The Politics of Animism: Orang Asli responses to extractivist industries in Malaysia

This project examines a form of indigenous climate politics among Batek Maia tropical foragers of Peninsular Malaysia in which women play a central role. The project aims to rebalance gender-skewed understandings of cosmopolitics in contemporary Southeast Asia through an analysis of women’s relationships with powerful non-humans who act as custodians of climatic conditions and the underworld. It considers how experiences of climate change and environmental degradation have been incorporated into cosmologies, shamanism and ritual practices. This involves an examination of the role of female coalitions in balancing and restraining male shamans’ experiences during ritual soul journeying. Using detailed ethnographic case studies, the project challenges reified ontological depictions of animism within a dynamic gendered framework that reframes animism as politics. The project offers vital insights into indigenous perspectives on the urgent issues of climate change and capitalist extractivism. It contributes to religious, political and ontological anthropology and the anthropology of gender and ritual.

This project aims to investigate how Batek communities understand and respond to climate change and environmental degradation through cosmological, ritual, and political practices. It examines the ways in which experiences of ecological transformation are incorporated into Indigenous cosmologies and ritual life, with particular attention to the roles of women in shamanic rituals and soul-journeys directed towards powerful nonhuman beings associated with extreme weather events. The project further explores how these cosmological and ritual responses inform Batek engagements with representatives of extractive industries and the state, and how such interactions contribute to the reconfiguration of Indigenous political strategies and broader anthropological understandings of animism, cosmopolitics, and environmental governance.