Organizer: Department of Anthropology, Cornell University; Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University

Type/Location: In Person / Ithaca, NY

Description:

Join the Southeast Asia Program and the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University for a talk by Joseph R. Klein, Research Associate with the Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions (SEACoast) and the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. This lecture explores how property and belonging are dynamically negotiated at sea in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, through indigenous customs, state permits, spiritual permissions, and coastal land reclamation.

To whom does the sea belong? In a world where European legal codes and juridical forms remain hegemonic, property is said to end at the coast—the geographical terminus of the legal concept of private ownership itself. Yet in reality, the coast and sea are alive with the play of property. Along the shores and coastal waters of Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, forms of access, belonging, rights, ownership, territory, and even legal property at sea are constantly negotiated and re-negotiated. This talk offers three cases exploring the play of property at sea in Eastern Indonesia, drawn from Joseph R. Klein’s book project—an ethnography of the Indonesian live coral trade and the commercial divers who supply rare and beautiful corals and fish for the global aquarium industry. Aboard a small diving boat, he observed as the divers navigated and negotiated these diverse claims of ownership and belonging to the region’s coral reefs. First, he explores indigenous and customary institutions of ownership and belonging at sea. Second, he shows how divers navigate the acquisition of permits and permission to gather corals from both states and spirits. Third, he examines how divers turn their coral money into private property through coastal land reclamation projects. At the fraying edge of the legal order, he demonstrates how property relations and forms of belonging are made and remade through these everyday encounters.

About the Speaker:

Joseph Klein is a Research Associate with the Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions (SEACoast) and the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work explores fisheries labor, marine product supply chains, and coral reef futures in Indonesia. He is currently working on a book project about Indonesian commercial divers and the global aquarium industry, as well as a co-authored book on the colonial legacies of coastal hardening in Southeast Asia. 

Registration:

To attend the event in person, please register here.