Congratulations, Jordan Peterson!

Jordan Peterson (PhD in Political Science) has received the Library Treasures Scholarships for AY 2022-2023 for his paper “Land, Identity, and Migration: Beyond resource competition as an explanation for correlation of indigenous mobility and ‘Sons of the Soil’ conflict in West Papua at the regency level”. Congrats, Jordan!

Of the one billion migrants in the world 763 million are estimated to be internal migrants; that is people who move within their country of origin. Relative to international migration, however, there has been a comparative dearth of research on the political implications of the massive movement of people within borders. This project critically engages with ‘Sons of the Soil’ (SoS) conflict theory in the context of indigenous Papuan mobility in West Papua at the regency-level. The invaluable digital resources of the Southeast Asia Collection and the Web Archiving Project for Papua and West Papua in the Pacific Collection will be used to conduct a statistical analysis of data from the Badan Pusat Statistik to understand the correlation between Papuan mobility and incidence of ethnic violence of ‘SoS’ conflict. Furthermore, this project will utilize discourse analysis of primary accounts from websites the Aliansi Demokrasi Untuk Papua, Jaringan Damai Papua, and West Papua Report, and secondary literature to argue that while ‘SoS’ conflict theory has been generative as a conceptual model for understanding the dynamics of ethnic violence in West Papua it lacks sufficient empirical support for the assertion that indigenous mobility is negatively correlated with ethnic conflict due primarily to economic factors. Rather, through discourse analysis of the websites and media produced by indigenous Papuan organizations affiliated with resistance movements indicates that identity is a paramount concern.

Information is cited from the UHM Library’s news