Page 126 - Ranah Studi Agraria: Penguasaan Tanah dan Hubungan Agraris

3

Changes in the Kedokan System:
Institutional Adaptation or Exploitation?

Gunawan Wiradi

A. Introduction

Kedokan system is basically a labour arrangement, based
on oral agreement, in which the labourer (s) will do a particu-
lar stage of work during the rice cultivation without being paid
in money, on a particular section (s) of a sawah, (The Javanese
word kedok means a plot—or a dike-off section—of a sawah).
The labourer(s) are however, the only persons who have the
right to harvest the rice and receive a certain share of the
product of the particular section of land they worked. The
common harvesters cannot join the harvest unless they are
admitted by these kedokan operators. lt is the kedokan opera-
tors (or pengedak), and not the landowner, who decides who

57