Graeme MacRae

Indonesian food security policy suffers from a fundamental internal contradiction – between neoliberal pressures towards more integration into the global market-based food system geared towards profit and an intractable residual belief in national self-sufficiency in staple foods. While this contradiction presents itself in technical and economic terms, it is fundamentally a matter of culture and ideology. The article addresses this contradiction by way of a study of key metaphors of food security, among which the most central is lumbung – the traditional rice barn. Lumbung of various kinds have been a central pillar of food security across the archipelago since ancient times and still serve in many contexts as a metaphor for food security at various levels. While this ‘lumbung culture’ may have ‘hindered’ attempts to integrate Indonesia more fully into wider circuits of market exchange, it has to some extent protected the Indonesian food system from the growing vulnerabilities of climate, resource/environmental stresses, and pandemics.

In 2012 the UNESCO World Heritage Committee added to its World Heritage List the ‘Cultural Landscape of Bali Province: the subak system as a manifestation of the Tri Hita Karana Philosophy’. Barely a year later, UNESCO had become sufficiently concerned about reports of various problems that it advised the Government of Indonesia of these concerns. Through ethnographic study of the initial implementation of the listing, this article reveals problems of uncontrolled development, and disputes over the allocation of benefits to local communities, and challenges to effective governance. It focuses on two key locations of the site, offering an analysis of problems, their causes and effects. Beginning with the premise that the gulf of understanding between the global World Heritage system and local communities often creates a range of unintended consequences, this article reveals the many ‘awkward engagements’ that have emerged ‘on the ground’ in Bali as local agencies of government are left to their own devices to manage the World Heritage site.

This introduction discusses the theoretical and methodological basis of the articles in the special issue: ‘Food Sovereignty and the Anthropology of Food: Ethnographic Approaches to Policy and Practice’. Firstly, it argues a need for an ongoing anthropology of food, grounded in ethnographic studies at various points in supply chains. Secondly, it foregrounds an inherent similarity of approach between the thinking and methods of the Food Sovereignty movement, on the one hand, and anthropology, on the other.

In July 2013, India passed a Food Security Ordinance designed to guarantee cheap grain for the poor – about two-thirds of the population. This was largely in belated recognition of levels of child malnutrition exceeding that of the whole of Africa. This massive food insecurity has been the flip-side of spectacular economic growth, largely in urban areas, which has created one of the largest middle-classes in the world. The policies which enabled this growth reversed decades of previous policy prioritising national food production and rural development. Other consequences have included corporatisation and ‘neoliberalisation’ of agriculture­ and widespread ‘agrarian distress’ manifesting most dramatically in epidemic levels of farmer suicides. One of the few exceptions to this pattern has been the foothills of the Himalayas, where agriculture has been relatively insulated from these changes and food sovereignty has remained largely in the hands of local communities. But this has not been without challenges of economic under-development, outmigration, environmental degradation and most recently the floods of June 2013. This article argues that the cultural ecologies of the hills provide a model and foundation for rural development based on traditional agriculture and local food sovereignty.

The notion of 'art worlds' is useful for thinking about meetings of meaning in art, and by implication architecture, across boundaries of nation, culture and identity. Because architecture is less easily separated than some other arts from the conditions of its material production, it inevitably sits, often uneasily, between these material conditions and its status as 'art'. The aim of this article, which began life as an exploration of the relationship between contemporary architecture and national identity in Indonesia, is to adapt the notion of 'art worlds' to architecture and to use it to consider the production of contemporary architecture in Indonesia, especially by reference to the approach of one architect who explicitly thinks and speaks of his work in terms both of 'art' and 'worlds'.

Solid waste is a serious and growing problem thoughout tropical Asia. Waste management technologies and policies have not kept pace with the increase in waste production. The island of Bali in Indonesia is an atypical case in which both production and awareness of waste are relatively advanced. As such it is a useful case for exploring the wider problem and possible solutions. This article reviews the current state of solid waste management in Bali. It shows that there is a fundamental tension between large-scale industrial solutions and small-scale community-based ones, but that the most successful solutions to date are at intermediate scales. It argues that the reasons for this relative success are primarily social, cultural and political ones rather than technical or economic ones.

All is not well with agriculture in Southeast Asia. The productivity gains of the Green Revolution have slowed and even reversed and environmental problems and shortages of water and land are evident. At the same time changing world markets are shifting the dynamics of national agricultural economies. But from the point of view of farmers themselves, it is their season-to-season economic survival that is at stake. Bali is in some ways typical of other agricultural areas in the region, but it is also a special case because of its distinctive economic and cultural environment dominated by tourism. In this environment, farmers are doubly marginalized. At the same time the island offers them unique market opportunities for premium and organic produce. This article examines the ways in which these opportunities have been approached and describes their varying degrees of success. It focuses especially on one project that has been successful in reducing production costs by conversion to organic production, but less so in marketing its produce. It argues finally for the need for integrated studies of the entire rice production/marketing complex, especially from the bottom-up point of view of farmers.