Strategies for shaping change: Networks for gaining access, enhancing exchange and obtain status

Abstract

Networks were important in the forming of a collaborative workshop where representatives of relevant groups discussed strategies to shape socio-ecological change in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Networks enhanced capacity, power, control and exchange. Furthermore, participants increased their social capital and status. Being part of established networks was on the one side a precondition for conducting the workshop. On the other side, the fact that two researchers are affiliated to a German university and thus were not part of these networks in Central Kalimantan enabled a dialogical character of the workshop. Communication and the transfer of formal and informal information in networks were widely conducted via WhatsApp, quite unusual for the German researchers but a common procedure in Indonesia. Establishing networks with ‘white people’ or ‘bule’ was a motivation for encounters between one German researcher and Indonesian workshop participants where issues of exotism arose. Furthermore, establishing networks between universities in the global North and the global South are an inherent aspect of transdisciplinary research and engaged anthropology.

Keywords

• trans-disciplinarity
• workshop
• networks
• resources
• Indonesia