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NGOs, THE INTERNETAND SUSTAINABLE RURALDEVELOPMENTYanuar Nugroho aa Manchester Institute of Innovation Research ,University of Manchester , Harold Hankins Building –MBS West, Precinct Centre, Oxford Road, Manchester,M13 9PL, UKPublished online: 10 Feb 2010.

To cite this article: Yanuar Nugroho (2010) NGOs, THE INTERNET AND SUSTAINABLERURAL DEVELOPMENT, Information, Communication & Society, 13:1, 88-120, DOI:10.1080/13691180902992939

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Yanuar Nugroho

NGOs, THE INTERNET AND

SUSTAINABLE RURAL DEVELOPMENT

The case of Indonesia

Today sustainable rural development is of paramount importance in Indonesian devel-opment. Yet, different social actors have different perspectives on it. Non-governmentorganizations (NGOs) in Indonesia have established themselves in pivotal positions inthe social, economic and political landscape across the country, and a large amountof their work has been connected with development in the rural sector. But, there hasbeen little attempt to understand how NGOs in Indonesia, particularly rural NGOs,engage with the issue of sustainable rural development itself. Since rural developmentis one of the oldest issues to be discussed among activists, since the early days of Indo-nesian NGOs, it is interesting to see how they understand the issue of sustainability inrural development and rural reform. An empirical study was conducted recently to seehow some Indonesian NGOs, in their endeavour to respond to and broaden the discourse,utilize Internet technology. The study employs a combination of quantitative and quali-tative approaches to build a detailed story about how different organizations working inrural development deploy strategies to deal with the issue. By doing so, it aspires to con-tribute to the advancement of theory relating to the efficacy of the Internet as a tool forsocial reform and sustainable development by taking Indonesia as a case study.

Keywords Internet adoption; Indonesia; non-governmentalorganizations; rural sector; sustainable development; reform

(Received 23 February 2009; final version received 24 April 2009)

1. Introduction

Any paper on development in Indonesia must take into account the fact thatnearly 50 per cent of the labour force works in (or more than 65 per centof the total population is engaged in) rural activities (BPS 2008). Stories fromthe rural sector are not always pleasant, however; in fact many are bitter.In Indonesia the sector has been characterized by farm labour with low productivity

Information, Communication & Society Vol. 13, No. 1, February 2010, pp. 88–120

ISSN 1369-118X print/ISSN 1468-4462 online # 2010 Taylor & Francis

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/13691180902992939

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and, as a consequence, rural inhabitants’ standard of living is very low. Thisproblem is classic in rural development in the East (see for example Boeke1952). The quality and fertility of rural land has also deteriorated as a result ofthe ‘green revolution’ carried out desperately by the Indonesian governmentsince the late 1960s to the end of the 1980s. Following the oil-boom, with nationaldevelopment policy in favour of industrial-oriented over agrarian-based develop-ment, not only did more farmers convert to factory work, but significant areasof farming land have also been continuously converted into industrial estates.These are among the severe problems hampering Indonesian rural developmenttoday, which attracts not only the attention of the government and the privatesector, but also that of non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

The important role of Indonesian NGOs in the country has been widelyrecognized, not only in promoting wider democracy and adherence to humanrights (Ganie-Rochman 2002), but also in development, empowerment andimprovement of livelihoods (Eldridge 1995; Hadiwinata 2003). For NGOsworking on rural issues, reforms in the rural sector have become the mainagenda in responding to multifaceted problems hindering rural development.The reform is orientated, broadly, towards sustainable development in therural sector. However, ‘reform’ and ‘sustainability’ in this sector are complexand affects the activism of rural NGOs. To help them deal with such complexity,many rural NGOs have been adopting and using Information and Communi-cation Technologies (ICTs), particularly the Internet. They have an emergingopportunity to use the Internet to support their quests for reform and sustain-ability in the rural sector. Rural NGOs have to learn how to appropriate thetechnology more strategically and politically to achieve this mission.

Although there have been some studies on the subject of the Internet andsocio-political dynamics in Indonesia (Hill & Sen 2000, 2005; Lim 2002,2003a, 2003b; Hill 2003), there has been little research targeted systematicallyat how Indonesian NGOs working in the rural sector use the Internet to achievetheir mission and goals. This paper aims to fill this gap. Exploring the case ofNGOs working in the rural sector in Indonesia, this study aspires to contributeto the advancement of theory relating to the efficacy of Internet-mediatedcommunication as a tool for social reform and sustainable development.

2. From ‘development’ to ‘empowerment’: NGOs agendain rural development

2.1 Problematiques in rural development

Rural development is an area in which the Indonesian government has played amajor role, especially during Suharto’s New Order regime, since the late 1960s.

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Due to food scarcity, as a result of poor political economy and population explosion,rural development was seen as a way of remedying the problem, with much inter-vention from the government. Aiming to enforce agriculture intensificationthrough high-yielding seeds, subsidized fertilizers and irrigation systems as partof a green revolution, the government established programmes such as Bimas(bimbingan massa/mass guidance) and Inmas (intensifikasi massa/mass intensification)(Booth 1992). By the early 1980s, through various programmes under Inpres(presidential instruction), the government changed the face of most villages by pro-viding them with roads, village-halls, schools, health-centres, markets and so on(Liddle 1985). In addition there were also interventions aimed at creating state-sponsored grassroots organizations such as LKMD (lembaga ketahanan masyarakatdesa/village people’s defence council), PKK (pembinaan kesejahteraan keluarga/family welfare guidance), Dasawisma (neighbourhood association), Karang Taruna(village youth association), and the like (Hadiwinata 2003). This situation seemsto confirm the observationmade by Arce et al. (1994) which suggests that the inter-ventionist state attempts to control the rural sector by establishing powerfulagencies to monopolize rural community development activities.

Many argue that such intervention has in fact been more detrimental thanbeneficial, in the long term (Hart 1986; Sangkoyo 1999; Daorueng 2002).First, agricultural produce like rice became highly politicized by the governmentand the ruling party, particularly under Soeharto (Sangkoyo 1999), placing pea-sants in a vulnerable position, politically. Second, although the implementation ofa green revolution, for a short period, was successful, this did not last long as thecountry turned out to be the major rice importer in the world. Indonesia becamea major rice importer in 1996, after failing to boost rice production. The riceimports hit six million tonnes during the 1998 crisis. Although this figure fellto four million tonnes in 1999 and 1.5 million tonnes in 2001, this is aset back because Indonesia won a FAO medal for the achievement of ‘self-sufficiency’ in rice in 1985 (Daorueng 2002). Third, yielding more rice hasproven to be problematic because vast areas of agricultural land have lost theirfertility due to the poor chemical treatment and high-yielding seeds offarming intensification schemes. Fourth, there were no genuine, independentgrassroots groups or organizations in rural areas which are important to builda healthy fabric of social life. The New Order’s intervention transformed thenature of rural society, marked by the emergence of rural elites as a class offavoured clients of the state (whose activities were under the guidance ‘fromabove’ and increasingly became implementers of government’s programmes)and the rural lower society who were commonly poor. In other words, ruralsociety was torn apart (Hart 1986).

This has all contributed to the deteriorating quality of life of rural people, asfarmers are kept trapped in poverty and thus become increasingly powerless.

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But, this is not the only problem. As a result of the industrialization policy,massive areas of agricultural land were converted into industrial estates orurban housing because farmers had very weak bargaining power to defendtheir land against demand from industry or the rich ‘people from the city’.Young villagers went to the cities to look for ‘better jobs’, mostly as factorylabourers or casual workers in informal sectors, leaving the villages with littlehope for the future. Since the 1998 reform, despite the government’s claim tohave been trying to ‘revitalize’ the rural sector, the situation has not improved.Farmers are still poor, or have become even poorer; agricultural land has notregained its fertility; farming is not carried out sustainably; agriculturalproduce is still politicized; conversion of rural land for non-agricultural purposescontinues; rural civil society remains weak and farmers are politically neglecteddespite villages being seen as sources of voter support.

2.2 The role of NGOs in rural development

NGOs in Indonesia have long been concerned with rural development issues andproblems. There are four important characteristics of NGO movements thatneed to be taken into account. First, Indonesian rural NGO movements havea long history before their ‘boom’ in the 1990s. Starting in the early 1970s,a number of NGOs like Bina Swadaya, LP3ES, Sekretariat Bina Desa, Dian Desaand many others were established and focused their activities on rural issues,community development and the promotion of self-management activities atvillage level (Hadad 1983; cited in Hadiwinata 2003, p. 91). During the NewOrder regime, many of these organizations had to adopt ‘friendly’ strategiesby not engaging in grassroots political activities, partly because of the repressionof NGOs by the government (Sinaga 1994; Fakih 1996; Hadiwinata 2003). Butthroughout the 1990s, many Indonesian NGOs, including those working in ruralsectors, started adopting more forward-looking strategies and openly expressedtheir opposition to government policies in rural development. The military oftenassumed rural NGO activities at village level (as well as labour NGOs at regionalor factory level) were aimed at organizing local grassroots movements and thusmasked political agitation (Billah 1995). Subsequently, for the last 10 or so yearsof its political power, Suharto’s New Order launched ‘black-propaganda’ againstNGOs, often involving repressions and violence against activists. This situationbecame favourable for Indonesian NGOs, to some extent, after reformasi (politi-cal reform) in 1998. Seen as important actors in the movement to overthrowthe authoritarian regime (Uhlin 1997; Hill 2000), NGOs regained some trustfrom the wider society who used to be ‘under the influence’ of the NewOrder’s anti-NGO campaign. Despite some difficulties, Indonesian NGOsmanaged to pin down their pivotal roles in the socio-economic and political

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dynamics of the country, often through their role in continuously advancing thereform agenda.

Second, the orientation of activism goes beyond development and food secur-ity. For these NGOs, the aim of rural sector reform is primarily to improve rurallivelihoods, to promote sustainable rural development, and to restore the econ-omic, social, political, and cultural rights of the rural communities. The aim is notjust food security (as campaigned by the NewOrder) but food sovereignty, whichmeans the ability to meet the national need without having to be dependent onsupplies from other countries. This certainly requires the fulfilment of farmers’rights and new orientation towards rural development.

Third, in order to do achieve this, Indonesian rural NGOs, in general, havetwo approaches. One is the ‘negative-logic’ approach: criticizing and standingagainst the negative aspects of rural development policies and practices. Theother is the ‘positive-logic’ approach: promoting alternative practices in ruraldevelopment. In terms of building the movement (Crossley 2002; Diani 2003;Della-Porta & Diani 2006), these approaches are what characterize the ruralNGO movement in Indonesia the most. In their first approach, rural NGOs inIndonesia often risk being misunderstood as ‘anti-development’ for theirconsistent critical stance towards status-quo rural policies and development prac-tices. These NGOs carry out advocacy towards farmers’ rights; support agrarianreform to reclaim farmers’ lands; oppose further agricultural land conversion;support farmers’ union activities and empower rural civil society throughresearch, lobbies and advocacy endeavours (Eldridge 1995; Ganie-Rochman2002; Hadiwinata 2003) and thus are often categorized as ‘rural-advocacy’NGOs.1 On the other hand, using the positive-logic approach, NGOs helpwith training farmers; provide support for rural home-industry or small-medium enterprises and help with better access to marketplaces. They provideassistance to farmers to enable them to learn more about organic and sustainablefarming processes and restore soil fertility; help with access to micro-creditschemes for women in rural areas; help to politically empower rural communities;and – to a limited extent – ensure agricultural produces are being fairly traded(Hadiwinata 2003).2 Non-governmental groups and institutions which undertakesuch activities are generally known as ‘rural-development’ NGOs. The categor-ization of advocacy versus development organizations in fact also applies for moregeneral NGOs both at practical and analytical levels (as demonstrated in Eldridge1995; Ganie-Rochman 2002; Holland & Henriot 2002; Hadiwinata 2003).

These different approaches enrich the NGOmovement in the rural sector. Theshared belief between these different NGOs is that for rural sector reform, meredevelopment orientation is not enough. Instead, it is empowerment that becomescrucial in making sure that reform in the rural sector will sustainably benefit thefarmers and the whole society. As hinted by an Indonesian scholar researching

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the Indonesian civil society earlier (Hikam 1999), empowerment here (and in therest of this paper) is broadly defined as a process through which the organization’sbeneficiaries (i.e. people or society) obtain the opportunities for self-sufficiency andself-dependency, either directly by themselves or through the help of others. Thisincludes encouragement, skills development, opportunities and access, and focuseson eliminating the future dependency of the individuals to help them attain theirgoals. Instead of development, empowerment has become the call for mostNGOs working in rural issues. As one NGO, reflecting on its activities, puts it:

We contribute in this context, particularly in empowering peasants. . . .Thereare various ways to do so, but in order to empower them we need to help thefarmers to help themselves in self-organizing and self-mobilization, then [wemust help them with] good access to marketplaces using mechanism likequality assurance [for agricultural produces]. In the bigger context of ruralmovements what we have done is just a small part because we focus onlyon the empowerment of production and economic aspects. For otheraspects that need empowerment, we have to collaborate with other NGOsor farmers organizations.

(Indro Surono, interview, 3 December 2005)

The comments of Indro Surono above represent the views of many other NGOs’on the matter. Certainly, having to limit their focus to promoting rural sectorreform, does not necessarily make NGOs lose view of the ‘bigger picture’ oftheir activities. In fact, it can make it clearer:

[In our development activities] we apply some standards which actually reflectthe socio-architectures of the problems; social justice that we aim to achieve.This all is part of our blueprint in promoting organic and sustainable agricul-ture. So, it is clear that social justice is structured in our organicmovement. It isthe samewith our other activities like quality assurance for organic agriculturalproduces as it implies strong organization of farmers. We want the farmersstrongly organised to fight for their own rights. We work on this issue withother rural [advocacy] organizations. If farmers have strong associations ororganizations, they can build their own internal mechanism. Externally, thisstrengthens their bargaining positions. Thus, while we work on quality assur-ance, other colleagues are working on strengthening farmers organizations.That’s how we work.

(Agung Prawoto, interview, 3 December 2005)

The two reflections above indicate an emergent strategy, which has a newmeaning and contextualization: the networking of movement for rural

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empowerment. Such a strategy, while effective, requires (or presupposes) arelatively high degree of cooperation and collaboration. The realm of NGOs isnot free from conflict or competition. Many organizations have now tocompete against each other over limited resources. However, beyond thiscompetition, NGOs will realize that eventually at the very practical level theycannot but cooperate with other organizations if they are to be successful intheir programmes. For example, while nearly all rural development NGOsactivities assume existing organizing endeavour (pengorganisasian), many ruraladvocacy NGOs deduce that development aspects of the community are beingdealt with by their developmentalist colleagues. It is at this networking levelthat rural NGOs come together to share different issues or problems faced byfarmers and can therefore solve them more effectively. For instance, problemsrelated to economic aspects or access to markets are usually best resolvedwith a development approach and problems related to political aspects or devel-opment policy are best tackled using an advocacy approach (as also suggestedpreviously by Billah 1995; Fakih 1996). This is where not only can the use ofthe Internet facilitate the exchange of issues, agendas and concerns, but it canalso help extend the organizations’ perspectives as more information becomesavailable on the Net. As the Internet is both a communication platform andan information resource, it provides NGOs with a way of coordinating activities,while at the same time collating and sharing useful and tactical information. Suchapproaches are not only beneficial for NGOs, in that they can collaborate andnetwork more effectively, but also they are important for farmers and ruralcommunities, in that they increasingly become aware that developmental (oreconomic) aspects are strongly tied and influenced by advocacy (or political)aspects in rural development. This is important, so that the farmers canengage themselves more effectively and more meaningfully in the socio-dynamicsof sustainable development and reform in the rural sector. In the recent politicaleconomy development, the rural sector is no longer subject exclusively tonational development policies, but increasingly globalized and regulated withinthe World Trade Organisation (WTO) under Agreement on Agriculture(AOA)3 (Kwa 2004).

It is therefore important for NGOs to focus their endeavours on empower-ing farmers and rural society so that in the globalized economy they can still havea say in deciding their own life, as one NGO representative reflects below.

[We envisage that] one day it would be the farmers who are able to carry outadvocacy works for themselves, to protect them from government repressionor brutal [implications of] globalisation in the rural sector. But we have tostart building this ability now. We have to start by involving them to under-stand, become aware of, and identify the actual problems [in rural reform and

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development]. Then, we have to encourage them to find the solutions of theirown, and communicate them to the communities through dialogues. Only bydoing this we can stop the dependency vicious circle. Farmers used to bedependent on the [New Order] regime and now there are apparentdangers that they can be dependent upon NGOs. We have to avoid this.

(Muhammad Riza, interview, 30 November 2005)

It seems clear that the orientation of rural sector reform, for NGOs, is one ofempowerment rather than merely development. This implies a strong buildingblock of rural NGO movement so that the empowerment endeavour can becarried out effectively.

Last, this brings in another characteristic of the current Indonesian rural NGOmovement: its international links. Either for pursuing development goals or orga-nizing advocacy activities, the international network of rural NGOs, facilitated bythe use of ICT like the Internet, has increasingly become more instrumental. Suchan engagement with international organizations has enabled the organizations notonly to spread the concerns of Indonesian NGOs about reform and developmentin rural sectors across the country in a speed and scale that has never been seenbefore, but also to help them network with other similar organizations atvarious levels, from local to global, to exchange ideas, experiences and support.A profound example is the Indonesian rural NGOs’ engagement with La ViaCampesina, a growing international peasant movement network, which not onlyfurthers the rural sector reform and development agenda at the national level inIndonesia, but also advances rural issues and integrates them at a global level.

To summarize, four of the most important characteristics of rural NGOs inIndonesia today have been laid out: (i) they are part of a long standing movementthat boomed in the 1990s; (ii) there has been a shift in the centre of activism, i.e.from economic development and food safety, to include food sovereignty and theempowerment of farmers; (iii) there has been the proliferation of two main cat-egories of movement: advocacy and development; and (iv) a strong internationalcomponent of the movement has emerged. These characteristics are very muchinfluenced by – and reflected in – the way these rural NGOs operate, both atthe national and global levels and, arguably, are consequences (intended or unin-tended) of the use of ICTs, particularly the Internet, in the organizations.

3. Adopting the Internet, empowering the movement:four dimensions of adoption

NGOs and civil society organizations (CSOs) have been active users of the Inter-net since the early days of its introduction in Indonesia (Purbo 1996; Lim 2003b;

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Hill & Sen 2005). The development of the Internet in the country began in theearly 1990s. In terms of users and subscribers, Indonesia is lagging behindother countries with only around 5 per cent of the population (230 million)using the Internet. In Southeast Asia, the highest proportion of users is foundin Singapore (29.9 per cent), followed by Malaysia (25.15 per cent). Accordingto the Association of Indonesian Internet Service Providers (APJII), over the pastfew years, the number of Internet users has increased very significantly, leaping toover 770 per cent during 1998–2002, from half a million to 4.5 million (APJII2003). This number was 16 million by 2005 and is approximated to be 20 millionby 2007 (APJII 2007). However, Internet access is still highly unevenly distribu-ted, resembling ‘technological apartheid’ (the term coined by Castells 1999) inmany regions of Indonesia. Despite the government’s efforts, Internet access isstill concentrated in big cities in Java, Bali and other major islands. Rural areasand other smaller islands still suffer from low availability of Internet andcommunication infrastructure. People in the area with limited access, likerural villages or remote islands, connect to the Net through warnet (warung Internetor Internet kiosk, also known as telecentre) whose very idea is to bridge theproblem of unequal availability of access (James 2006). In West and SouthSumatra provinces, for example, women farmers are very active in the searchingof information on technology and market related to their daily work throughwarnet (Laelasari 2004). Other instances are to be discussed later as part of theargument of the paper. As the Internet not only facilitates communication andcollaboration of organizations within and between countries (Castells 1996;Dutton 1999, 2004; Warkentin 2001) but also contributes to the spread ofissues and concerns (McConnell 2000; Surman & Reilly 2003; Dutton 2004),it plays a pivotal role in the change strategy of the NGO movement.

However, not much is known about how and to what extent IndonesianNGOs adopt and use the Internet. By triangulating quantitative and qualitativemethods (Gilbert 1992; Danermark et al. 2002), this study aims to explorethe features of the diffusion, use and impacts of the Internet in IndonesianNGOs, especially in relation to advancing rural sector reform and sustainabledevelopment. This study collects data in 2005–2006 through the combinationof surveys, in-depth interviews and a series of workshops from a total of 390NGOs, about half of which work on rural, or rural-development-relatedissues (e.g. rural issues, farmers and development). The survey was designedto capture the typology of Indonesian NGOs (size, nature of organization,main issues and concerns and activities) and the pattern of Internet adoptionand use (i.e. period of use, expenditure, reason for using the Internet, signifi-cance of use and fields of use, among others). The target population was theNGOs listed in the four publicly available directories (i.e. SMERU, TIFA,LP3ES and CRS). In total, the survey was sent to 957 NGOs and was responded

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to by 268 organizations (28 per cent response rate) based in 27 provinces (out ofa total of 32 provinces) in Indonesia. The data were analysed using multipleindicators multiple causes latent class analysis (MIMIC-LCA) (MacCutcheon1987; Magidson & Vermunt 2002; Vermunt & Magidson 2002) and temporalsocial network was generated using Pajek (Batagelj & Mrvar 2003). In-depthinterviews were conducted to provide in-depth insights about Internet adoption,use, and impacts. Interviews were arranged with 42 leaders or senior activistsfrom 35 NGOs; three workshops were organized in Jakarta, Surabaya andYogyakarta (attended by 35, 33, and 26 participants, respectively, representing72 NGOs in total), and two focus groups were set up in Aceh (attended by 18participants in total, representing 9 organizations). This qualitative data was tobuild case studies (Eisenhardt 1989; Stake 1995) and provide more insightsinto the quantitative findings.

From an observation where 94.03 per cent use PCs in the organization and86.94 per cent have access to the Internet, only a very small group has used theInternet for more than 10 years (5.97 per cent). Most of them have used itbetween 5–10 years (28.73 per cent) and 3–5 years (26.87 per cent). Quitea proportion (19.03 per cent) just started using it within the last 3 years.This finding confirms the pattern of technological adoption suggested by diffusiontheory – with ‘innovators’ and ‘early adopters’ (here referred to as ‘leaders’)leading the adoption, followed by ‘early majority’, ‘late majority’, and ‘lag-gards’– which forms a bell-curve and, cumulatively, S-curve (Rogers 2003).But, what makes ‘leaders’ and ‘laggards’ (for this classification, see Rogers1995, 2003) in Internet adoption? Apart from demographic aspects (size, age,and financial turnover), it seems that adoption patterns have some correlationwith the NGOs issues and concerns (Figure 1).

It shows the first dimension: adoption. In general, NGOs working on devel-opment or development-related issues and concerns (salient issues are codedgreen) are estimated to be more likely to be early adopters of the Internetthan those working on advocacy-related issues (coded blue). MIMIC-LCAshows that NGOs working around rural issues (farmers, rural, environment,poverty, civil society empowerment, and so on) are estimated to be part of an‘early majority’ group in terms of Internet adoption.4 But, what actuallydrives the adoption of the Internet in Indonesian NGOs in general? Internally,it is the need to obtain information and to improve organizational effectivenessand efficiency; externally, it is the need to bring about mutually beneficialrelationships and collaboration among organizations, instead of competition.Figure 2 maps all the drivers for adoption, internally and externally.

Although Indonesian civil society is not absent from conflicts and frictions ofinterest, the organizational need for social esteem or status and egocentric andcompetitive motives are not strong drivers for Internet adoption in NGOs,

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unlike in other types of organizations (as found in, e.g. Coombs & Hull 1996;Newell et al. 2003; Rogers 2003). Apparently, for Indonesian NGOs, includingthe rural ones, adopting the technology which serves such internal and externalpurposes (Figure 2) empowers them in organizing their movement, expands theirnetwork, and, to some extent, therefore increases their bargaining position whendealing with other actors in Indonesian politics. From these findings, it is markedthat for Indonesian NGOs, in the dimension of adoption, activities do matter.

The survey also shows the second dimension: impact. More than 92 per centof Indonesian NGOs under study, who have used the Internet, find that its usepositively or very positively affects the achievement of the organizations’ goalsand missions. It is also found that Internet use significantly or very significantlyincreases the performance of the internal management of more than 87 percent of NGOs in this study and helps nearly 75 per cent of them to becomemore focused or much more focused in their aims and activities. But more

FIGURE 1 Issues and concerns of each adopter category.

Notes:N ¼ 268. Latent Class Analysis. BIC(LL) ¼ 5407.792; NPar ¼ 94; L2 ¼ 4214.830; df ¼ 127;

p , 0.0001; and Class.Err ¼ 2.6 per cent (see appendix). This figure appears in author’s

earlier works (Nugroho 2007a).

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importantly, it has widened nearly two-thirds of the NGOs’ perspectives to globallevel, or at least beyond regional, national or local boundaries. As a consequence,the use of the Internet has become a major support for the expansion of NGOs’networks (see Figure 3).

The impacts of Internet use in NGOs as depicted above are also true forrural NGOs, despite limited access of the technology in rural areas in thecountry as discussed. Externally, the Internet has been instrumental in expandingorganizational perspective and networks so that rural NGOs and farmer commu-nities are aware of the latest developments and take part not only at the local, butalso at the global level. This has enabled much cooperation and collaborationwhich was difficult, if not impossible, before.5 Internally, the Internet hasfacilitated capacity-building in many rural NGOs and also for farmers. With

FIGURE 2 Internal and external drivers for Internet adoption in NGOs.

Notes: N ¼ 268, multiple responses possible. This figure appears in author’s earlier works

(Nugroho 2007a).

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such capacity-building, NGOs can help farmers to have more direct access to themarket, which is essential to introduce sustainable agriculture, fairer trade andbuild firmer economic ground for rural development.6 In many cases, whenaccess is not directly available to rural farmers, NGOs act as hubs to channelthe information that the farmers need or use to help their work. Unfortunatelyno official data are available but according to the most prominent Internet activistin Indonesia there are 20,000–25,000 Wireless Internet nodes with a growth of2000–3000 nodes per month and many of these are now penetrating rural areasin Indonesia.7 This finding characterizes the third dimension of impact: the adop-tion and use of the Internet in NGOs has created strong impacts both on internal andexternal activities.

The third dimension is networking. It is evident that the Indonesian NGOnetwork has expanded significantly over the past decade. Not only are morelinks established nationally and globally, but the network has also becomemore cohesive over different periods of democratic transformation in thecountry indicated by the increasing network indicator k-core (from 3 to 6 forthe international network and 5 to 9 for the national network) and density(from 0.0021 to 0.0092 and from 0.0029 to 0.0141, respectively). The increas-ing cohesiveness and density of the network seems to have correlation with thesocio-political dynamics in the country (see Figure 4).

At the national level, major socio-political events took place in Indonesiaduring the heightened period from pre-1995 to 1998 and significantly affected,but were also affected by, civil society activism (as also reported by McCarthy2002; Harney & Olivia 2003). This study argues that these socio-political

FIGURE 3 Impact of the Internet use in Indonesian NGOs.

Notes: N ¼ 268, single response, Likert-scale. This figure appears in author’s earlier works

(Nugroho 2007a).

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events are both outcomes and fabrics of the socio-political engagement ofIndonesian civil society. As outcomes, the events reflect how Indonesian civilsociety has advanced its movement and partaking in social change. As fabricsof civic engagement, such socio-political events provide context and opportunityfor Indonesian civil society organizations to link each other’s work. At the inter-national level, networking between Indonesian civil society and internationalpartners has been around for quite a long time, initially for fostering democra-tization agenda while under Suharto’s authoritarian regime (already explicitlyexpressed by Billah 1995; Fakih 1996). By means of such networking, localorganizations voiced their concern or passed relevant information about socio-political problems (usually related to state violence, human rights violation ordevelopment policies) onto their international partners who would use the infor-mation to pressurize the Indonesian government in international gatheringsthrough their own governments or by way of protests. The network, with inter-national partners, has been able to give Indonesian civil society some bargaining

FIGURE 4 Expansion of Indonesian CSOs networks.

Notes: N-network ¼ 350, all nodes depicted across period, links represent ‘join action’, data

collected 2005–2006.

Source: This figure appears in Nugroho (2009); the periodization and the discussion of the

international network appears in Nugroho and Tampubolon (2008); data and analysis

rendered for this figure is based on Nugroho (2007a).

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power to challenge the authoritarian regime and, arguably, to contribute to theefforts in bringing it to an end, despite questions about the role of internationalnetworks during the heightened period of change in Indonesia prior to 1999 (e.g.as addressed in Nugroho & Tampubolon 2008).

This networking, particularly for rural NGOs, has been essential not only inenlarging capacity, but also in being part of the global rural movement. An instancewould be the involvement of many Indonesian rural NGOs in the La Via Campessina(‘road of the peasants’), whose secretariat is now in Jakarta, Indonesia. LVC is theinternational movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless,rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agriculturalworkers, and defendsthe values and the basic interests of farmers. Having members from 56 countries inAsia, Africa, Europe, andAmerica, LVC aims to develop solidarity and unity amongsmall farmer organizations in order to promote gender parity and social justice infair economic relations; the preservation of land, water, seeds, and other naturalresources; food sovereignty; sustainable agricultural production based on smalland medium-sized producers. It is evident that in the dimension of networking,there is an enlargement of NGOs’ capacity through networking. An argument developedfurther from the networking aspect is that the network is not just instrumental tosocial change in the country for NGOs; it is the arena for change in its own right(Nugroho 2009), including in the rural sector.

These three dimensions bring about the fourth dimension: roles of the Inter-net in building the NGO movement. The adoption of the Internet by NGOs hasgiven new impetus to many NGOs in bridging global and national politics. Onthe one hand, facilitated by the Internet, more global NGOs paid more attentionto the Indonesian situation and collaborated with Indonesian NGOs. Politicalevents like the elections in 1999 and 2004 became an opportunity for connectingwith global NGOs (be it in terms of financial support, coalition, joint activities orother types of collaboration). Humanitarian relief actions too have been alwaysimportant junctures for collaboration. The aftermath of the Tsunami in 2004, forinstance, saw a massive scale of global NGOs networking with Indonesian organ-izations, possibly unprecedented in the country’s civil society history. On theother hand, the use of the Internet has contributed in building the capacity ofIndonesian NGOs in that the technology facilitates the extension of networks,provides information channels and platforms and these contribute ultimatelyin widening the perspective and understanding of NGOs towards the complexproblems they aim to address.8 This capacity building also enables them toparticipate better and integrate closer with global civil society. Participation ofIndonesian civil society, including rural NGOs, in parallel meetings at multilat-eral or world summits (such as in Seattle in 1999), as well as attendance inthe series of World Social Forums (since 2001), arguably contributes to thegrowing global NGOs collaboration with Indonesian groups. In this sense, the

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advancement of global NGO movements seems to be both an outcome and ameans of global collaboration, which is heavily mediated by the Internet.

Having mapped the dimensions of Internet adoption in NGOs from a generalperspective, the next section presents a detailed account of the way a rural NGOadopts and uses the Internet and the impacts it brings, using a case study.

4. A tale from the field: Yayasan Duta Awam9

To reach a more nuanced understanding about how rural NGOs work and howthey benefit from the use of the Internet in their organizations, the case ofYayasan Duta Awam (YDA) is presented here. YDA is a local farmer advocacyNGO based in Central Java province but works in other regions, i.e. Riau,West Kalimantan, Bengkulu and South Kalimantan provinces, in a closenetwork with tens of other local NGOs working in similar issues. In additionto its international networking with international organizations like the CatholicRelief Service and Ford Foundation, YDA is also an active member of SatuDunia, anational Indonesian civil society network, part of OneWorld.Net.10 Together withits networks, YDA is now championing the monitoring of the implementation ofCERD (Community Empowerment for Rural Development), a nation-wideproject funded by a loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The hullabaloo of rural development has become a bitter picture for farmers– the beneficiaries that YDA works for and with. However, apart from realizingthat they are poor, many of these farmers do not understand the bigger pictureand thus they lose hope in their life. YDA aspires to give this life back to thefarmers. At the policy level, this is done by promoting their rights; at a practicallevel, it is carried out by widening farmers’ perspectives about the complexitiesof the broader situation – not to get them lost in the complexities but to letthem decide what is best for their own life. To YDA, farmers should be themain actors determining their own life – they should not and must not beneglected in rural development policies and practices.

Despite being an advocacy NGO, what YDA does is perhaps representativeof some of the typical courses of action of rural NGOs in Indonesia. Even withhuge variations in activism and different approaches (development vis-a-vis advo-cacy), by and large, there are three common areas of activity oriented towardsfarmers: (i) awareness raising; (ii) professional capacity-building; and (iii)empowerment of farmers as citizens. First, raising farmers’ awareness hasnever been more important, as rural development policies, which directlyaffect farmers’ lives, are not always in their interests. For many rural NGOslike YDA, awareness raising is central, particularly because globalization hasbeen affecting rural life in many ways and does not always bring about positive

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development for rural inhabitants. The abstract idea of globalization has a veryreal face in rural development, which is often frightening and intimidating forordinary farmers in Indonesia.11 Globalized rural development, influenced byglobal interests, has transformed the country’s rural sector into a sector ofmisery which is being sacrificed for urban development and industrialization;where land is being converted for industrial purposes and where humanresources are being lost. Literatures on poverty demonstrate that land tenureor land ownership is a critical factor implicated in poverty incidence. There isalso the effect of out-migration of productive labour from villages to urbanand suburban areas in search of work, mainly in the industrial sector (Aiditn.d.; Tjondronegoro 1984; Raynolds 2002). Farmers need to be aware of thissituation.

Second, building the capacity of farmers helps them cope with what hasbeen left by the failure of three decades of green revolution in the country. InIndonesia, mainstream farming and agricultural policies based on the green revo-lution have destroyed a lot of rural land which has become very difficult, if notimpossible, to restore to its natural fertility. Capacity building for farmers (forexample by introducing low input and organic farming, sustainable agricultureand promotion of fairer trading, etc.) not only improves farmers’ skills andknowledge but significantly contributes to the effort to restore soil’s fertility.Capacity building of this sort also offers a possible way out of the viciouscircle of structural poverty, as farmers lose their own land and become mere‘workers’ (petani penggarap) and earn little in return for their hard work,giving rural people little opportunity to make decisions about their own life.For organizations like YDA, capacity building is therefore not only about provid-ing skills but also providing knowledge and awareness for rural communities.

Lastly, in such a context, rural empowerment now has a new dimension: itprovides farmers and rural inhabitants with a better opportunity to participate inrural development and hence enables them to take part in the very processes thataffect their life and fully participate as citizens. It is in this spirit that the use oftechnology like the Internet in rural empowerment has been introduced deliber-ately. YDA throws away the perception that the Internet is the technology onlyfor ‘people of the city’, the haves, or even the ‘techy-literate’: the Internet is alsothe technology for farmers, for ‘people of the villages’. YDA set up two webcommunities and a mailing list that farmers can join and participate in. One com-munity, agrodev, is aimed at helping Indonesian farmer groups with market accessand promoting sustainable livelihoods through social networking. The other one,indosl, is an Indonesian watchdog network Pesticide and Transgenic Network thatfocuses its concern on monitoring the use of chemical pesticide and transgenicorganisms in the country.12 These two communities have around 80 activemembers linking rural farmers with NGO activists and the wider public.

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Although these online communities (possibly the first of their sort in Indonesia)are formally set up to help disseminate important agricultural-related issues to itsNGO networks, YDA also encourages farmers to be active users of the Internet,to be aware of the global issues in agriculture and rural development, and toengage with international farmers’ networks as the Internet has becomeincreasingly available in some villages through telecentres or warnet (literallymeans internet kiosk). The result of this effort, for YDA, is sometimes beyondexpectation (see Tukimin’s experience in Box 1).

BOX 1 YDA and Advokasi.About the organization. YDA, www.dutaawam.org, set up in Solo, Central Javain 1996, is a NGO working on the issue of farmers advocacy and civil societyempowerment. Working with 16 full-timers, YDA aims particularly toempower the farmers so that they can advocate themselves independentlyin the future, when agricultural and rural development issues are projectedto escalate politically in Indonesia. This goal is to be achieved through threemain strategic activities: participatory research and monitoring, stakeholderdialogue forums and grassroots media. As a ‘Farmers’ Institute for Advocacy’YDA has formulated its strategy to empower and increase farmers’ capacitythrough educations, trainings and mobilization; advocacy; development ofpublic discourse; database; and capacity building for institutions and organiz-ations. To help running the organization, YDA has been using the Internetsince 1998, when Internet was firstly introduced to the public in Solo andwas probably the first NGO in the area which adopted the Internet.Internet use for communication and networking. For YDA, the main reason forusing the Internet was plain: the increasing need for up-to-date information,both for the organization and mainly for its beneficiaries, namely farmers andrural communities. As a part of the organization’s strategy, the Internet isintroduced to YDA’s staff, networks, and their beneficiaries: local farmers.Not only is the farmer’s bulletin ‘Advokasiı’ made available online, butdespite difficulties, YDA has also endeavoured to pioneer online communitiesfor farmers and its NGO networks. The result of YDA’s engagement with theInternet sometimes goes beyond what can be imagined. It would certainly besimplifying to claim that farmers’ broadened understanding about globalpolitical-economy issues surrounding agricultural development and policy isthe result from YDA’s (and its network’s) use of the Internet. But certainlyit is difficult, if not impossible, for YDA and its networks to keep updatedwith the latest development in agricultural development policy, includingthe global issues surrounding it, if they do not adopt the Internet.

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Building farmers capacity. To take a case, Tukimin is an ordinary farmer fromKiram Village, Banjar, and a regular reader of Advokasi. He once confidentlyargued with an ADB’s project executor when he saw the mismatch betweenthe planning and the actual project undertaking during CERD project. Heinsisted that there should be participatory approach in the project instead oftop-down implementation, because ‘This project is being financed by the govern-ment’s debt to ADB, and it is us, the people, who will have to pay it back’, replyingagainst the statement of an ADB’s engineer that the project was possiblemerely because of ADB’s fund (Advokasi 2007, p. 12). Using the Internetfor dissemination of awareness and broadening perspectives, YDA helpsfarmers like Tukimin to understand the direct impact of globalization intheir local context.

‘After queuing for oil, now, queuing for national poverty’; ‘Public participatory advocacy in

Riau: Advocacy was successful and not anarchic’; ‘Tip for planting coffee and rice’;

‘Participatory development in Talang Bunut’; ‘Is state still there for the poor?’

Source: Farmer’s bulletin Advokasi, Edition 21, http://www.dutaawam.org/ (15 May 2007).

For rural NGOs like YDA, the Internet can be used as more than a mere communication

tool. More importantly, it could be an important means for empowerment: to build

farmer’s capacity as an active citizen who has the voice and the rights to be involved in

the very process of rural development where they belong – which is the heart of reform

in the rural sector in Indonesia.

Source: Survey, observation and interview with YDA’s Executive Director, Muhammad

Riza (30 November 2005).

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YDA itself has reaped the benefit of Internet use. The use spans from usingemail and VoIP for communication with its partner organizations, searching forinformation using the web, to providing training in Internet literacy to staff,partners and farmers when the access is available. When there are accessproblems, YDA would relay the information to the farmers through printedmaterials and likewise, farmers’ activities are communicated to other organiz-ations through YDA’s website. There are three important aspects of such Inter-net use to consider. One, the Internet is a resource to improve effectiveness as ithelps the organization to access sources of information and is important for com-munication purposes. YDA’s staff have become familiar in using email not onlyfor regular communication with their colleagues and networks, but also forreporting activities; information searching through the WWW has becomecommon practice to help with participatory research and advocacy work. Two,the Internet has been a means by which both the NGO and the farmers withwhom they work can become embedded in national and international move-ments. For example, the change of YDA’s website from a show-window-typeof website into a blog-styled website reflects the vision of a shared and networkedcommunity. Furthermore, using email for internal communication and externalnetworking has proven to be beneficial for YDA and its beneficiary groups, beinginvolved in the rural movement both nationally and internationally. Three, despitethis, the adoption and use of technology is not a straightforward process. There isa gradual process of mastering, usually known as ‘social learning’, or pendampin-gan (literally means ‘companionship’) through which staff who use the Internetless intensively are accompanied by others who use it more intensively. Thislearning process, apparently, does not stop at the organization level.

Pendampingan [(companionship)] is the best way [to work with our benefici-aries]. Unfortunately, our NGOs colleagues, to our observation, are stillminimal in sharing farmers’ issues. Only few do it properly. Whereas weknow that there are abundant issues related to farmer and rural developmentout there, at national and global scale . . . like genetic engineering or [chemical]pesticide. . . . That’s why I think we should help these [NGOs] to use the Inter-netmore strategically in long-term perspective, and not just for [organisations’]visibility and social status. Because, in many cases, although they can accessemail and Internet [WWW] they still come to us, YDA, to ask questions towhich the answers can actually be found in the Internet very easily. I wonderwhy this happens

(Muhammad Riza, interview, 30 November 2005)

The YDA case above shows how the strategic use of the Internet for rural empow-erment is structured and routinized in the organization. It also shows how, by

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creating space for social learning, both at the organization and the network level,familiarization with the Internet becomes much easier for the organizations andnetworks. The benefit of such technological implementation can also be enjoyedrelatively more quickly, especially by the beneficiaries they workwith: the farmers.

5. Reflection and lessons learned

The survey on the use of the Internet in NGOs and the case study of YDA bringssome points for reflection. First, the distinction between ‘evolutionary’ and‘revolutionary’ views of technology13 is made. Although the advent of Internettechnology is considered to be revolutionary in that it fundamentally empowersthe role of NGOs in social movements as conceived by them in the survey (recallthe discussion of Figures 3 and 4),14 the adoption of it seems to follow an evol-utionary path. The explanation lies in the nature of the social engagement ofNGOs: using technology for cyberactivism is important (as theorised byMcCaughey & Ayers 2003), but it is only secondary to direct interaction andengagement with the beneficiaries. This is a major point in the case of theNGO movement in the rural sector. Using the Internet for rural empowermentis important, but the real reform and development takes place in the ‘off-line’realm: the real engagement with farmers and rural issues and activism – asclearly shown in the case of YDA. To take the reflection further, on the onehand, the substitution effect of the Internet is not fully realized most probablybecause of the problems of access availability. On the other hand, using the Inter-net as a communication tool does not mean replacing ‘older’ technologies likethe telephone or fax; neither does it mean swapping printed bulletins foronline newsletters for the dissemination of information and managing organiz-ational networks, precisely because the ‘older’ technologies are a mediationfor a more ‘direct’ engagement and interaction with beneficiaries and networks.

Second, the adaptation of technology means building organizational capability. Fromclose observation of Indonesian NGOs like YDA, this study suggests that whatcharacterizes the adoption and use of technology like the Internet is the effort tobuild organizational capability, particularly to configure and reconfigure thetechnology according to their needs – or in short, building ‘configurationalcapability’.15 At the empirical level, as shown both by the survey and case study,the strategic use of the Internet in civil society means that the technology isrecognized as having the potential to be a platform for strategic activities (likecampaigning, civic engagement, fundraising, coalition building, etc.). Whatmatters in the use of the Internet in NGOs, then, is whether or not thesepotentials can be realized and thus become an advantage for strategic use. It isimperative that Indonesian NGOs build their capabilities in strategically using

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the Internet by configuring and reconfiguring both technological and organizationalproperties. As shown in the case of YDA, the development of these capabilities (andtheir aspects) depends on the provision of continuous learning in the organizationsand networks through social learning or ‘companionship’. Such a process is substan-tial for changemanagement issues in an information system strategy (Galliers 2004;2007), for it addresses not only strategies (and strategizing) but also the unantici-pated consequences of the strategic use of the Internet in NGOs.

Third, there are two strategic uses of the Internet in rural NGOs: networking andempowerment of actors. Using the Internet is more than just applying technology fora particular purpose, more importantly, it is about using technology to supportthe strategic and political work of NGOs (Warkentin 2001; Surman & Reilly2003). However, it should be noted that the strategic realm of NGO – andother civil society groups – movements actually stem from ‘traditionalstrengths’ of the civil society sector, like pertinent issues and concerns, tacticalsocial and political orientation, and distinctive activities (Keane 1998; Deakin2001). Using the Internet does endorse these strengths and make potenciesmore realizable, but it does not replace them. The data and the case presentedhere suggest that rural NGOs have potential – and can indeed realize suchpotential – to use the Internet strategically and politically in promoting sustain-able development within rural sector reform. The potential does not lie mainlyin the technology itself, but rather in the strategic use of it. Indeed, the Internetis highly effective in communicating about or campaigning for sustainabledevelopment, but the essence of strategic use would be to use the technologyas a platform to mobilize resources, ideas and actions that put sustainabledevelopment into practice through advocacy or development activities.

One particular strategic use revolves around the idea of networking the move-ment. While networking with global civil society is undoubtedly important today,in order to take rural sector reform and development on board, networking withlocal and national organizations has never been as significant. Why is this? Socialmovement is all about networking: of ideas, of awareness, of organizations,and of activisms (Diani 2003; McAdam 2003). It is thus important, from anNGO perspective, to channel the grand policies of rural development (as mayhave been reinvigorated by the government) into local concerns and to widenthe direct involvement of organizations and their beneficiaries towards theimplementation of such policies. In this sense, networking is important notonly to help expand and animate the networks themselves, but also to facilitatethe understanding about the complex nature of rural development issues in thelocal context. Fuelled by the use of technological artefacts like the Internet, anetwork of social movement in a country like Indonesia is no longer just aninstrument for civil society to mobilize resources and action: it has become alocus of power in society, a powerful fabric of social change. The Internet

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itself, working as a driver of these networks, as a direct consequence, should beviewed as more than just a communication tool.

Another strategic use of the Internet in rural NGOs is the empowerment of ben-eficiaries. The case of YDA shows that through Internet use, NGOs can reallyempower farmers and rural communities by broadening their perspectivestowards various global issues that resonate with their local context. This way,Internet use can help NGOs assist the farmers to create the opportunities fortheir self-sufficiency and self-dependency. It helps NGOs encourage rural commu-nities and develop their skills to engage in a more sustainable rural development.Just like most Indonesian NGOs, which do not have the luxury of being able toafford an IT specialist to help them use the technology, YDA chose social learningas a strategy for Internet implementation because it suits thewayNGOswork. Thecase further suggests that organizations could actually exploit and explore technol-ogy more effectively to improve operational management and provide strategicmanagement information to achieve their missions and goals. More importantly,the use of technologies like the Internet can be used by NGOs to help their ben-eficiaries widen their perspectives about global issues which affect the very contextof their work: rural development. This is of paramount importance because a lot ofproblematic rural development issues at the macro-level need to be disentangled,and one way to do so is to articulate the issues in the local circumstance and tounderstand the implication in context (Raynolds 2000; Kwa 2004).

As a final reflection, there is one critical note about these strategic uses: theInternet and its use in IndonesianNGOs cannot be seen as homogenous. As depictedin the context of this study in the earlier section, large parts of the population do nothave access or capabilities to use the Internet. It is within this very circumstance thatNGOs need to ‘translate’ and ‘interpret’ un-adapted content of the Net. That it istrue not only for technicalities like language, also in terms of the ‘context’: globalissues need to be rearticulated andmade to be understood within the local context.Only if such problems can be properly tackled, the use of the Internet can signifi-cantly impact Indonesian NGOs’ relationship with their national and internationalpartners and to empower their beneficiaries. This case also offers a lesson: adoptionof the Internet is not only affected by availability of access and determined by thecharacteristics of individuals adopting the innovation (e.g. rural communities andfarmers), rather, it has more to do with the constraints and opportunities providedby those disseminating the innovation (e.g. rural NGOs).

6. Concluding notes

Reform and sustainable development in the rural sector, it is claimed, has been amajor agenda of Indonesia’s reformasi, both by the government agencies and by

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non-government institutions. However, NGOs have always been very critical ofvarious policies in rural development imposed by the government, mainlybecause NGOs view – from past experiences and future projections – thatthese policies are not in favour of farmers and rural communities in the longterm. While, for the government, reform generally means ‘development’, forNGOs this implies ‘empowerment’. Consequently, while rural communitiesare seen as ‘objects of development’ by the government (as in the notion of‘food security’), they are ‘subject’ in the eyes of NGOs (as in ‘food sover-eignty’). The implication of this is fundamental: rural sector reform is notonly about building rural communities through agricultural and rural develop-ment in the grand political economy scenario as largely envisaged by the govern-ment. Rather, it is about reclaiming farmers’ and rural communities’ social,political and economic rights to determine their own life; it concerns elevatingstandards of living in rural areas; it involves protection of the rural environment;and it invokes rural sector sustainability – objectives which are commonly sharedamong Indonesian NGOs, particularly those who work in the rural sector.

It is important to take this into account when examining how rural NGOsuse the Internet to help them to take on board rural sector reform and sustain-able development in their activism, because both their adoption of the technol-ogy and their response towards the issue cannot be taken for granted.

Evidence here suggests that not only does Internet use impact upon NGO’sperformance in terms of internal management, but more importantly, that such ause has contributed to the widening of organizational perspectives, expansion oforganizational networks and thus the increase of organizational influences in thesociety, including in the furtherance of rural sector reform and development. Infact, this technological use can also, to some extent, be seen to be part of thestrategy of Indonesian rural NGOs to build critical views towards policies andpractices of rural development through their engagement with various civicgroups, including farmers.

While this suggests strongly that the Internet has become a significant meansfor NGOs and their beneficiary groups to actively participate in social transform-ation, direct engagement and interaction with the beneficiaries is irreplaceable,for the fabric of social change is, in the context of Indonesia, often localized in theoffline world. Although such a change may also be initiated in the online world, asthe Internet has become a sphere in which to exist and to act (and thus‘cyberspace’ – a ‘spatial’ dimension in which life exists (Graham 1999)), forrural NGOs this may not be always the first focus. It is not because NGOs donot understand the importance of technology, but because technological use issecondary to the real engagement with rural communities.

Nevertheless, working largely in local contexts, while maintaining globalnetworks, has made Indonesian rural NGOs, to some extent, able to spot

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increasing disillusionment about rural sector reform and development, especiallywhen a more global perspective is taken (Raynolds 2000; Kwa 2004). Being ableto address adequate criticism towards rural sector development (as imposed bythe government in favour of more global control) is not always easy for manyIndonesian rural NGOs. This is why, in addition to engaging in global civilsociety activism, national networking among Indonesian NGOs remains impor-tant not only for building and enhancing the capacity of social movements topromote sustainable development, but also because it is the fabric of socialchange in itself (as also concluded in Nugroho 2009).

Finally, there are some strategic areas in NGO activism where the Internetcan be, and has been, used strategically and politically to advance NGO involve-ment in rural sector reform and sustainable development. However, there is areal need for further thinking and reflection focusing on what can actually bedone with the strategic implementation of the Internet within organizationsworking in rural issues generally.

Notes

1 Interview: Muhammad Riza (30 November 2005); Indro Surono (3December 2005).

2 Interview: Antonius Waspotrianto (28 October 2005); Indro Surono andAgung Prawoto (3 December 2005); Yulia I. Sari (19 December 2005).

3 AOA, which is currently part of the new WTO trade round launchedin November 2001, has elements that are likely to be problematic forIndonesia, e.g. (i) another round of reduction in tariffs; (ii) possiblemeasures that could ensure state trading enterprises (STE), such asBULOG (Indonesia’s STE for rice and other sensitive commodities)from having import monopoly powers; (iii) very little, or no real disci-plines on domestic supports, e.g. no overall caps or limits on the green boxspending is being discussed for the developed countries (which meansthat dumping of cheap agriculture produce by the USA and EU into devel-oping countries will continue, and could even increase); and (iv) special anddifferential treatment for developing countries under discussion, e.g. theconcept of special products and a special safeguard mechanism (spear-headed by Indonesia) is extremely inadequate since these are merelyband-aid measures. Food security and rural livelihoods cannot be limitedto a small number of crops but should encompass the broad range ofproducts small farmer produce (Kwa 2004).

4 See Appendix for a more detailed account. However, it should be notedthat in the early days of the Internet use in Indonesian NGOs, it was

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advocacy organizations that pioneered the use of the Internet for pushingsocial movement. An interview with Wahyu Susilo of INFID (1 December2005) reveals the birth of Nusanet initiated by INFID as the first securecommunication exchange platform for civil society activists. Nusanetplayed an undeniably important role for Indonesian CSOs in establishinglinks with their partners across the archipelago in order to fight for demo-cratization and across the globe for mobilizing global solidarity, especiallyin overthrowing Soeharto’s regime.

5 Interview with Indro Surono (3 December 2005). Agung Prawoto (3December 2005); Muhammad Riza (30 November 2005); AntoniusWaspotrianto (28 October 2005).

6 Interview with Muhammad Riza (30 November 2005); Antonius Waspo-trianto (28 October 2005); Agung Prawoto (3 December 2005).

7 Onno W. Purbo’s blog http://asiablogging.com/blog/221/role-of-ict-in-rural-development/.

8 Interview with Indro Surono (3 December 2005); Muhammad Riza (30November 2005); Antonius Waspotrianto (28 October 2005).

9 This section is based on the survey and interview with YDA’s ExecutiveDirector, Muhammad Riza (30 November 2005), and also appears inNugroho (2007b).

10 SatuDunia is a newly established Indonesian node of the global networkOneWorld.net (www.oneworld.net), which was established since 1995and currently has more than 1,600 partners internationally. SatuDunia isan initiative of HIVOS, Yayasan Jaring and OneWorld UK and was officiallyset-up on 16 December 2006. See http://www.satudunia.net/?q¼node/238 (2 April 2009).

11 Recall the integration of rural sector within WTO regime through AOA,as outlined in Section 2 above.

12 See http://agrodev.multiply.com and http://indosl.multiply.com, themailing list is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agrodev/.

13 See, for example, Freeman and Perez (1998).14 This points are also observed by some scholars (Harney & Olivia 2003; Hill

2003; Lim 2003b; Hill & Sen 2005).15 ‘Configurational capability’ is defined here as an organization’s capacity and

ability to arrange their use of the Internet by modifying its settings andconfigurations, including hardware and software, and at the same time,also modifying the organization’s routines such as working arrangementsand internal policies. There are four aspects of configurational capabilitiesobserved when NGOs implement the Internet: (i) cognitive (configuringdistributed knowledge of different kinds), (ii) organizational (configuringdistributed actors and other repositories of knowledge and know-how),

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(iii) design (configuring functional features and solutions), and (iv) affective(configuring motivation, shared value, issues and concerns). The first threeaspects were also observed by scholars who also found similar capabilitieswhen researching low-tech companies in PILOT project (Bender 2005,2006; Bender & Laestadius 2005; Hirsch-Kreinsen et al. 2005). The affec-tive aspect, which may have escaped their attention because of the nature ofthe organizations being studied, appears very strongly in this study. Theseaspects together build the organization’s configurational capabilities.

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Appendix

Analysing Indonesian NGO’s issues and concerns and adoption pattern usingMIMIC-LCA.

The MIMIC-LCA model is a classification method when researchers cannotfind a ‘gold standard’ to classify participants. The MIMIC-LCA model includesfeatures of a typical LCA model and introduces a new relation between the latentclass and covariates (MacCutcheon 1987; Magidson & Vermunt 2002; Vermunt& Magidson 2002).

In this case, the covariates are: length of Internet use (intsinc), PC use(pcsinc), IT expenditure as percentage of annual turnover (itexpproc), and ITexpenditure in nominal (itexpnom); while variables being estimated are theissues and concerns data: ic_env (environment), ic_glob (globalization), ic_rural(rural), ic_urban (urban), ic_devp (development), ic_hrights (human rights),ic_justpec (justice and peace), ic_democ (democratization), ic_gender (gender),ic_child (children and youth), ic_poverty (poverty alleviation), ic_educ (edu-cation), ic_disabl (disable), ic_labour (labour and trade union), ic_farmer(farmer), ic_prof (professional worker), ic_gov (governance), ic_csemp (civilsociety empowerment), ic_confres (conflict resolution), ic_plural (pluralism),ic_idigns (indigenous rights), ic_ecosoc (economic, cultural, and social rights),ic_oth (other issues). The results from MIMIC-LCA models and the profileare presented below.

The goodness-of-fit of the MIMIC model

Model LL BIC(LL) Npar L2 df p-Value Class. Err.

2 Class 22,553.67 5,420.4256 58 4,421.7976 163 1.8e2811 0.0153

3 Class 22,450.18 5,407.792 94 4,214.8303 127 1.3e2794 0.0258

4 Class 22,363.57 5,428.8913 130 4,041.5957 91 1.7e2786 0.0384

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The profile of indicators.

Yanuar Nugroho is a research associate with the Manchester Institute of Inno-

vation Research (MIOIR) at the University of Manchester UK. His research

focuses on technological innovation and social change with particular interest

in civil society sector in non-western contexts. He is also a member of research

group in the area of innovation, development and sustainability. Address:

Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, University of Manchester, Harold

Hankins Building – MBS West, Precinct Centre, Oxford Road, Manchester

M13 9PL, UK. [email: yanuar.nugroho@manchester.ac.uk]

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