GSSC Seminar Series
27 May 2025
Sharing with the Devil: Appropriation of Company Wealth in an Indonesian Plantation, 1830s - 2010s.
Pujo Semedi (Unversitas Gadjah Mada)
12:00-13:00
This presentation explores workers' appropriation of company assets at a coffee/tea plantation in Java, Indonesia. The study traces this phenomenon from the plantation’s establishment in 1875 through the 2000s. Despite being highly productive in supplying commodities to the global market, a closer analysis reveals that the plantation has consistently reported losses due to the appropriation of assets by workers and management. Pujo Semedi approaches this issue by examining the tension between the plantation owners’ drive for accumulation and the workers’ and managers’ demands for sharing.
Pujo Semedi teaches in the Department of Anthropology at the Faculty of Humanities at Universitas Gadjah Mada. He has conducted various collaborative research projects focused on fishing communities along the North Coast of Java, agriculture in the mountainous regions of Java, palm oil cultivation in Kalimantan, and small-scale farming and forestry in rural Southern Germany. He published an edited volume with Kosuke Mizuno and Gerben Noteboom (2023), Two Centuries of Agrarian, Economic, and Ecological Shifts in the North Coast of Java (1812–2012), and coauthored a book with Tania Li (2021), Plantation Life. Corporate Occupation in Indonesia’s Oil Palm Zones.