Defending Environmental Rights: an Ecological Democracy Perspective

Environmental problems are amongst the most complex issues faced by the government. The reason why such problem is difficult to tackle lie within its basic assumption which often contradictory to the country’s development agenda. Take an example of Cement Plant controversy that happened recently – the plant that situated in Mount Kendeng, Pati, Central Java, considered harmful to the surrounding and threatening the environmental right of the people who lives in nearby areas. This case can be referred as government misconduct on neglecting basic environmental right. Environmental rights itself are commonly understood as the reformulation and expansion of existing human rights and duties in the context of environmental protection. However, although it has received much attention at grass root level conveyed by activist group and people based community, environmental rights still do not have strong recognition, whether in domestic level and also in international level. Therefore, this research attempt to modulate recognition on environmental right by emphasizing ecological democracy perspective, particularly in public participation in environmental policy making. Public participation is vital to ecological democracy as the key to sustainable development and in defending the environmental rights. The concept itself tries to bridge the government and public needs – to ensure that the public can participate in any ways by providing feedback and solutions. There are three main types of environmental rights – procedural, substantive, and solidarity. As for this research, we will focus on solidarity aspects, to explain the public engagement in environmental policy making

On the Practical Limitation of The OIC’s Solidarity for Refugee

This article discusses relations between the ethical and the practical sphere of solidarity for refugees in Islam. The study on refugees in this article, however, focused on the political and social context of solidarity; thus, theological exploration will not be the main subject. Theoretical discourse on religion and social solidarity is applied to outline the practical limitations of the principles. As for methodology, the literature review method is employed to engage the normative ethics also documents of the OIC initiatives. We find that the Limitation of solidarity in the OIC countries reflect Redekop’s idea of social solidarity: multidimensional, religion as the source of solidarity, the social ecology of Muslim countries limits the practical implementation of the common rule, social solidarity has a compositional effect and every resource or responsibility has to be distributed, and solidarity is achieved through various social institutions

Aesthetic and World Politics by Roland Bleiker. Basingtoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Hardcover: 271 pp.

Aesthetic approach to politics is not really something considered as a novelty. Immanuel Kant has described the aesthetic relationship with rationality way back in the 17th century, as well as Friedrich Nietzsche and Jaques Rancier as a more contemporary counterpart. In the field of international relations, the study of aesthetics has been raised by a number of reviewers – from James Der Derian, Costas Constantinou, David Campbell, to Anthony Burke – who began to lay aesthetics as a foothold in approaching various phenomena. Roland Bleiker is one of the most consistent among them. In an essay entitled "The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory", Bleiker opened the discourse to establish aesthetics as one of the paradigms in international political theory. His essay is published in 2001, contrasts with the majority of international political theories that always try to "catch the world as it is". Bleiker assumes that there is always a distance between representation and what it represents. Through aesthetics, he criticizes approaches that fill this theoretical gap with mimetic ideas. He emphasizes that aesthetic studies do not try to mimic the reality, but it is trying to recognize the various emotions and sensibilities in the formation of a certain representation. The great role of "emotion" in politics is further explained by Bleiker through an essay entitled “Fear No More: Emotions and World Politics”, published seven years after

Zheng He’s Soft Power Discourse in Indonesia: Identity in Power Relation

This article proposes an identity turn in the ongoing discourse of China’s peaceful rise. While economic diplomacy remains as China’s leading trade, a robust social relation has been deliberately promoted in maintaining the relationship between states. To symbolize the peaceful relation, China does not need to look further as Zheng He, an ancient sea admiral of the Ming dynasty, posed as a powerful figure for peaceful diplomacy. The social constructivist approach to soft power will be used in analyzing the concept of collective identity and power relations. To illustrate this approach, a specific case study on China-Indonesia Muslim’s connection that exists since Zheng He’s era, will be highlighted as a landscape where the shared identity meet. The qualitative method will be applied to interpret shared values between the two societies. Despite the fact that the state level of analysis is generally used in depicting soft power discourse, this article tries to step beyond the boundaries of states by emphasizing the relationship of soft power in society level

When Solidarity is Trampled by Religious Sentiment: Outlining Indonesian Muslim Solidarity toward Rohingya Refugees

The Rohingya crisis in Myanmar has drawn international attention due to gross violations of human rights, which have occurred in the conflict. This condition forces the Rohingya to flee from conflict areas in the attempt to seek protection from neighbouring countries including Indonesia. To deal with the refugees, the Indonesian government, alongside Muslim organizations, have taken immediate steps in tackling the crisis. However, behind the humanitarian solidarity lays a critical problem related to the religious sentiment toward the Buddhist community in Indonesia. The sentiment that tarnished the humanitarian principles and threatened Indonesian multiculturalism showed the versatile side of identity. To provide a better understanding of identity-based conflict, this article explored how a group’s sense of collectivity can easily turn into sentiment. By conducting multiple interviews with the representatives of Muslim Organizations and also collecting secondary data related to the Islam conservative agenda, this paper aimed to outline the paradox of Indonesian Muslim response toward the Rohingya’s refugees crisis. Using Ross’s theories of identity conflict and using Galtung conception of social conflict, the findings concluded that religious sentiment in Indonesia during the Rohingya’s refugee crisis are led by blind fanaticism toward certain religious beliefs that bitterly trample the nation’s sense of solidarity

The Atonement of Our Parent's Sin: Place-Based Narrative of Indonesia’ Drowning Muslim Community

This article emphasised the local Muslim community's response to environmental change and explored how religious narratives play a significant role in shaping their action. Place-based narrative is employed as conceptual frame to scrutinise the community’s understanding of the drowning condition. As a case study, Pantai Bahagia Village in West Java is selected based on two criteria: (1) deemed as the fastest drowning area in the North Java Coast; and (2) the existing Muslim-based environmental activism initiated by local teachers in responding to environmental change. For method, qualitative case study is applied by conducting interviews, group discussions, and direct observation. Findings show that the local history of Pantai Bahagia interacts with a national political event in the 1960s that eventually triggers massive environmental change in the Beting area. Further analysis of the place-based narrative indicates that familiarity with religious expressions encourages ecological awareness in the local community and provides the basis for environmental activism