An air of legality – legalization under conditions of rightlessness in Indonesia

Land rights are uneven in Indonesia as they favor government over citizens as rights subjects. Moreover, legal complexity and social inequality make legal knowledge about land rights rather inaccessible to small-scale farmers and the urban rank and file.Finally, the presumption of legality enables government institutions to acquire land and establish land control even if juridical settlements have been made against it. Despite these three forms of rightlessness, law and legalization are important for ordinary people who experiment and improvise to legalize their claims. And,crucially, such manufacture and persuasion of legality can have the effect of law.