HIGHLIGHTS
2018
Animism and Interconnectivity is an ethnographic study of Batek Dè’ and Manya’ religion on the periphery of the Malaysian rainforest. In the twenty-first century, the lives of these two small-scale groups of former hunter-gatherers take place on the interconnected frontier between forest and the outside world, a nexus of different ideas, peoples and objects of diverse origins. Through an examination of specific events occurring in particular places on the forest periphery, the book highlights changes and continuities in shamanistic practices, myths, cosmologies and relations with other-than-human beings in the transformed physical and social landscape. Each chapter presents ethnographic vignettes and case-studies as a means of providing concrete examples of how contemporary Batek and Manya’ animism is shaped by ongoing socio-economic, political and environmental change in twenty-first century Malaysia. Connectivity is both empowering and debilitating, the various modalities it takes must be understood as shaping animistic forms and practices within a context of shifting political and ecological conditions.
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2016
This chapter focuses on how the Batek Tanum have realigned their religious and moral geographies in an increasingly globalized world. Under constant pressure from political, social and economic marginalization, stemming principally from being displaced from ancestral landscapes, they have demonstrated remarkable adaptability by incorporating new ideas, events and imagery into their religious practices and beliefs. This adaptability has allowed for change to occur while social and ontological continuity is maintained. The ability to transform the fabric of their religious landscape within the contemporary context of massive environmental degradation, territorial loss and social pressure constitutes an effective strategy of empowerment, a counter to the threats of marginalisation. Examination of the ways these transformations take on a global dimension allows us to delineate the threads of Batek Tanum resistance to the devastating effects of transnational forces at work within their environment
2014
Traumatic experiences of past violence and atrocities greatly influence the Batek’s and Batek Tanum’s present attitudes toward direct and structural forms of violence. A variety of anti-violent strategies are adopted, including the choice to escape when physically threatened. Rather than demonstrating ‘weakness’, this course of action represents a smart survival strategy. External violence reinforces values of internal cooperation and mutual-aid that foraging societies, even sedentary groups, typically privilege. In recent years, the Batek’s increasing political awareness has opened new forms of resistance against the structural violence embedded within Malaysian society.
Our study proposes that societies cannot simply be labelled as violent or non-violent on the basis of socio-biological theories. Research into hunter-gatherer social organization and violence needs to be reframed within larger debates about structural violence. The “anti-violence” of certain foraging groups can be understood as a powerful form of resilience to outside pressures and foraging groups’ best possible strategy for survival.
2013
Bateks imbue the forest with religious significance that they inscribe onto the landscape through movement, everyday activities, storytelling, trancing and shamanic journeying. However, as processes of globalization transform Malaysian landscapes, many Batek groups have been relocated to the forest fringes where they are often pressured into converting to world religions, particularly Islam. Batek religious beliefs and practices have been re-shaped by their increasing encounters with global flows of ideologies, technologies, objects, capital and people, as landscapes are opened up to development. This article analyzes the ways these encounters are incorporated into the fabric of the Batek’s religious world and how new objects and ideas have been figuratively and literally assimilated into their taboo systems and cosmology. Particular attention is paid to the impacts of globalization as expressed through tropes of fear.