The Significance of Forest to the Emergence of Batek Knowledge in Pahang, Malaysia

Abstract

This paper argues that the landscape is an important source of knowledge and continuity. The case material is from the Batek, who are mobile forest-dwellers of Pahang, Malaysia. They are a good example of an egalitarian society that does not need political leadership to reproduce its sense of cultural distinctiveness. The question is how do they do it? What, if any, are the mechanisms? The Batek, when they talk about their identity, emphasize the forest. The forest has many salient characteristics, among them the network of camps and pathways (which includes both walking trails and rivers). Pathways, I argue, are where a lot of environmental and social knowledge develops. But they are not only trails to knowledge. They are also routes to remembrance. When people walk along these pathways, they can keep in touch with their history and also learn much that is new about the world. Movement is therefore an integral part of knowledge development and communication. This paper fleshes out these claims and offers a way to look at the landscape from the point of view of mobile peoples. It also rejects the classic anthropological bias towards declarative knowledge (knowledge that can be expressed in language). Ultimately, it examines how cultural persistence depends on people having continued access to and interactions with their landscape and why hunter-gatherer studies need to give more attention to the role of landscapes in knowledge production.