As one of the largest producers of crude oil palm (CPO) in the world, for the last several decades, many rural areas in Indonesia have been undergoing a massive transformation where its natural resources are exploited more rapidly than ever for the creation of incredibly large mono-cropping plantations of oil palm. Studies investigating the consequences of oil palm development revealed that it had led to inequality, vertical and horizontal conflict, socio-cultural disruption, and environmental issues. However, little was known about how it affected local communities in terms of the emergence of violence within them. This study shed light on the effects of oil palm development specifically how the socio-cultural and spiritual disruption, brought on by the conversion of the area into an oil palm plantation and people participation in oil palm cultivation, led to the emergence of everyday violence among them. Conducted in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, this study shows that the practice of everyday violence in the development phases of oil palm are not only related to the loss of access over natural resources, but related to the disruption of people’s cosmic energy, ancestor and kin ties embedded in the land and trees, the balance between the human, spiritual and social world, and the disturbance of their social relations through the idea of malu, but more importantly the disruption of inner connections that felt by the heart.
This study shows that to understand violence it is not enough just to focus on obvious and visible forms of violence. It is as much about the more subtle, less visible, immaterial parts. As such to comprehending expressions of violence and its role in natural resource exploitation the social and cultural dimensions need to be more central in studies on violence