Lye Tuck Po  
Dr.
M.A., Ph.D., Anthropology (University of Hawai`i, Manoa), B.A., English & Philosophy (Randolph-Macon Womanʼs College)

I'm an environmental anthropologist with experience in consultancies, newspaper reportage, NGOs, teaching and training, and independent research. I joined USM in 2010.My primary research focuses on the environmental knowledge and relations of local communities, especially Southeast Asian tropical forest dwellers. My long-term work is with the mobile, hunting-and-gathering, forest-dwelling Batek (Orang Asli) of Pahang. This study developed into an abiding interest in the knowledge and knowing of landscapes and in indigenous epistemologies.I've also conducted fieldwork with Khmer and Kuay communities in central Cambodia. There I switched my attention from forests to hydrological systems, and from hunting-and-gathering to agriculture, and investigated contemporary classifications of religious sites in the pre-Angkorian templescape of Sambor Prey Kuk monument complex. I'm currently preparing a book of photographs depicting the agricultural cycle in my field village.I continue to be interested in forest management and politics, vulnerability and climate change adaptations, the politics of knowledge, Southeast Asian societies and cultures, and the Orang Asli and other indigenous minorities of Malaysia.

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 plye@usm.my  |   04-653 5383  |    C23 / 309  l     EXPERTISE

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PUBLICATION

Changing pathways: Forest degradation and the Batek of Pahang, Malaysia

The social ecology of tropical forests: Migration, populations, and frontiers (2005). de Jong, Wil, Tuck-Po Lye, and Ken-ichi Abe, eds. Kyoto: Kyoto University Press. by Wil de Jong and Lye Tuck-Po

The political ecology of tropical forests in Southeast Asia: Historical perspectives (2003). Lye Tuck-Po, Wil de Jong, and Ken-ichi Abe, eds. Kyoto: Kyoto Area Studies on Asia, Kyoto University Press and Melbourne: TransPacific Press.

Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia: A comprehensive and annotated bibliography (2001). CSEAS Research Report Series no. 88. Kyoto: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University.

PAPERS

Tracking with Batek hunter-gatherers of Malaysia
A. Pastoors & T. Lenssen-Erz (Eds.), Reading prehistoric human tracks: methods and material. Springer (Forthcoming)

Endicott, Kirk, Lye Tuck-Po, Nurul Fatanah Zahari, Alice Rudge. 2016. Batek playing Batek for tourists at Peninsular Malaysia's national park. Hunter Gatherer Research 2 (1):95–118.

Signaling presence: How Batek and Penan hunter-gatherers in Malaysia mark the landscape (2016). In: Marking the land: Hunter-gatherer creation of meaning in their environment. W. Lovis and R. Whallon, eds. Pp. 231–260. Oxford: Routledge

Making Friends in the Rainforest: "Negrito" Adaptation to Risk and Uncertainty

Batek lexicon: Glossary extracted from Changing pathways: Forest degradation and the Batek of Pahang, Malaysia (2004). Archived at RWAAI, the Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage, Lund University (Lye Collection)

The wild and the tame in protected areas management, Peninsular Malaysia. In Complicating conservation in Southeast Asia: Beyond the sacred forest. M. R. Dove, P. S. Sajise and A. A. Doolittle, eds. Pp. 37–61. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

A history of Orang Asli studies: Landmarks and generations

The ingenuity of local culture: Photos from the Cambodian countryside
Kyoto Journal, 34–37, 2007

The significance of forest to the emergence of Batek knowledge in Pahang, Malaysia

The road to equality? Landscape transformation and the Batek of Pahang, Malaysia

Forest peoples, conservation boundaries, and the problem of 'modernity' in Malaysia. In Tribal communities in the Malay world: Historical, cultural and social perspectives. G. Benjamin and C. Chou, eds. Pp. 160–184. Leiden: IIAS and Singapore: ISEAS.

Uneasy bedfellows? Contrasting models of biodiversity maintenance in Malaysia. In Conserving nature in culture: Case studies from Southeast Asia (2005). M. R. Dove, P. S. Sajise and A. Doolittle, eds. Pp. 83–116. New Haven: Yale Southeast Asia Council Press.

The Meanings of Trees: Forest and Identity for the Batek of Pahang, Malaysia
Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2005

Before a step too far: Walking with Batek hunter-gatherers in the forests of Pahang, Malaysia

Being forest peoples: Globalizing local sustainability. 2008. Moussons: Social Science Research on Southeast Asia 12:35–48.

Migration and the social ecology of tropical forests. In The social ecology of tropical forests: Migrations, populations, frontiers. W. De Jong, T.-P. Lye and K.-i. Abe. Pp. 1-24. Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2005.

Forest, Bateks, and degradation: Environmental representations in a changing world

De Jong, Wil, Lye Tuck-Po, and Abe Ken-ichi. 2002. The political ecology of tropical forests in Southeast Asia: Historical roots of modern problems. In: The political ecology of tropical forests in Southeast Asia. Lye, de Jong, & Abe, eds. Kyoto: Kyoto Area Studies on Asia, Kyoto University Press.

Conservation and the Orang Sungai of the lower Sugut, Sabah: Preliminary notes
Borneo Research Bulletin 30:46–65. (With Grace Wong), 1999

TALKS

Protecting animals, managing people: Resource thinking in Malaysia. Lecture presented at the 40th Southeast Asia Seminar, “The Promise and Challenge of Democracy in 21st Century Southeast Asia,” Yangon, Myanmar, 19-22 November 2016
wildlife conservation; governance; implementation

Notes on religion & sustainability. Presentation at the Regional Interdisciplinary Workshop on Ecological Sustainability, Culture and Religion in Southeast Asia, 14-16 October 2016, KL

Other ways of remembering. Lecture presented at the Humboldt University zu Berlin-Universitas Gadjah Mada-Universiti Sains Malaysia International Summer School in Southeast Asian Studies, "The Return of the Past: Memory-making and Heritage in Southeast Asia", USM, Penang, 11/3/15

Making tracks and tracking change: Batek mobility, 1993-2014. For: Panel on “Sociality on the move: Finding the way through Hunter-gatherer ecological knowledge”, IUAES Inter-Congress, Chiba, 18/5/14

Fieldwork: Myths, conjectures, and corrections. Presented at the 2nd School of the Arts Research Colloquium, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, 9/5/14

How Batek children discover the forest. For: workshop on "Social learning and innovation in contemporary hunter-gatherers: Evol. & ethnographic perspectives," Kobe Gakuin University, 30/3/14 (to appear in a volume of the same name, edited by B. Hewlett & H. Terashima)

Other ways of remembering. Lecture, the Humboldt University zu Berlin-Universitas Gadjah Mada-Universiti Sains Malaysia International Summer School in Southeast Asian Studies, "The Return of the Past: Memory-making and Heritage in Southeast Asia", UGM, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 25/2/14

Indigenous peoples, anthropology, and the "area" of Area Studies. Presented at the 7th EuroSeas Conference, Lisbon, 2-5 July 2013.

Making things. Presented at the 10th Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies, Liverpool, 25-28 June 2013

Senses of place: Notes toward a methodology

Landscape knowledge in Cambodia: Notes toward a methodology. Paper read at the Annual Fellows Meeting, Asian Scholarship Foundation, July 2-3, 2007, Bangkok.

Həp: The significance of forest to the emergence of Batek knowledge in Pahang, Malaysia. Paper presented at the 8th International Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies. National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan, 26-29 October 1998

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