Kebang Lewa Lolon: Institutionalizing Gemohing Values and Formulating a Community-Based Blue Economy Governance Model in East Flores

Yosef Dionisius Lamawuran, Maria Augustin Lopes Amaral, Ferdinandus Ngau Lobo, Alexander Simon Tanody, Ibrahim Miguel

Abstract


The blue economy is criticized for remaining dominated by technocratic-sectoral approaches, while community-based governance (CBG) literature tends to treat collective norms as a designed variable rather than the outcome of a long-institutionalized cultural value system. This gap leaves unanswered how local wisdom can be systematically institutionalized into authority structures, collective rules, and social accountability within community-based blue economy governance. This study analyzes how Kebang Lewa Lolon, a Gemohing-value-based marine zoning practice in Bubuatagamu Village, South Solor District, East Flores Regency, reflects the blue economy and CBG, and formulates an equitable, sustainable local wisdom-based CBG model. Using a qualitative instrumental case study design, data were collected through in-depth interviews, participatory observation, documentation, and focus group discussions involving twenty informants, analyzed thematically and inductively through institutional bricolage and Ostrom's design principles. Findings show that authority, collective rules, and sanctions within Kebang Lewa Lolon were not administratively designed but assembled (bricoled) from the philosophy of the Lamaholot land-based food barn, translated into three marine zones, evidenced by the failure of the initial technocratic approach and its success once reframed culturally. This study contributes to institutional bricolage scholarship by detailing how that land-based philosophy is reassembled into marine governance, and by showing that the resulting model is not a single, uniform template but a tiered one: ecological sustainability and food security follow a direct pathway of cultural institutionalization, while social justice follows a conditional pathway moderated by a facilitating actor. Practically, replicating a local wisdom-based coastal governance model requires mapping the local cultural-institutional repertoire rather than literally copying the zoning structure.

Keywords


: institutional bricolage; community-based governance; blue economy; local wisdom; Kebang Lewa Lolon.

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References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.33373/jtp.v10i2.9605

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