Palm oil wealth and rumour panics in West Kalimantan

The expansion of palm oil cultivation to the hinterlands of West Kalimantan has brought new wealth at an unprecedented rate, but has recently been accompanied by a spread of moral panic, especially among the Dayak. Poverty is the devil's closest companion ancient wisdom tells, although increased material affluence creates its own social problems as well. For the Dayak, the growth of wealth through oil palm plantations is achieved through difficult and painful social processes of losing traditional land, a rapid rise of consumerism, leaving them feeling marginalized in this new economic setting. The promised wealth of palm oil may have materialized, but the old pain is not forgotten, which drives people to ensure that they will always get a share of the wealth by reducing other people's access to it. Enormous wealth can also choke people if the society is not equipped with the proper paths to channel the wealth back to the production system. Combined with long collective memories of real and imagined violence, these problems can lead to the re-emergence of moral panic, one that appears in an old form, but is triggered by new causes.