ALSA 2025 meeting

Indonesia is a multicultural society. The social and cultural plurality in Indonesia is marked by the presence of pluralism that is both vertical and horizontal at the same time. The vertical characteristics of pluralism in Indonesia are characterized by the adaptability of each group to the developments around them (Zakaria, 2000).
The Constitution of Indonesia recognizes customary law communities and their traditional rights. However, the requirements contained in this article have made the implementation of the constitutional mandate not optimal at the field level (Simarmata, 2006). The Constitutional Court Decision No. 35/PUU-X/2012, which is considered to be a decision that can overhaul the legal framework that regulates the agrarian sector (Simarmata & Steni, 2017), which has produced nearly 500 regional legal products (HuMa Indonesia, 2025), also does not ultimately produce a space for social inclusion that changes the lives of indigenous peoples in a more meaningful way (Zakaria, 2024).
Why does this happen?
This study addresses the issue of recognition for the rights of indigenous peoples from a socio-anthropological perspective. The results of this study show that the lack of socio-anthropological perspectives in the process of formulating related policies, as manifested in the incompatibility of the content of law with the socio-anthropological reality in the form of the structure of society (Koentjaraningrat, 1980), has resulted in the legal politics of recognition and respect for the rights of indigenous peoples to be highly political. As a result, the laws that were subsequently produced away from the ideals of statehood, as read in the fourth clause of the Preamble to the 1945 Constitution, were "to realize justice for all Indonesian people".