Negotiability and limits to negotiability—land use strategies in the SALCRA Batang Ai Resettlement Scheme, Sarawak, East Malaysia

Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography 105(1):17–28, 2005This paper analyses negotiations of land-use strategies in a combined governmentally controlled plantation and resettlement scheme in Sarawak. Referring to an overall concept of social processes being open-ended and hence negotiable, we argue that negotiations must be understood as a combination of practices at different levels that directly or indirectly form and transform land use strategies. After investigating two examples of land use negotiations we found that simple every-day practices such as selling plantation crops off-scheme can have just as strong implications for land use strategies as the political decisions concerning land rights. Due to this, local people are able to form and transform land use even under governmental pressure and commercialisation despite lacking influence in the forming of rural development policies. Yet, there are also limits to their ability to negotiate.