Cultural ecology and identity negotiation: Reading Padanglawas legends as a discourse of local resistance in the era of global literature

The globalization of world literature creates an acute dilemma for local and national literatures, forcing them to navigate between sustaining unique cultural entities and succumbing to homogenizing external pressures. This article examines oral legends from Padanglawas Regency, North Sumatra Province, as dynamic arenas of cultural identity negotiation and localized resistance within contemporary planetary literary dynamics. Grounded in the theoretical premise that literature functions as a biocultural artifact inextricably linked to its ecological and social matrix, this research synthesizes a robust cultural ecology paradigm with a decolonial post-European comparative literature framework. Through an interpretive qualitative methodology examining a corpus of 16 documented Padanglawas folktales, this study systematically analyzes the reciprocal interactions between ecological parameters (habitat preservation, natural resource governance, sustainability) and socio-cultural dimensions (cosmology, kinship organization, moral regulations, ritual arts). The findings reveal that Padanglawas legends transcend archaic folkloric artifacts, operating instead as living socio-ecological laboratories that articulate complex ethical negotiations between human communities, natural environments, and political authority. Narratives such as “Si Oppung” and “Parmata Sapihak” function as structural instruments of social regulation and moral guardianship rooted in indigenous cosmology. Meanwhile, accounts like “Siti Halus” and “Liang Namuap” stage ontological mediations between human society and supernatural domains, whereas “Bah Rumun” and “Daulat Raja Chola” archive extensive pre-modern trans-regional and cross-cultural connectivities between the Indonesian Archipelago and South Asia. Consequently, local literature emerges not as a passive subordinate in comparative studies, but as an active agent forging ecological consciousness and cultural resilience against global homogenization. These insights demonstrate that comparative literature pedagogy must be strategically reoriented to defend national and regional literatures from planetary literary enclosure—directly echoing the visionary theme of the 35th KIK HISKI conference in 2026, “Indonesian Literature as a Citizen of World Literature,” which emphasizes the indispensable bargaining power of localized cultures in the global arena.