Ward Berenschot
Our publications
Rightless resistance investigates why resistance to land grabbing so often fails. The rapid expansion of oil palm plantations has triggered widespread conflict across rural Indonesia as communities lose their land with little compensation. Based on an unprecedented study of 150 such conflicts, this book uncovers how villagers fight back against palm oil companies, and what their struggles reveal about power, law, and citizenship in postcolonial Indonesia.
Enduring colonial legacies and collusive politics have left rural Indonesians virtually rightless, so villagers turn to customary traditions and social norms instead of formal law—a strategy that rarely gets results. By analyzing this resistance to corporate land grabbing, Ward Berenschot (KITLV), Ahmad Dhiaulhaq, Afrizal, and Otto Hospes offer a new perspective on why land rights movements often fall short. When the legal system is unreliable, people aim lower—and the deeper power imbalances facilitating their dispossession go unchallenged.
The research
The book is based on the NWO-funded research project Palm oil conflicts and access to justice in Indonesia (POCAJI), conducted by KITLV, Wageningen University, and Universitas Andalas, in collaboration with Indonesian NGOs and scientists. For the first time, a large-scale, systematic study was conducted of 150 conflict cases across four provinces: Riau, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, and West Sumatra. The patterns were strikingly similar everywhere: communities lost land without meaningful consent or fair compensation, promises of profit sharing were not honored, and when communities went to court, they almost always lost.
The documentary Colonial Debris
In addition to the book, Berenschot produced the 90-minute documentary Colonial Debris (Tanah Moyangku) together with the renowned Indonesian documentary filmmakers from Watchdoc. The film follows Indonesian communities protesting against palm oil companies and developers taking over their land. As the filmmakers dig deeper, they discover how contemporary conflicts have roots in the nineteenth-century colonial legal order.
