sasi, whereas our respondents were able to provide a detailed account of where and how land
sasi is practiced in the village territory. On the other hand, Evans et al. record sasi as occurring
in Hila, whereas we note its absence. It seems that sasi in Hila has been slowly dying and has
been practiced to some extent into the 1990s. Whether at this point you proclaim it dead or
alive is a matter of opinion. Our results should be seen not as an attempt to provide some
definitive single answer to the question of what is sasi. That is clearly impossible. Rather, our
results are a snapshot of village-level perceptions in 1997.
Some will want to disagree with the fact that we have included among “sasi” villages a few
where there is no access restriction applied to local residents. Our approach has been to
honor our respondents’ concepts of sasi, not impose any academic definition. If villagers in
Rohua, Amahai and other parts of Seram say they have sasi, we have recorded the presence of
sasi, even though their system does not conform with sasi as practiced in traditional villages
of the Lease Islands. In the same vein, we record sasi lelang in Muslim villages such as Kabauw
and Pelauw as sasi, even though the connection with adat tradition has become tenuous.
7.5.2 Variability and core concepts
The inventory shows that occurrence and attributes of the sasi institution and marine sasi, in
particular, vary with village religion, population size and island, and also according to whether
it is adat, church or “others”. Marine sasi is most common in villages of 2,000-3,000 people
and is most usually administered by adat or local government leaders, with the church playing
only a supporting role.
Despite the welter of variation in the institution as operationalized in villages of central
Maluku, sasi evokes a consistently positive response from village authorities, who regard it
as good and useful even if in their own village, sasi is lost or non-functional. The value of sasi
is seen to lie in prevention of theft, optimization of village incomes, rational resource use
and, in some cases, resource conservation.
The inventory reveals that in any one village, the sasi institution of today is never a
comprehensive management system. Its scope and area of application are very limited.
Considering the sum of its many variants, however, we can also say that sasi does involve
many concepts, attributes and structures that are important in any marine resource
management and conservation regime. These include:
1. The concept of open and closed areas/open and closed seasons.
2. The concept of community tenure rights over a marine area.
3. The concept of limiting access to resources.
4. Controlled harvest and distribution of benefits.
5. Locally developed and agreed upon regulations. These may be specific to the village,
(limitation of gear types, size of fish or shellfish harvestable) or may reinforce national
laws (prohibition of blast fishing, use of poisons).
6. Local wardens or enforcers (the kewang) who have defined rules of process as well as
prescribed sanctions to impose.
7. A responsibility shared by all residents to report violations of sasi rules.
8. Methods operating to advise all residents at regular intervals of the substance of sasi
rules.
9. An overall goal of improving or maintaining community welfare which, being rooted
in adat or the concept of the unity of man with nature, is consistent with modern
concepts of sustainable use.
10. A hierarchical institutional structure wherein various tasks are divided among clearly
78 An Institutional Analysis of Sasi Laut in Maluku, Indonesia