly one million hectares of official forestland in West Java to
the State Forest Corporation—centralising authority away from the province—and in the latter’s formal use of the language and protocols associated with national security to evict villagers as ‘forest security disturbances’.
Finally, practices of financial legitimation surface in the provisory system of
payment (10,000 Rupiah per month) by villagers to the Sundanese
Peasant’s Movement instead of paying a third of their rice production as
rent illegally demanded by the State Forest Corporation. They are also
visible in the annual contributions of a million Rupiah by each sub-village
to the Village Office, in essence a tax which established the villagers’ claim
as landholders.
Lund’s fine-grained study of conflicts over land in remote tracts not
only offers striking instances of practices of legitimation along all four
registers, but also points to clear arenas that require attention for sustainable energy transitions. These arenas include the relations between people
and institutions at multiple scales, and the necessity to allow for the desire
for change to express itself in democratic politics. In his case, both the
top- down use of force and popular resistance are opportunistic. Each seeks
to recognise and establish specific relations between people and institutions in order to cement land claims in their favour. This reading of the
shaping of accountability relations casts new light on the social contract
and on authority and subjecthood.
9.2.3 For Håvard Haarstad
The case is how Norwegian cities set climate mitigation targets construed
as reductions in carbon emissions at the urban scale. While these targets
are seemingly ambitious and commendable, they encounter challenges of
commensurability across cities, and often lack concrete strategies for operationalisation. Haarstad identifies an accountability crisis that the very
presence of decarbonisation targets can serve to justify prolonged delay on
actual climate mitigation, as targets allow cities to channel the discursive
S. SAREEN