Seeing empathy as resistance: a conjunctural photovoice study of women and mining in Indonesia

Abstract

Mining is increasingly under the scholarly microscope for its social and environmental impacts, including its uneven gender impacts. To study resistance of women across two communities affected by a long-established nickel mining and smelting operation in Indonesia, we paired photovoice with a discussion on conjunctures in the photo-stories. Photovoice is a visual ethnographic method that combines photography and storytelling to explore answers to research questions centered on how research participants make sense of their social worlds. By adding a discussion of conjunctures found in the photo-stories, we noted the combined methods facilitated empathetic responses and cross-community solidarity, a powerful antidote to the hyper-individualism and social discord fostered by mining interests in the neoliberal capitalist period. As Indonesia plans to open dozens more nickel mines and smelters, like the one in our study, in the rush to supply nickel for electric vehicle batteries, our study challenges scholars to look for empathy and solidarity. Seeing and exercising empathy and solidarity are important as extractive interests are expected to continue divide and conquer tactics to secure land and resources for exploitation.

Keywords:

• Conjunctural photovoice
• empathy
• everyday resistance
• gender
• Indonesia
• participatory action research
• resource extraction

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Carolyn Bassett, Leslie Jeffrey, Suzanne Dudziak, Shannon E. Bell and Matthew Hayes for championing our field work, reviewing early versions of our work, and sharing their theoretical and methodologist insights. We are grateful to numerous activist-scholars who informed our thinking on mining in Indonesia: Arianto Sangaji, Inda Fatinaware, Catherine Coumans, Evan Edinger, Roger Moody, Chalid Muhammad, Haris Retno, Sarah Agustiorini, among many others. We thank the Karonsi’e Dongi..” Please add the line - We are grateful to Abdallah Naem for conducting a photovice training with our participants. Finally, we thank the late Werima Mananta, her sister Naomi Mananta, and Pak Yadin for being the first Karonsi’e Dongi people to share their struggles with us at the turn of the millennium.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Steelworkers Humanity Fund.

Notes on contributors

Tracy Glynn

Tracy Glynn is an Assistant Professor in the Environment and Society program and School of Social Work at Saint Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Her research examines the gendered nature of everyday resistance of resource extraction in Indonesia. In the early 2000s, she was the international mining campaigner at the Jakarta office of JATAM, a grassroots network that supports communities affected by mining, oil and gas in Indonesia. Her current research challenges climate activists to consider the social and environmental impacts of the metals boom for electrification.

Siti Maimunah

Siti Maimunah holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Development and Cultural Studies from Universität Passau in Germany. She was a WEGO-ITN Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow. A native of Jember, East Java, Indonesia, her career began in the year 2000 with JATAM (Mining Advocacy Network) where she developed her knowledge about gender and mining. Later, she became a researcher at the Sajogyo Institute, focusing on agrarian issues. She is a regular commentator in national newspapers and magazines. She is the author of Indigenous People and State of Mining (2010), Mollo, Development and Climate Change (2015) and Weaving and the Guardian of Identity (2018).