Michael Dove: The Banana Tree at the Gate. A Historyof Marginal Peoples and Global Markets in BorneoYale University Press (The Agrarian Studies Series), 2011,x+332 pages, index, Price $55 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-300-15321-7

Cristina Eghenter

Published online: 8 December 2011# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

The Banana Tree at the Gate. A History of marginal Peoplesand Global Markets in Borneo by Michael Dove is every-thing but a marginal account of the peoples of Borneo. Thedepth of the historical excursus and the systemic interpreta-tion of cultural, agro-ecological, and resistance practices ofthe Kantu in West Kalimantan take the readers well beyondthe gate and the outer limits of their world into the complextransactions, both practical and symbolic, of the economiesand lives of the Dayak peoples in this part of IndonesianBorneo over time.

Through the many intersecting narratives of the dualeconomies of rubber and rice (swidden), of strategies ofresistance and development played around outside interven-tions and local options to either conceal or reveal, accept orreject, the book offers a complex picture of the dynamiclinkages between the peoples of the interior (the marginalpeoples) with global markets and state-initiated initiatives inBorneo history.

The volume is built on, rather than comprised of, alreadypublished work and interpretations re-visited into a meta-narrative of dual economy and transactional order, everydaypractice and political economy, and contrasting epistemolo-gies of production that go back to the early field-notes andencounters of the author with the Kantu in the mid 1970s.

It is precisely the wide range of possible frameworks ofinterpretations explored, and the dynamism of the marginalpeoples rendered visible hence legible, that most compel-lingly highlight the value of the volume as a lesson incomplex ethnography, historical political economy, andepistemological anthropology.

The “micro-stories (that) travel back and forth in thesame time frame” (p xii) are the strength of the book. Theyare as much local as they are global or, better, they are local-to-global-to-local narratives. The key to understanding is inthat relationship which the author historicizes throughout.We can only understand the global through the local actors(p 247) as opposed to seeing the local as an articulation ofthe global. Interestingly, also, the stories sometimes defy theauthor’s attempt at creating an overarching meta-narrativeand keep revealing layers of complexity which are open tomultiple interpretations.

The dual economy of rubber and swidden can representmore, or sometimes less, than different transactional orders.That is, there is no a priori epistemology for the economiesto be always interpreted in that light. As production systemsthey fit (p 145), but they also exist side-by-side. The econo-mies are part of a historical and political process of negotiationbetween unequal economic actors. Rubber cultivation exem-plifies how local and so-called marginal people have beenseizing economic opportunities as they have arisen over time,and have preserved production and traditional livelihood alter-natives, a way of living that they know, an “everyday practice”they have relied upon for centuries.

Swidden agriculture remains largely practiced in most ofIndonesian Borneo. As the most defiant mode of agriculturalproduction, ‘irrational,’ shifting and layered, swidden agri-culture is just another side of the use of the forest andintegral part of the representation of Dayak identity in theouter world. Swidden agriculture is nevertheless changing.Its temporal and geographical space is diminishing. Withgrowing development needs in the communities upriver andshifting patterns of labor and investment, the ‘dual system’is increasingly showing an uneven and precarious state, andthe balance is tipping towards intensification of othercommodities.

C. Eghenter (*)Social Development Senior Adviser, WWF Indonesia,Jakarta, Indonesiae-mail: ceghenter@wwf.or.id

Hum Ecol (2012) 40:165–166DOI 10.1007/s10745-011-9449-0

Is the narrative of political economy of Borneo a narra-tive of missed opportunities or rather, once again, a narrativeof rich forests and ‘impoverished’ people (see pp. 212–213)who have been denied control of those resources? NTFPs,rubber, diamonds, and pepper, along with their ‘imaginativeconstructions’ (p. 249), have over the centuries made theextra-local wealthier than the locals, they have beenexploited by powerful outsiders, whether political, militaryor trade agents, with little return for local development, butnot all in the same way. Smallholder cultivation of rubberand some forms of local appropriation of gaharu exploita-tion and trade might have been the exception in Borneo.

The lessons of James Scott (1998), Bourdieu and otherson how the uses of the space reflect specific social andpower order, and political economies, resonate throughoutthe narrative. Recognizing differences that might exist is theoutcome of a process of legibility, but the intersecting storiesof differences reject simple reification of these differences.The use of the land between local farmers and the statecompanies is fundamentally different, but the narrative alsoconvincingly exposes the many opportunities for hybridiza-tion, influence, and reciprocal transformations, and ‘mutualcausation’ (p 245), as the author puts it, that can happenalong the outer limits of plantation schemes, rice fields andpepper gardens over time, notwithstanding the unequal po-sition of those involved.

Differences in images and representations of time are alsopart of the story, although for the most part implicitly so inthe book. Is the temporal framework of the marginal peoplesa continuous present with no line of discontinuity with thepast? And is the temporal projection of rubber, oil palm andother commodities plantation schemes a seamless and betterfuture? Images of time play a role in the practices of naturalresource management. Often, in collective representationsof local and marginal peoples, the past becomes the point ofreference for the future, and the future is represented as arecurrence of the past. The Borneo narrated in this book,however, was not the case. Interestingly, it is the studies thathave focused on the historical nexus of natural resourceexploitation and appropriation that have convincingly con-tributed to a more accurate narrative of the role of local andmarginal peoples (e.g., Wadley 2005). A complex, negoti-ated past paves the way to an open future. In Borneo, boththe local government and local people may be entertaining

new expectations for the future. And for local people, thefuture might be radically different from the “traditional”future of others’ imagination.

Increasingly, new paradigms of development supportedby global financial resources are being charted locally. Thecrisis to be addressed is no longer only that of resolvingeconomic inequities and fulfilling basic human rights, butalso reducing the abuse of natural assets and the risks ofclimate change. The emerging agenda for a low-carbon andgreen economy in Indonesia, and in Borneo, can potentiallychange the system of production and interaction, with thepossibility of empowering local actors in more definitiveways (see also pp. 209, 257). In West Kalimantan especially,and parts of East Kalimantan, smallholder rubber is lookedat as a potential sector for a pro-poor and pro-greeneconomy.

Through a policy-oriented and applied research lens, nar-ratives like the ones presented in this book might at firstfrighten those interested in finding quick policy solutions oranswers. There is neither linear development nor uncompli-cated interactions to be reckoned. Is the past too complex todeliver a clear roadmap for the future? Have marginal peoplesbeen global agents for longer than the imagination of state andcompanies would have? If the book elegantly spells complex-ity, uncertainty, blurred space, and conflicting claims, it has agreat value for policy-oriented research that is, to offer explan-ations of the ways things happen as they happen, little causalstories recognizable—i.e., intelligible—from one context toanother (Elster 1989). This is a sine qua non condition inorder to help design more appropriate, and locally owned,economic schemes and natural resource managementpolicies.

References

Elster, J. (1989). Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge.

Scott, J. (1998). Seeing like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improvethe Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press, NewHaven and London.

Wadley, R. (ed.) (2005). Histories of the Borneo environment. Eco-nomic, political and social dimensions of change and continuity.KITLV Press, Leiden.

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