Rupture and its complex temporalities at Indonesia’s Jatigede Dam

Recognising that large-scale hydropower dams instigate dramatic, far-reaching and uncertain changes, Sango Mahanty and colleagues have developed the notion of ‘rupture’ to better understand the how and why of such intense, disruptive interventions. Rupture breaks with what we call ‘project time’ – more conventional ways of delineating and assessing the impacts of large dams – to consider how dams and resettlement might interact with other crises and are historically situated. In this project we use a rupture analytic to think through the sources and implications of the long construction of Sinohydro’s Jatigede Dam in West Java. We argue that Jatigede is an example of rupture, and one that can tell us about the role of uncertainty, ongoing forms of marginalisation, and the nature of Chinese infrastructure investments.

Through our analysis we highlight how the construction of Jatigede brought about a crisis in local livelihoods and splintered any resistance movement. Displacement and resettlement occurred in a haphazard way over several decades, generating deep uncertainty and many different forms of mobility. Jatigede has interacted with other historical processes to produce uneven and uncertain effects. The uncertainty around the dam became embedded in local mythology over the long ‘journey’ of land acquisition, compensation, resettlement, return, displacement, waiting, and rebuilding, while the final inundation was experienced by many as an emergency.

Jatigede is a Chinese infrastructure project in that it is linked to the spatial dynamics of a new wave of dam construction in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, largely enabled by China’s dam export industry. Chinese finance and expertise certainly came together to finally build Jatigede, but that does not mean that it is simply a case study of Chinese investment or the Belt and Road Initiative. More than a ‘Chinese’ infrastructure project, Jatigede is a project shaped by multiple political regimes in Indonesia, and intersects with existing dynamics of transmigration, inequality, and marginalisation. Our analysis helps to clarify the impacts and implications of large dams in ways that ‘project time’ cannot and orients us to the historical conditions that render people displaceable and dams peaceable.

Authors: Brooke Wilmsen, Ardhitya Eduard Yeremia, Sarah Rogers, Suraya Afiff