Gintingan in Subang : an indigenous institution for sustainable community-based development in the Sunda Region of West Java, Indonesia

This study attempts to understand how indigenous community institutions pose an important role in sustainable community-based development, including the integration between local culture and development. Gintingan as an indigenous community institution in Subang of West Java is used as an example of how the local people of Kabupaten Subang operationalise their indigenous beliefs and systems in their livelihood, and how dynamic processes influence the utilisation of the indigenous institutions to reach the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the community level. In particular, this study identifies local people’s preferences towards the available ‘Plural Community Institutional System (PCINS)’ in the society: indigenous, transitional, and modern institutions. The independent and intervening factors, i.e. socio-demographic, psycho-social, as well as government and private promotional factors, are examined in the study, to understand the dynamic influences of how the local people of Subang choose their preferences to utilise the available community institutional systems. The study also seeks to contribute ethnoscientific findings to the development debate about the top-down versus bottom-up approaches in development. In particular, the discourse examines the roles of both approaches in poverty reduction, by using the community institutional systems approach.