While there is a global consensus that agricultural systems need to be transformed to be more sustainable, possible pathways and challenges to this process are still debated. We analyse the challenges and opportunities involved in transforming smallholder farming to organic agriculture in Indonesia, where the intense application of Green Revolution technologies came at enormous environmental costs. We adopt a transdisciplinary approach to identify possible pathways towards organic agriculture, based on an analysis of farmers’ knowledge and barriers to adoption, value and belief systems, and institutional structures, including policies and regulations. We present our empirical findings as ‘system knowledge’, ‘target knowledge’ and ‘transformation knowledge’ and incorporate insights from both academics and practitioners. We draw on evidence from large-scale surveys, field experiments, in-depth interviews, participant observation and document analysis. A key insight of our research is that Indonesia does not lack initiatives towards organic farming, but that these various initiatives have different motivations, goals and strategies. This misalignment detracts from the transformational potential of organic agriculture and is responsible for the hitherto limited success of the organic transition. Our findings suggest that policy action at multiple levels is required, guided by an inclusive strategy that is drawn up in a participatory manner.

Organic agriculture has developed in Indonesia since the 1980s due to the work of various pioneer social movement organizations and as a reaction to the ecological and socio-economic problems arising from the Green Revolution. In the twenty-first century, organic agriculture has undergone standardization and market expansion, following the dominant agroeconomic trajectory. This article discusses the way three pioneer organic organizations in the Yogyakarta region have reacted to these developments. The findings show two divergent reactions, with one organization resistant to market expansion, while the others are more open to it due to their funding needs. However, all three share tensions regarding issues of fairness in market relations. These tensions reveal unarticulated socio-structural issues that tend to be overlooked in the current trend towards marketization in organic agriculture. The move away from its social movement foundations leads to laments that ‘organic has lost its way’. This article argues that the tensions illustrate issues voiced by the conventionalization debate in organic agriculture and that these issues should be articulated to reclaim the transformative potential of organic as a social movement in Indonesia.

Recent approaches to multilingualism, such as translanguaging, emphasize the porous, fluid, and hybrid nature of language use. This article intends to show, through an example of a local language debating competition in Central Java, that culturally emblematic performances tend to create monolanguaging spaces, due to their monolingual focusing on certain language varieties that are iconic to local ethnolinguistic identity. Monolanguaging spaces are language ideological spaces in which speakers project an idealized performance of their ethnolinguistic identity. Ethnographic observation shows that the performance of monolanguaging spaces involves the erasure of speakers’ multilingual repertoires and translanguaging practices, in accordance to the language ideology surrounding the hegemonic prestigious language variety and in accordance to the local norms of status or power-based social interaction. Attending to monolanguaging spaces reveal it as a performance accomplished through discursive work and power relations, involving the misrecognition of its connection and dissonance to multilingual repertoires and practices. (Language ideology, erasure, translanguaging, monolanguaging space, performance, ethnolinguistic identity, Javanese)*

Indonesian vocational secondary education reflects the increasingly multilingual demands of globalized education and labor market. This study focuses on two orders of multiple languages that are present in vocational high schools in Semarang, Central Java. It aims not only to describe the different orders of languages, but also to suggest that each order represents differing strategies of dealing with the demands of globalization. One order represents the state-backed institutional approach, which views multiple languages as distinct entities and demands students to have monolingual competence in English, Indonesian, and Javanese to engage in globalization, cultivate nationalism and preserve tradition. The other order represents the market-oriented way vocational schools meet the demands of globalized industries and labor markets by directly adopting the multilingual industry register into local learning processes.