Abstract
The political rhetoric of social and economic development in Malaysia is used as a dominant and largely unquestioned discourse to justify the industrialized exploitation of the traditional territories of the indigenous people of West Malaysia. This article explores social policy drivers in respect of findings from a condensed ethnography of the Jakun Orang Asli people of Tasik Chini in the State of Pahang. Tasik Chini provides an important example of a wider problem affecting many Orang Asli communities in Malaysia relating to industrial exploitation, but is a case of special interest in respect of its significance as a site of rich and unique biodiversity, as well as being home to one of only two freshwater lakes in West Malaysia. Notably, Tasik Chini is also a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, of which there are only two in Malaysia. The lake and surrounding forests have provided the Jakun villagers with abundant natural resources for subsistence, but now the area is badly eroded and polluted by the ravages of big business. This presents a serious dilemma for the Jakun concerning whether to resist the destruction of their traditional way of life or to comply with state agendas and collude with their loss of self-sufficiency and autonomy. As such, the situation in Tasik Chini raises important questions regarding national social policy drivers and the position and welfare of indigenous people in Malaysia.
Introduction
This article discusses findings from a condensed, ethnographic study of an indigenous community in West Malaysia facing ecological degradation of their traditional territories through industrialization. A critical discussion of national social policy supporting the exploitation of natural resources is offered as providing insights into both the rhetoric of benign wealth generation as well as the controversial rationalization underpinning Malaysia’s idiosyncratic ethnic/‘race’ politics, given the linked rationalization towards economic development with regards to its indigenous communities. This article offers both narratives from indigenous community participants and interviews with non-indigenous professional participants working in the area of indigenous research/activism, creating a dialogic juxtaposition exploring the issues of social and economic development in Malaysia in relation to local communities.
The context of the problematic as examined in this article relates in part to Malaysia’s controversial policy of affirmative action towards the so-called bumiputera groups, comprising the Malay community and Dayak indigenous people on East Malaysia (as opposed to West Malaysian indigenous people studied here), which has been the subject of on-going debate and critique (Whah and Guan, 2017). Less commented on are Malaysia’s social policy drivers relating to the rhetoric of ‘social and economic development’, yet nationally this policy carries inherent problems that affect particular ethnic groups over others. In this article, we will discuss how such rhetoric relates to the privileging of the bumiputera and how this in turn serves to disadvantage and marginalize the least affluent communities in Malaysia, those constituting the indigenous groups of West Malaysia – the ‘Orang Asli’.
Both the Dayaks and the Orang Asli are composed of many different ethnic groups. The Orang Asli in West Malaysia form only 0.6 per cent of the total population in Malaysia (JHEOA, 2010; Nicholas et al., 2002, 2010) and are divided into three large groups with a number of subgroupings, of which the Jakun are classified as ‘Aboriginal Malay’ (See table 1).
Orang Asli Groupings.
Source: Ashencaen Crabtree et al., 2016.
Ethnic and lifestyle subdivisions apart, in the public eye the Orang Asli are often subsumed into one characterization, being perceived as a shy people, backwards in their capabilities and as leading a ‘backwater’ lifestyle (Ashencaen Crabtree et al., 2016). Perceptions of the Orang Asli appear to have changed remarkably little over time in contemporary Malaysia (Nicholas, 2000). The prevalent colonial views of the Orang Asli as both children of nature (Ooi, 2003) and the hapless prey of predatory traders (dealing in indigenous slaves and forest goods) (Leary, 1995) have inherently carried constructed hierarchical positions of superiority and inferiority that are accepted, taken-for-granted and continued in post-colonial Malaysia. Carey (1976) comments that even the most enlightened colonial attitude towards the Orang Asli tended to regard them as so anachronistic that they needed the rarefied air of protected reservations to preserve their culture – something that legal structures reinforced. In turn, Idrus (2011) claims that the general colonial attitude towards the Orang Asli was that of a people occupying the lower rungs of the human evolutionary ladder and therefore in need of paternalistic protection. She argues that these attitudes have permeated post-colonial ethno-politics in Malaysia, where such discourses remain firmly in place in terms of religio-ethnicity and class (Idrus, 2011). Gomes (2004) concurs, stating that contemporary government views of the Orang Asli persist in viewing them as inhabiting an obsolete, immutable and enclosed worldview that permits neither obvious change nor socio-economic development. Commensurately, Nicholas states that a latter-day internal colonization is clearly discernable in the ‘management’ of the Orang Asli through government bodies, today referred to as the JAKOA (Jabatan Kemajuan Orang Asli) (Nicholas, 2000, 2010). As for the people themselves, owing to their entrenched social positions they have adopted the homogenizing appellation ‘Orang Asli’ (‘original people’), for political ends (Nicholas et al., 2002).
In this article, the politics of ‘development’ as applied to the Orang Asli within a socio-political discourse are considered in light of current research into the Jakun villages of Tasik Chini, Pahang, Malaysia. The ethnographic study discussed was undertaken under the auspices of the Tasik Chini Research Centre at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). This sought to offer a social science corrective to the Centre’s predominantly natural science focus on the region and its people. Such alternative views have proved essential in understanding the impact of the socio-economic difficulties experienced by the people of the area in relation to the degradation of their environment, the erosion of traditional lifestyles and the precarious circumstances of finding new sources of livelihood.
The rhetoric of ‘development’ and the Orang Asli
The socio-economic position of the Orang Asli in Malaysia varies across the country, with some communities very much worse off than others. However, altogether they indisputably constitute the most impoverished people in Malaysia, with 35.5% living in hard-core poverty conditions and 76.9% living beneath the poverty line (Nicholas et al., 2002), typified, in the latter case, by the communities studied here.
The 1991 Census survey indicates that 88.7% of Orang Asli continue to live in rural areas, although less than 1% retain nomadic lifestyles, which are associated with the greatest levels of poverty (Nicholas, 2000). Furthermore, the customary rural assets of the Orang Asli have been greatly compromised by loss of customary territories and land incursions over the years, as recorded by the Malaysian human rights ‘watchdog’ SUHAKAM (2013). Regardless of these circumstances in respect of land rights disputes, figures denoting serious poverty serve to endorse the general view promulgated by the government and media regarding the stunted development of the Orang Asli, and thus their need for concerted social and economic development (Gomes, 2004). This position reflects Bourdieu’s (1977) concept of ‘doxa’, a tacit, unspoken ‘taken-for-granted’ self-evidence permeating the socio-political context in which policies affecting people’s development, lifestyles and futures are made. Here we explore the application of doxa underpinning the general national assumption of the need to bring such development to the Orang Asli – an issue of extreme importance to those with vested interests in contemporary government. As Bourdieu (1977: 166) states: the dominant classes have an interest in defending the integrity of the ‘doxa’; in this case because an effective defence allows or even promotes the continuing success of accepted social policies. It retrenches them through the self-evident need for socio-economic development activity for a people who are taken-for-granted as being backward and in need.
Other aspects of underprivilege are indicated by higher morbidity and mortality among the Orang Asli (Baer, 2006; Nicholas, 2010), together with a weaker level of educational attainment, compared to the general population, in terms of ‘school drop-out’ rates (Abdullah et al., 2013; Noor et al., 2011).
Owing to these factors, government efforts have focused on improving the socio-economic demographics of the Orang Asli by promoting their greater participation in the market economy. Based on such evidence a prima facie case would suggest that, on the surface at least, social and economic development of the people is a welcome if challenging endeavour. In respect of this, Nicholas et al. (2002: 12) describe the three main planks of government plans towards the Orang Asli as: integration and assimilation sedentism and regroupment privatization of their development
The assigned role of the JAKOA is to be a departmental tool of government policy and thus to act as protectors of the interests of the Orang Asli. In addition they serve as the people’s mouthpiece, but also as gatekeepers protecting them from being accessed by other groups and outsiders, including researchers. Additionally, the JAKOA are known to use their influence in the selection of community leaders, traditionally selected through adat (customary practice), which is usually decided via inheritance or individual qualities or other selective community-constructed identification processes (Carey, 1976). The role of the JAKOA represents an example of the underlying doxa of backwardness and need. Because of these assumptions their purpose is seen as benign, empowering and necessary, whilst resistance to them is recognized as deviant – all of which reinforces the social policy drive towards ‘development’ and the eradication of occupational lifestyles that run counter to this policy.
Generally, the JAKOA represent the Orang Asli and issues pertaining to them in public forums, in Courts of Law, in public policy and at government level (Nicholas, 2010). The representative aspect of speaking for the Orang Asli as undertaken by the JAKOA is arguably a continuation of post-colonial paternalistic control: an anachronistic measure that may no longer be required. It also continues publicly to perpetuate a myth of incapacity that does little to empower the people represented. Accordingly, many participants in our study expressed highly ambivalent sentiments towards the JAKOA’s role and assistance.
Drawing on the previously introduced Bourdieusian notion of doxa, the language of social and economic development, as articulated in Malaysia, forms a dominant public discourse serving to define a socially validated outlook together with a capitalist modus operandi (Bourdieu, 1977). In these constructions, that which is viewed as out-of-step with these modes is regarded as socially incongruent and invalid, and hence is excluded and marginalized. Such assumptions of right-thinking lead to viewing the very conditions composing underprivilege as a demonstration of the entrenched retarded position of the Orang Asli. This carries the clear implication that the marginalized in these groups exemplify an obdurate form of ethnic pathology serving only to hold them back.
An elucidation of this embedded and seemingly static stereotype applied to the Orang Asli, as a collective ethnic group, is offered by Gomes: It is possible that the Government’s view has been influenced by the existing anthropological literature, it arises more directly from its espousal of the previous modernization model of change which represents the Semai and other Orang Asli as subsistence-oriented, ‘backward’ and ‘traditional’ people in need of modernization through the diffusion of new technology, ‘modern’ values and market orientation. (Gomes, 2004: 2)
The rhetoric of development, underpinned as it is by taken-for-granted and assumed self-evident beliefs, is therefore highly significant to an understanding of the intersections of global, neo-liberal capitalism and the positional constructions of ethnicity and class in Malaysia, as experienced by the Orang Asli people. Such experiences are explicitly connected to macro policy towards the Orang Asli. They are found embedded in the deep fault lines between apparently impermeable ministerial jurisdiction in governance of specific areas of control. This affects Orang Asli lives in terms of which government body manages various resources, with strict jurisdiction creating a lack of joined-up approaches leading to gaps in provision. Furthermore the cleavages between Federal and State Government – both directly and indirectly, but often severely – affect the lives of Orang Asli communities. To give an example, while the Prime Minister Najib is both the Head of the Federal Government and also happens to represent the local Tasik Chini constituency, it is the State Government that primarily controls these local territories and how they are managed.
Ethno/‘race’ politics and development: Who are the bumiputera?
The position of the Orang Asli in terms of ethno-politics in Malaysia is ambiguous, which has proved highly disadvantageous to them collectively. The term ‘bumiputera’ was one that was extended from Malays to embrace the indigenous peoples of Sarawak and Sabah during the negotiations over accession to the new Federation of Malaysia in 1963. While Dayak bumiputeras have gained some advantages from affirmative action policies, the main beneficiaries are perceived to be overwhelmingly the Malay middle classes, where emulating such success may mean adopting Malay Muslim identities and practices (Chua, 2007).
The bumiputera ideology of Malay supremacy, which continues to cling to its privileges with great tenacity in the country (Whah and Guan, 2017), was established through constitutional prerogatives at political levels from the time independence was negotiated (Hew and Ashencaen Crabtree, 2014). Bumiputera status carries a raft of additional advantages via affirmative action policies in terms of education, employment and land/housing rights as enacted under the New Economic Policy of 1970 onwards, through higher shares of capital in the corporate sector, industrialization, urbanization and education; thus serving to lift the Malay community out of widescale poverty and creating a new affluent Malay bourgeoisie (Jomo, 1994; Tan, 2001; Whah and Guan, 2017).
Bumiputera privileges are ideologically based on the concept of indigeneity and thus exclude migrant sojourners, like the Chinese and Indian populations of Malaysia. Yet this assertion contains an unavoidable contradiction, for factually the true indigenes of Peninsular (West) Malaysia are the Orang Asli, and the most authentic Malayan indigenes of all are the Orang Asli Negritoes, who can trace their heritage back to early hunter-gatherer/foragers, the Stone Age Hoabinhians (Carey, 1976; Lye, 2011; Nicholas, 2000). In contrast to the Orang Asli peoples, the Malay population in Malaysia is historically composed of more recent migrant groups from other parts of Southeast Asia, primarily Indonesia (Tan, 2001).
Yet, owing to a number of factors, including perceived remoteness and dispersal, numerical insignificance, culturally traditional lifestyles and a lack of coordinated voice, the Orang Asli of the Peninsular have received no particular political consideration towards recognized ‘native’ prerogatives in respect of their authentic indigenous status. Rather, they serve as an awkward anomaly in the ideological positioning of ethno-politicized Malay supremacy in terms of the status of indigenous privileging. In this context, the doxa of backward children who need assistance helps maintain the superior positioning of the Malays.
A further complexity arises through the formal and international recognition of the specific and frequently disadvantaged circumstances of indigenous people through the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) (Nicholas et al., 2010). The Malaysian government is a signatory of the UNDRIP, which in respect of its recognition of traditional indigenous territories carries a direct international implication in terms of social and economic development in Malaysia. In the meantime, government policy continues to strive to utilize the ambiguous positioning of the Orang Asli to best advantage, while smoothing out the discrepancies. This takes place through such strategies as political ‘representivity’ (control and selection of Orang Asli political/community candidates as opposed to genuine representation) (Nicholas, 2000: 207). Meanwhile, the increasing Islamization of Malaysia, riding on the back of enshrined nationalistic Malay supremacy, gives rise to ‘dakwah’ calls to conversion to the State religion of Islam (Hew and Ashencaen Crabtree, 2014). This is disruptive of traditional indigenous identities, community relationships and ways of being (Toshihiro, 2008). As mentioned, further factors are internal interference with community decision-making processes via JAKOA (Ashencaen Crabtree et al., 2016), and erosion of traditional lifestyles to enforce alignment with the neo-liberal, individualized market economy (Gomes, 2004).
Methodology
Between mid-January and April 2014, six Jakun Orang Asli village communities at (Lake) Tasik Chini were identified and approached via culturally grounded leadership hierarchies, for consent to conduct a qualitative study of the effects of ecological change taking place in the area, as experienced in the lives of participants. These were the kampungs (villages) Gumum, Ulu Gumum, Melai and Ulu Melai, Tanjung Puput and Chenahan (See Figure 1).
Map of Tasik Chini (see Ashencaen Crabtree et al., 2016).
This study used a condensed ethnographic approach to data collection (Rist, 1980; Woolcott, 2008) in which the aim of the research was to develop in-depth insights into the phenomena (Atkinson, 2015; Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). Owing to logistical constraints, data-gathering was confined to an intensive three-month period in the winter–spring months of 2014. Data collection involved critical observation and the gathering of documentary and statistical information, together with visits to local sites of contextual importance. Several individual interviews were carried out with villagers of all ages and both sexes, together with Human Rights activists, NGO workers and academics, supplemented by numerous individual interviews and three community-based focus group discussions at individual villages. Accounts from these stakeholders provided useful insights into how the stark changes to Tasik Chini were experienced and perceived, with wider social and ecological implications attached.
Given the overt disempowerment of the communities by outside agencies where the communities felt their knowledge to be both belittled and dismissed, efforts were made to engage the communities in aspects of co-production of knowledge, and the researchers attempted to dismantle the research hierarchies of ‘expert’ and ‘subject’ (Ashencaen Crabtree et al., 2012).
This approach resonates with indigenous research methodologies, here defined by Chilisa (2012) as seeking to work with the epistemological and ontological assumptions of what counts as reality within the indigenous community. Furthermore, working within indigenous worldviews requires such research to be a vehicle for the values of compassion, care, togetherness, empathy and respect, considered important to many indigenous communities (Chilisa, 2012; Davey et al., 2014). Such prescriptions also imply that the researcher engages fully with the study communities in their struggles towards emancipatory raised-consciousness, referring to the conditions of their oppression (Davey et al., 2014).
Accordingly, indigenous methodologies informed our study in ensuring that respectful engagement of the villages was to the fore (Parker and Ashencaen Crabtree, 2016), and that it was seen to be directly relevant to the Jakun community’s interests. Finally, data analysis was grounded in ethnographic methodology, where findings emerged through the coding of raw data at increasing levels of complexity, and where congruities and anomalies were noted in the development of a thematic analysis (Parker et al., 2011; Ashencaen Crabtree et al., 2016; Ritchie and Lewis, 2003).
Research findings: Disrupted livelihoods
The process of developing thematic analysis of the data indicated several interconnected themes relating to wage earning and subsistence (see Clarke and Braun, 2013; Ritchie and Lewis, 2003). The reliance of the local Jakun communities on the surrounding environment in this respect meant that the marked ecological changes taking place locally were regularly – indeed habitually – referred to. In the following sections, therefore, four themes are discussed that connect with and illuminate the overarching issue of social development as a macro ideology, having direct relevance to the Tasik Chini communities studied. These comprise: Social development and exploitation of natural resources Social development and the eco-tourist trade Impact on the communities – the ‘bankrupt’ environment Social development and poverty
Social development and exploitation of natural resources
The Jakun Orang Asli of Tasik Chini (and those who have married into the communities) have traditionally earned a livelihood through the collecting of forest plant resources, hunting as well as fishing, and small-scale farming activities (Omar, 2014). More recently they have also engaged in opportunistic, locally grown, eco-tourist enterprises. These have since largely faded away through the deterioration of the lake and the demise of a key community-based entrepreneur (Ashencaen Crabtree et al., 2016).
The last couple of decades in particular have witnessed enormous ecological changes to the Tasik Chini environment in which it would be no exaggeration to say that the damage has been profound and demands immediate, vigorous and orchestrated government action (Hezri and Chan, 2012; Pheng, 2014).
According to the accounts provided by the communities, rich deposits of iron ore were discovered at Tasik Chini many years ago by an outsider from the Jah Hut Orang Asli sub-ethnic group who married into the Jakun community (Ashencaen Crabtree et al., 2016). This discovery, however, eventually spelled catastrophe for the local villages when mining concessions were granted by the State of Pahang to external, foreign companies. This has resulted in the inexorable demolition of forested hills, including areas of sacred significance to the people. Deforestation continues to take place on an enormous and very rapid scale in the area, making it difficult to find up-to-date figures in the public domain. However, Sujual et al. (2010) note that Tasik Chini is composed of 75% forested areas and estimate that from 1984 to 2002 these forests shrunk by 861.70 hectares owing to industrialization . The damage was also aerially documented by the global anti-corruption social activist group ‘Transparency International’ in a widely circulated documentary entitled ‘Tasik Chini – Eco system on a brink’ (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXzD2IxtMEk).
The result is that great swathes of once native territory have yielded to the destruction of the logging, mining and palm oil industries. Notably, profits are filtered away to powerful interest groups and do not benefit local people.
Mining has also resulted in contamination of the lake through seeping metal toxins (Ebrahimpour and Idris, 2010). The lake no longer offers former pristine, lotus-laden waters rich in flora and fauna, but is now murky and polluted; fish stocks have also fallen markedly (Ashencaen Crabtree et al., 2016). The Federal Government implemented the building of a dam in the mid-1990s in order to raise the level of water in the lake. This plan, much criticized at the time by Malaysian environmentalists, and without consultation with the Jakun communities, sought to prevent the great (Sungei) Pahang River and its tributary, Sungei Chini, from seasonally flowing into and out of the lake to create a non-tidal lake. The result of damming has been a stagnant eutrophic environment from which toxins cannot escape nor permit passage to migrating fish (Ebrahimpour and Idris, 2010; Shuhaimi-Othman et al., 2008). As described by one older female participant in a focus group discussion: It [the lake] used to be greenish [not brown] and now it is all gone. And [now] when you view it from the Water Treatment [plant] it’s all destroyed. Then we used to have many natural resources like the herbs but once the dam was built the water has been cloudy, the fishes have been decreasing and the water is polluted. Because of the dam the fishes are stuck in the lake and last time the fishes were able to move freely into the lake and out to the river and back to the lake. But they are not as free as they were before. The same as humans – if we are stuck in one place we would begin to die.
Commensurately, while some villagers stated that fish catches were generally edible, all villagers unanimously agreed that the fish were undersized, tainted and unpleasant to eat compared to the past. Rashid, a local Jakun fisherman who has worked the lakes since he was a child, was in a knowledgeable position to make the following comparisons: Before the dam there were a lot of fish, but that the dam caused ekor kucing
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to grow. Once fishes from the Pahang River used to flow into the lake especially when it flooded. The last time [prior to the dam] it was heaven – a lot of fish – and [we] could just use a net to catch them. The high level of PEM (protein-energy malnutrition) in Orang Asli results from a mix of lost foraging and farm land, increases in river pollution (decreasing fish catches), food shortages, the level and frequency of infectious diseases and intestinal parasites, barriers to education and cultural discrimination. (Baer, 2006: 122)
Social development and the eco-tourist trade
The damming of the lake has contributed greatly to its ecological deterioration, leading to its predicted collapse as a sustainable living environment within the next few years (Hezri and Chan, 2012). The dam itself was a clumsy attempt to cash in on greater profits from the promising numbers of tourists that began to visit the lake owing to its undefiled beauty from the 1970s up until the last decade (Ashencaen Crabtree et al., 2016).
The degradation of the lake is regarded as the cause of the collapse of the burgeoning cottage-industry tourist trade at Tasik Chini, as described by this middle-aged male participant: Before, tourists came for the water lilies between the 1990s and 2008. There was a lot of sightseeing, but [after] when they came [there were so few lotuses] and so people used to lie and say they were out of season. The lake was [once] so full of lilies there were only paths for the boats.
As Nubi, a disillusioned participant in his fifties comments: [The local people] don’t do handicraft now as we cannot sell to the tourists, so we’ve had to give it up. Before [the 1980s up to the mid-1990s] then about 20 boats would come per day carrying eight tourists nearly every day.
The deforestation of the surrounding forests by the incursion of big industry is rapidly diminishing the biodiversity of the area where many species of flora and fauna, including wild elephants and tigers, are no longer seen (Pheng, 2014). The huge irony that such disastrous manoeuvres by the State Government to greedily capitalize on the growth of tourism have resulted in the eco-system’s collapse is not lost on the local Jakun. Instead, the collapse is commented on as constituting a huge trauma of bereavement for the community, and as resulting in the main loss of revenue that enabled the local people to profit and assisted them in sustaining their diverse forms of traditional livelihoods.
Admittedly there have been concerted attempts to save Tasik Chini from further destruction, such as the successful application by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia to have the area designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, of which there are two in Malaysia, a surprisingly low number comparatively speaking, where rich biodiversity and human habitats co-exist (UNESCO, 2017). Tasik Chini is also unique in being only one of two freshwater sites in Peninsular Malaysia, making this a site of national significance. Regardless, Tasik Chini’s international status has failed to halt aggressive industrialization and consequent pollution of the area. However, the somewhat wistful idea that Tasik Chini could still be exploited as a viable tourist attraction continues to be resurrected, although not by the locals themselves (Habibah et al., 2013).
Impact on the communities – the ‘bankrupt’ environment
The communities are heavily reliant on the forest as a resource and thus its loss is a grievous blow. Nubi, our previously mentioned participant, graphically describes Tasik Chini as the ‘bank’ of the communities from which a living could always be drawn. The metaphor may be aptly extended to the forest as the ‘people’s bank’ – and one being close to bankruptcy through the unscrupulous financial dealings of others, as the majority of participants perceive the situation, to the grave cost of the local communities.
Now not only are the local Jakun communities unable to find the resources they require for their own food consumption or for trade, but this also carries other serious legacies in seriously jeopardizing the future survival of the community. As Idah, an eloquent elder, explained in a focus group interview: The children will lack land for homes [and to] collect natural resources from the forest. The forest is the place where [we] really make a living, like the herbs, tongkat ali, rotan [rattan].
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The health of the future generation may be worse. They will have no places to grow herbs
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to keep themselves healthy.
This archive of indigenous cultural knowledge is extensive in reference to the Temiar Orang Asli group. Baer (2006) reports an encyclopaedic oral knowledge of the names and uses of 1500 different plant species only superseded by their staggeringly impressive zoological knowledge. These lifestyle aspects clearly question the underlying doxa of self-evident need; however, we can see that unspoken assumptions prevail in all aspects contributing to the demise of traditional lifestyles.
Some younger villagers have consequently been forced to seek other forms of employment beyond Tasik Chini, where a local man employed in security work commented on the change to the area: The forest you can see…and when going fishing and not hearing the noise of the forest. Once it was so loud, the monkeys made a lot of noise but no more…A really big sadness, the lake…the children will not know about tongkat ali. The lake will just go. Children [here] without education will have nothing. Last time youngsters would follow their parents into the forest who would show them the trees and plants. Now there is not so much to show. Then the youngsters knew what to do without consulting their parents, almost instinctively, but that is rarer now.
Social development and poverty
Social development as an ideological position directly links to Malaysia’s drive towards ‘full’ status, which under former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir was popularly referred to as ‘2020’, the year by which the country would have achieved this coveted international status. Social development as a ubiquitous term is therefore continually heard as one that is ostensibly meant to galvanize and unite disparate factions and interest groups in society in the interests of the state. As Idrus (2011) notes, it also articulates with the position and status of the nation state; and therefore by logical extension to support social development is a civic duty of patriotic allegiance, while by contrast to appear critical or unallied to it is tantamount to an act of subversion. This vision has not only been articulated overtly at the conscious level but has become embedded within everyday Malaysian culture and society.
The question of integration of the Orang Asli in terms of identity, religion, culture and lifestyle was one commented on satirically by one social activist in interview as directly relating to the complex and interwoven issues of land rights and cultural autonomy versus assimilation and their ramifications: The official policy is to integrate into the mainstream. I am reminded of an Orang Asli man who told Robert Knox Denton [a former Yale University anthropologist]: ‘it’s very clear, they want to make all Orang Aslis Malays and when the Orang Aslis are Malays, then Malays are the Orang Aslis’. They [the government] provide many things for the Orang Asli to upgrade their socioeconomics, especially ‘up’ their income. They provide oil palm and rubber plantation projects. Some, especially from the Negrito groups – Batek – are very backward, staying nomads. The Government has tried to provide a permanent village as a first provision and after that tried to provide economic projects – rubber and then oil palm…The Orang Asli should understand what the Government is trying to do for them. We try to bring the Orang Asli to us, mainstream society, to get benefit. Like we climb a mountain – some people are on top, some in the middle and some at the bottom…
As political rhetoric would have it, the Jakun of Tasik Chini and the Orang Asli in general are currently undeveloped, in terms of their attempts to hold on to a traditional and culturally-based, collective, non-capitalist, subsistence lifestyle in their own traditional territories that are felt to be imbued with spiritual meaning. Yet, the destruction of the local environment that supported these livelihoods may also be construed as an overt act of economic development. Certainly the support offered by the State of Pahang in the exploitation of the natural resources of the area has involved trading in the beauty and ecological health of the area for profit that does not even benefit the local area. Continued industrial erosion flagrantly trivializes and dismisses Tasik Chini’s UNESCO Biosphere Reserve status – an otherwise valuable national asset – as irrelevant to profiteering; yet, as one social activist commented, sustainable conservation can pay economic dividends: It’s tough to protest without resources – it’s really about the developers. People want quick profits now rather than preserving for the future, for Malaysia. They don’t see that if they conserve the Biosphere Reserve they can make money in the future for the whole of Malaysia and that the Malays would benefit more from this…Greed of individuals now rather than conserving it for the future. Destroying lives of people who are already impoverished. Not like it is taking money from people who are already well off, it’s from impoverished people. It’s so unethical. Homestay programmes, cultural experiences, the forests…Aslis could begin to manage the forest for the government and be paid for it, and then you create new types of jobs…becoming forest rangers, preventing poaching. [Currently] you are giving employment to others who are alien to the culture and environment. What kind of job qualification do you need to work in the forest, to be a ranger? You must know the forest, the plants – that’s not being recognized…So this [would be] the entire community managing the forest and being able to harvest the forest in a sustainable way, having indicators for that and being able to earn from that. Nepal and India have good examples of community forestry.
Thus the ability of the communities to remain self-sufficient is being substantially eroded by cumulative environmental damage. The option to take reimbursement for palm oil holdings offers no real solution to poverty, as individual families are unable to manage the crops themselves or expand their holdings and control the intensity of crop production. They are therefore reduced to the position of state dependents; and in so doing are relegated to an even more marginalized and disadvantaged position than before, consequently justifying continued state manipulation.
Concluding remarks
The rhetoric of social and economic development constructs a powerful discourse of nationalistic modernity underpinning a range of social policy initiatives. These are designed to enrich and empower the nation state in terms of capitalist enterprise and the shaping of individuals and communities into the ideal model citizen. This is epitomized by the production of a new Malay bourgeoisie rather than by indigenous people or sojourners. The discourses of social development as doxa are insufficiently critiqued in public policy and little discussed in the media, where such policies do not prevent poverty in relation to environmental damage caused in its name (Bourdieu, 1977). Our analysis indicates that these embedded assumptions have explanatory power. Yet, once brought to the surface this allows for an interaction between socio-political ‘givens’ and traditional socio-cultural indigenous capital, heralding grassroots resistance and challenge, whilst promoting a uniquely traditional lifestyle (Bourdieu, 1977). Prevailing social development policies do not create a particularly appealing viable alternative for indigenous communities in West Malaysia, which have so much to lose. Essentially, such poverty traps erode autonomy and independence and encourage a welfare dependence attitude that is likely to lead to poverty cycles across generations and increased political interventions.
The irony and insult of this lamentable situation is that such dependency among previously self-sufficient, proud communities merely confirms general ignorance and prejudice that, for their own good, Orang Asli communities require increased social and political pressure to abandon their claims to traditional land and the right to practice their own culture. They must instead conform to homogenizing mainstream majority culture that is overtly destructive to their own culture, and therefore their wellbeing, in the name of social and economic development policies that inevitably raise the urgent questions of how this development proceeds and whom it benefits.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the Tasik Chini Research Centre at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Bournemouth University for their generous support of this research study.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
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