Regulating the Terminal Economy: Difference, disruption, and governance in a Papuan commercial hub

Abstract

AbstractWhat kinds of governance agendas emerge at frontiers of commercial expansion, where routine economic relations traverse differences of ethnicity and degrees of formality? In the Balim Valley in the highlands of Indonesia's easternmost Papua province, mobilities and trade intersect at adjoining peri-urban markets and minivan terminals. The ‘terminal economy’ at the edges of Wamena, the region's bustling hub, is a threshold between rural and urban life, where indigenous livelihoods are subordinated to Indonesia's expanding commercial networks. Here, a cosmopolitan population—including indigenous Papuan highlanders and newcomer merchants from distant Indonesian regions—gathers to buy and sell local horticultural produce and imported commodities, transit between modes of transportation, and engage in a variety of formal and informal economic activities. This article traces the emergence of a multifaceted commercial regulation agenda, in the wake of demands for the recognition of indigenous contributions to the regional economy. It considers recent indigenous-formulated regulation policies in the context of the region's commercial history, one that is marked by a colonial devaluation of indigenous economic life and, more recently, by uprisings, inter-ethnic tensions, and government attempts to control and contain informal vending. The article conceptualizes commercial regulation as a convergence between efforts to contain disruption and demands for the revaluation of marginalized economic practices. It argues that commercial regulation is especially salient in regions that have been relegated to an end-point position in national and global commodity distribution paths.