Sumatra's Flood and the 'Third Way'

Source: Copernicus

The ‘third way’ exists for there are two more dominant 'ways' that are competing: the way of the state and the market. The concept is a social and political philosophical one, popularized by the philosopher and sociologist Anthony Giddens, which spans its influence in social, political, and economic sciences. Both the market and the state, as Elinor Ostrom said, build a category of thinking that dominates our modern view of how things are managed or have gone in a good or a bad direction. If the road is bad, we blame the government. If chillis are expensive, we blame the market, but soon after rationalize it, for 'the market' has its own valid and seemingly natural logic – to only condemn afterwards the government, which fails to intervene. Journalists, especially, often portray things in such a dualistic or simplistic manner.

In Indonesia, the recent case of major flooding disasters, which befell Sumatra's people, can serve us an example of these dualistic thoughts, and later on deliver us an important lesson of what a ‘third way’ could be. You can find it in newspaper articles, popular social media posts and televised news. This time, the dualistic scheme is not only enforced by journalists, but also by the people (Indonesian: netizen) at large. After the news about the flood broke, people directly blamed the market; because of the market's need for palm oil, wood, and global commodities, forest was cut down. Following that, they blamed the government, criticizing that the Indonesian government failed to protect the ecological balance, including the people living within it. Allegations are launched massively that the local and central government colluded with the companies. Lastly, the public also criticized the government massively for refusing international help. Indeed, all central government officials, who live in Jakarta and are thus far from the flood occurrence, have resorted to the rhetoric that Indonesia is a big nation and can tackle its own problems. We witnessed a localized national pride by non-victims Jakarta's elites, indeed, poured into the national government's official discourse and even foreign policy. As a result, when Aceh's governor decided to accept help from neighbouring countries by the request of Aceh's local government, the public could even point at the ongoing dissent within the Indonesian government bodies and amplified their criticism.

What do we take away from it? The popular critique seems to show a public awakening, at least in its superficial expressions, that the government and the market might have worked together to exploit nature at the grave cost of ecological depletion and anthropogenic natural disasters, that isnot only felt by the complicit people who worked in the exploitative enterprises, but also innocent ordinary people in the regions. Another popular critique  focused on a dissonance between reality and central government discourse; people noticed that the central government enacted decisions which contradicted the needs of Sumatra's local government(s).

Now, what is the ‘third way’? Though not expressed directly, journalists and the public actually commented on that. The most prominent example would be Ferry Irwandi's effort to fly to the disaster sites with an individually significant amount of donation, which obviously, in comparison to a state intervention, does not mean much and should not be compared in the first place. The people applauded the effort, and Irwandi also used the opportunity to further criticizethe exploitation done by market actors and the proud central government, which has also been the critical development discourse that he and his organization, Malaka Project, had attempted to mainstream.

Source: Ade Yuandha / AFP

The ‘third way’ is made by elements of civil society that act out of solidarity for each other. These are persons, NGO, organizations, and others, who are not elected by anyone and paid to take care of others, but do so, nor are they hiring others and making profits for the owner or management level. This understanding of the ‘third way’ belongs to what political scientists and sociologists usually call the 'communitarian' perspective. In Indonesia, the school of thought was accommodated by a once famous Islamic-nationalist intellectual: Nurcholish Madjid, by coining the term masyarakat madani. The communitarian perspective, normally, does not include the distinct socio-political perspectives of the traditional and Indigenous People, who are mostly studied under the banner of Indigenous movements by anthropologists. What unites both the communitarian and Indigenous perspectives, however, is their political epistemology, which is expressed in the trust in the people's capability of self-organization and direct actions, without needing any intermediation by the state apparatus or the market's invincible hands.

Source: Ferri Irwandi

Now, not only the popular national influencer like Irwandi was doing the ‘third way’; the victims were far from mere confused and hopeless people who could only wait for the hands of the proud state. Many are solving the problems with the means they can get themselves. Journalists report efforts by local villagers to cut and use the massive amount of cut wood logs which ransacked their villages as it was carried by the flood. Also, the effort by the conservation department of Aceh's local government, who mobilized their elephants to help some villages get rid of destroyed materials and again wood logs.

We heard stories from our friend, who studied for her PhD in Göttingen; she came from Padang and was there when her village was severely affected by the flood. Her village and she never received any help from the upper-tier level government. So, it is not just rumor, that people are still out there and tackling the post-flooding environment; it is the truth. The central government policy of national pride protectionism is actually felt in the grassroots. So, she told us how she made the efforts to raise for funding here and there, including in a religious community of Indonesian diaspora in Göttingen. She raised tens of millions of rupiah, and with that she organized her fellow villagers to act and recover the community from the flood. It is indeed an example of gotongroyong par excellence.

In summary, we hope to have demonstrated to you what the ‘third way’ means in the case studies of the recent catastrophic event of Sumatra's flooding. Yes, the Indonesian ‘third way’ is very much there. Furthermore – Indonesia as a state was actually founded by the ‘third way’ principle. The rhetoric of bambu runcing (untranslatable), as a symbol of self-organized weapon procurement to fight the Japanese and Europeans altogether. Such rhetoric is legally ratified within the fundamental state's philosophy, Pancasila; the first Indonesian president once said that Pancasila could be squeezed further (diperas) into one essential concept (intisari)t: gotong royong. The word means: mutual cooperation. We all know this; because we had to memorize in our school. If the market actors, certainly, for their capitalist attitude of seeking profit, and the government for their forgetfulness, may have forgotten about gotong royong, at least we, the people, should not.

We are grateful to the volunteers and the victims for reminding us what gotong royong actually is, and we offer our deepest appreciation to all of you who have helped to ease the suffering faced by Sumatra's flood victims, who have endured this human-made catastrophe and we hope that all the victims could get back on their feet soon.

Further reading:

Barkin, David. “Shaping a Communitarian Ethos in an Era of Ecological Crisis.” Frontiers in Sustainability 3 (July 2022). https://doi.org/10.3389/frsus.2022.944252.

Giddens, Anthony. The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy. Polity, 2008.

Graeber, David. The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement. Penguin, 2014.

Reese-Schäfer, Walter. Kommunitarismus. Campus Verlag, 2001.

Ostrom, Elinor. “A Communitarian Approach to Local Governance.” National Civic Review 82, no. 3 (1993): 226–33. https://doi.org/10.1002/ncr.4100820305.

Sukarno. “Lahirnya Pancasila.” Speech. BPUPKI Meeting, Gedung Chuo Sangi-In, 1945. [Copy in a party's website] https://pdiperjuangan-jatim.com/naskah-lengkap-pidato-sukarno-1-juni-1945-lahirnya-pancasila/.

About Author:

Geraldus Martimbang is a doctoral researcher at the Technical University of Munich, where he researches the social, economic, and spatial history of colonial tea plantations in Priangan, West Java. Trained as an architect and urban planner, he has worked in Germany and France as an architect and now at project management consultancy.