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CHAIRPERSON

Assoc Prof Maznah Mohamad, Department of Malay Studies, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

In international conservation and environmentalist imaginaries, extinction is often cast as an ‘edge’ off which species rapidly or gradually fall. Concomitantly, humanity is depicted as morally responsible for drawing species back from that brink. This paper seeks to disrupt, but also rework, such ‘edgy’ conservation imaginaries through an exploration of the more-than-human configurations—and predicaments—that are emerging in one conservation ‘problem space’ in East Malaysia. In the 1960s, Sabah’s Lower Kinabatangan floodplain—once home to wild orangutan populations—was converted to industrial plantations. Against all odds, a small group of (what conservationists call) ‘ghost orangutans’ have continued to dwell and even thrive in this plantation landscape. In this paper, I contemplate the spectral puzzle posed by these apes, as well as the ethico-political dilemmas to which they give rise. I suggest that certain Southeast Asian conceptions of spirits, deities and other such beings offer an alternative way of apprehending these apes’ ‘ghostly’ presence and the claims that they make on conservation practitioners.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Liana Chua is a social anthropologist and Tunku Abdul Rahman University Assistant Professor in Malay World Studies at the University of Cambridge. She has worked with rural Bidayuh communities in Sarawak, East Malaysia, since 2003, looking at conversion to Christianity, ethnic and religious politics, development, displacement and experiences of environmental change. Her current research revolves around the social, political and aesthetic dimensions of the global network of orangutan conservation in the ‘age of the Anthropocene’. Her publications include The Christianity of Culture: Conversion, Ethnic Citizenship, and the Matter of Religion in Malaysian Borneo (2012), Southeast Asian Perspectives on Power (co-edited with Joanna Cook, Nicholas Long and Lee Wilson, 2012), and Who are ‘We’? Reimagining Alterity and Affinity in Anthropology (co-edited with Nayanika Mathur, 2018).

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this webinar has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the webinar.