Abstract:
The cultural value system of the Petalangan society that settles in Pelalawan regency,
Riau, is traditionally, nature-oriented. Each tribe owns their own forest and land.
The ownership, utilization, and maintenance of the forest and land are wellregulated
by the local custom, reflected in several of their customs. The forests
not only serve as a resource to fulfill thei, needs, but also as a model and the core
of their life philosophy. Concepts about life, nature, time, work, and the
relationship between one and another have been changed and eroded by
industrialization. Forests, as the center of cultural orientation, have changed
into an economical meaning. The presence of national authority over the ownership
and governance of the forest and land rights have brought many changes to the
meaning of forests for the Petalangan society. Various interests have turned the
forests' from a highly-valued cultural property into a source of conflicts between the
government, the industry and the society, be that native or immigrants.
Furthermore, the social functions expressed in formal rules, such as national law
or regulations, are already eroded by the advancement of individual functions of
land and forest owners. All these- conditions work together and bear the potential of
creating a social conflict. Cases of local conflicts then appear, which pit the
government, with the interest to preserve the forest as a national park area,
against the local residents, who are not willing to let go of their forest and land.
The analysis in search of the conflicts' sources, and the trialz, to apply the
approach of Talcott Parsons' functionalism, is hoped to explain more of the
differences of what really happen in the ownership and governance of forest and
land rights in the Pelalawan region. Land and forests clearing by large companies
cannot be denied as the largest source of conflict. The single cultural value has
changed and creates community diversity with economic-oriented interests, which
later will slowly erode the forest and land significances as the cultural value
orientation of the Petalangan society.
