Environmental activists’ hysteresis as a driving force for establishing environmental actions against urban forest privatization in Bandung, Indonesia

Abstract

Despite the huge and growing environmental movement to protect urban forests in Indonesia, the tensions between environmental activists’ past engagements with nature and the emerging environmental problems are under-studied. The inner contradiction between the intensive nature of the connections and experiences that the actor maintains and the recent external threat to the environment is the key energizer of an environmental movement. Through Pierre Bourdieu’s seminal concept of hysteresis, this article explores how activists’ previous experiences with nature suffer disjuncture caused by the threat of urban forest privatization occurring in their neighborhood. Drawn from in-depth interviews with the co-founders of an environmental movement organization, the activist narratives in this article reveal that the development of their current struggles was driven by feelings of disappointment, anxiety, anger and a fear of losing the urban forest. The urban forest, for them, not only constitutes a physical space, but serves social and spiritual purposes, represents local identity and is the basis for everyday life.