Concrete Bodies, Forest Hearts: The Social Resilience and Resistance of Sarawak’s Penan in the Period of Post-Environmental Movement

• Main Authors: Nga Shi Yeu, 顏仕宇
• Other Authors: Su-Mei Lo
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/59pan5

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 人類學研究所 === 107 === This thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork among the settled Penan community, with whom I am mainly concerned in interior central of tropical forest, which locates in Sarawak, Malaysia. The icons of resistance and spirit of environmental guardianship are claimed to the Penan due to publication at the forefront of the international platform by environmental activists according to the dramatic upsurge in the issue of forest degradation since the 1980s. Regarding the current phenomena in wage employment and intermarriage relationship with logging developers, I attempt to research on the question that how commonly defined “hunter-gatherer” Penan community presents their affinity towards market opportunities, and the engagement of extractive capitalism in daily life is both a question of social relations and a political issue of subjectivity. In examining the zone of ambiguity towards economic development and balance in livelihood, my analysis leads to rethinking the notion of collectivity in Penan community, whereby actors with differential bodily experiences to express their subjectivities towards the statements of development, rather than identified cultural identity as isolated entities. Further, as witnessed the resource contention in daily life, it discerns a linkage to the politics of capital accumulation, where a specific form of domination is created. Therefore, I would explore Penan’s concept of power relations with my focus on local leadership and the negotiation process in the context of customary right. Lastly, I will argue that the recognition of landscape is within the context of cognitive and politically imaginative dimensions based on their current way of livelihood under modernization, rather merely a concrete narration and disengaged from the particular sentiments of the local community. Thus, Penan’s responses to river pollution are required to examine the aspect of continuity for the landscape as a source of a hidden transcript. The conceptual aim is to offer a more sensitive perspective of the human cause of river pollution in local, with their past memory of resistance, and social resilience to engage in current living status in the period of post-environmental movement.