Papers

• Water Problem in the Tourism City of Yogyakarta: Between Ritualism and Biopolitics Mohamad Yusuf Universitas Gadjah Mada

  This study is inspired by a conflict occurred involving locals and hotel corporations with the dispute over water used. Through a case study in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, the locals of Yogyakarta have started to experience negative repercussions of the rapid development of global chain hotel development which lead to the water scarcity. The primary objective of the study is therefore to analyze the existing biopolitics of water which has been applied by the government. How is the changing perception of water? How this has resulted in the environment and social impacts for the communities where tourism development has arisen? By analyzing how are the biopolitics controlled and operated, the empirical evidence can be found to support the main argument. In the discussion of biopolitics, water often viewed as an essential role of human survival (Hellberg, 2017). Hellberg (2017) associates explicitly the term of survival in line with what has been formulated as MDGs and SDGs focus. It is narrowed on how water is regarded as the essential needs for safe and clean domestic water. The baseline of this argument is the phrase of ‘making life’ as introduced by Foucault in his discourse about biopolitics. It aims to create free access to water for the sake of the survival of everybody. For Indonesian, particularly for people of Yogyakarta, water has become one of the most important aspects of the community, and some people perceive as having supernatural qualities. Water symbolizes the purification process of the community. However, there has been different ways of perceiving water between people and the government, due to the development of tourism industry. Tourism becomes one of the most leading economic sectors in Indonesia. This study found that there are infractions from the hotels in the water-use system meanwhile, the government does not use their power to affirm consequence but providing the other solution instead. Furthermore, the condition of local communities remains the same since the water scarcity they encountered getting worse.

• When Places and People Are Vulnerable: Thinking About Resilience and Sustainability in Post-Haiyan Leyte Maria M. Ikeda Kyoto Sangyo University

  The island of Leyte located in the central region on the east coast of the Philippines is known to be vulnerable to natural hazards. More than five years ago, Typhoon Haiyan with strong winds and massive storm surges devastated the coastal areas of Leyte, disrupting the lives and livelihoods of mostly poor families whose main source of income is derived from farming and fishing. How do people living in vulnerable places rebuild their homes and livelihoods? Can they build-back better? We propose in this study a framework for a sustainable building-back-better process in three critical areas of (a) employment and education, (b) built environment, and (c) natural environment implemented through modules of self-help, mutual assistance and public-private partnership initiatives to rebuild homes, livelihoods and communities in areas devastated by natural disasters based on field work done in Leyte, Philippines. Case studies of mutual assistance and self-help initiatives are analyzed based on how these initiatives affect community-based capacity building and empowerment. We also consider the utilization of social networks in reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience against potential natural disasters. We analyze what grassroot initiatives can be made more sustainable in the pursuit of building back vulnerable places where people live at constant risk of natural disasters.

Abstract

Keywords

• Climate
• Development
• Governance