Studying Democracies elsewhere: possibilities and limits of participatory research in the example of a Central Javanese community

The Network of People Concerned about the Kendeng Mountains (JM-PPK) has been fighting against a cement factory of a subsidiary of the German HeidelbergCement in Central-Java in Indonesia since 2006. The Kendeng limestone formation is 180 kilometers long and provides at least 200,000 people with vital water resources. The JM-PPK uses non-violent protest strategies, such as vigils and marches to raise awareness about the dangers of limestone mining. Despite pressure and violence from state and non-state actors, the JM-PPK has for many years maintained their close-knit community and stood firmly united against their opponents. One of our authors has engaged with the JM-PPK for seven years through collaborative transnational activism and one month in-situ ethnographically inspired fieldwork. In the fieldwork, we were interested in the strategies and procedures that the community uses to maintain their internal cohesion and to take communal decisions. In this paper, we reflect on the possibilities and limits of participatory research in such a community. We reflect on the complexity of formulating research questions with people of a very different educational and socio-cultural background than the researcher, the difficulties of different languages and field access, ethical questions, and questions of normative baggage and criteria for democracy.