Melampaui Benturan Budaya: Tinjauan Kritis atas Teori Konflik Etnis Dayak–Madura di Kalimantan dari Argumen Frank Fanselow

Abstract

This article critically reviews Frank Fanselow’s explanation of Dayak–Madurese ethnic conflict in Kalimantan and situates it within broader debates on ethnic boundaries, resource competition, political transition, identity mobilization, and local institutional capacity. Using an integrative-critical literature review, it synthesizes Fanselow’s article and thirteen additional academic references selected for conceptual relevance, empirical focus on Indonesia or Kalimantan, publication quality, and verifiable bibliographic records. The review finds that Fanselow’s main contribution lies in treating Dayak knowledge as social theory rather than merely local data and in challenging economic reductionism. Nevertheless, the idea of a “clash of cultures” risks reifying Dayak and Madurese communities as homogeneous groups, naturalizing stereotypes, and obscuring the roles of regime transition, local elite competition, territorial control, rumors, and weakened security arrangements. The article proposes a multilevel explanatory model linking five layers: historical-structural legacies, political-institutional change, territorial-economic contestation, the production of ethnic boundaries and stereotypes, and triggering and mobilization mechanisms. This synthesis argues that culture matters as a language through which conflict is interpreted and organized, but it is not an autonomous or automatic cause. Reconciliation therefore requires recognition of local categories alongside institutional reform, rights protection, social relationship recovery, and safeguards against the political instrumentalization of identity.