Combatting Environmental Injustice: Social Hermeneutic Analysis of the Retextualization of the Jakarta Kamisan Action into Kaltim Kamisan Action

Abstract

East Kalimantan activists held peaceful protest demonstrations in front of the East Kalimantan Governor's office every Thursday at 4 pm. This action is known as the Kaltim Kamisan Action (KKA). Initially, the action was an act of solidarity with the Jakarta Kamisan Action (JKA) which demanded the settlement of serious human rights cases in Indonesia. However, in its development, this action does not only duplicate the work of the Jakarta human rights activists. In the hands of East Kalimantan activists, KKA became a 'new text' that was more local in color, became an activist school for budding activists in the province and echoed local issues typical of East Kalimantan. Unlike the elitist JKA, the KKA succeeded in recruiting the urban poor, indigenous peoples, local youth communities and student organizations. Social hermeneutic analysis (Ricoeur, 2006) which emphasizes understanding of new texts, contexts, authors, readers and texts is used to understand the KKA as a text. With this method the author explains how local activists change the resistance text from the central activists into a new resistance text that is used to fight more problems of local oppression, especially the problem of exploitation of natural resources in East Kalimantan.

Keywords: social hermeneutic, demonstration, local issue, solidarity