Lye Tuck-Po

About

I'm an environmental anthropologist with experience in consultancies, newspaper reportage, NGOs, teaching and training, and independent research. I joined USM in 2010 after years of working in a variety of settings.

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.

As a consultant, I documented local responses to conservation measures in Sabah and, most recently, I conducted “Contemporary Ethnography” and resettlement planning research with the dam-displaced Western Penan of Sarawak. My NGO-work was in climate change awareness-raising.

Since 2006, I have also become interested in visual anthropology and using photography and the internet to popularize research findings. 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.

Publications

Books

in preparation. A dictionary of Batek. With Tim Phillips.

in preparation. An agricultural year in Cambodia: Photoessays. Proposal in progress.

de Jong, Wil, Lye Tuck-Po, and Ken-ichi Abe.Editors. 2005. Migration and the social ecology of tropical forests. Kyoto: Kyoto University Press. 

Lye Tuck-Po. 2004. Changing pathways: Forest degradation and the Batek of Pahang, Malaysia. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. [Malaysian edition published in 2005 by SIRD, Petaling Jaya] 

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

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

Journal articles

Lye Tuck Po. 2011. A history of Orang Asli studies: Landmarks and generations.Kajian Malaysia: Journal of Malaysian Studies 29 (Supplement 1; Special issue on "Community, Identity, Politics and Healthcare in Malaysia," edited by Abdul Rahman Embong and Chin Yee Whah):23–52 [pdf]

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

Lye Tuck-Po. 2005. The meanings of trees: Forest and identity for the Batek of Pahang, Malaysia. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 6:249–61.

Lye Tuck-Po. 2002. The significance of forest to the emergence of Batek knowledge in Pahang, Malaysia. Southeast Asian Studies 40(1):3–21. [pdf]

Lye Tuck-Po. 2000. Forest, Bateks, and degradation: Environmental representations in a changing world. Southeast Asian Studies 38:165–84. [pdf]

Lye Tuck-Po and Grace Wong. 1999. Conservation and the Orang Sungai of the lower Sugut, Sabah: Preliminary notes. Borneo Research Bulletin 30:46–65. [pdf]

Book chapters

Endicott, Kirk, Lye Tuck-Po, and Nurul Fatanah Zahari. 2011. "Batek playing Batek for tourists at Peninsular Malaysia's national park." To be included in: Cultural tourism movements: New articulations of indigenous identity. Edited by Alexis Celeste Bunten, Jenny Chio, and Nelson Graburn. Book proposal in preparation.

Lye Tuck-Po. 2011. “The wild and the tame in protected areas management, Peninsular Malaysia,” in Complicating conservation in Southeast Asia: Beyond the sacred forest. Ecologies for the 21st Century. Edited by Michael R. Dove, et al, pp. 37–61. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Lye Tuck-Po. 2008. “Before a step too far: Walking with Batek hunter-gatherers in the forests of Pahang, Malaysia,” in Ways of walking: Ethnography and practice on foot. Edited by Tim Ingold and Jo Lee Vergunst, pp. 21–34. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate Publishers.

de Jong, Wil, Lye Tuck-Po, and Ken-ichi Abe. 2005. “Migration and the social ecology of tropical forests,” in Migration and the social ecology of tropical forests. Edited by Wil De Jong, et al. Kyoto: Kyoto University Press.

Lye Tuck-Po. 2005. “Uneasy bedfellows? Contrasting models of biodiversity  maintenance in Malaysia,” in Conserving nature in culture: Case studies from Southeast Asia. Edited by Michael R. Dove, et al., pp. 83–116. New Haven: Yale Southeast Asia Council Press.

Lye Tuck-Po. 2005. “The road to equality? Landscape transformation and the Batek of Pahang, Malaysia,” in Property and equality, vol. 2: Encapsulation, commercialisation, discrimination. Edited by Thomas Widlok and Wolde Gossa Tadesse, pp. 90–103. Oxford: Berghann.

de Jong, Wil, Lye Tuck-Po, and Ken-ichi Abe. 2003. “The political ecology of tropical forests in Southeast Asia: Historical roots of modern problems,” in The political ecology of tropical forests in Southeast Asia: Historical perspectives. Edited by Lye Tuck-Po, et al., pp. 1–28. Kyoto: Kyoto Area Studies on Asia, Kyoto University Press and Melbourne: TransPacific Press.

Lye Tuck-Po. 2002. “Forest peoples, conservation boundaries, and the problem of ʻmodernityʼ in Malaysia,” in Tribal communities in the Malay world: Historical, cultural and social perspectives. Edited by Geoffrey Benjamin and Cynthia Chou, pp. 160–84. Leiden: IIAS and Singapore: ISEAS.

Others

...newspaper stories, magazine features, reports...

Seminars & Conferences

Latest only

Making tracks: Comparing two hunter-gatherer societies of Malaysia. Annual Meetings, American Anthropological Association, session on "Reconfigured Pasts: Parks, People and Remembrance," Montreal, Canada, 16-21 November 2011.

New knowledges, old problems: Resource management along the Stueng Saen (Saen River), Kampong Thom province, Central Cambodia. PPSK Seminar Series, School of Social Science, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 14 October 2011.

People, science, and a changing environment: Learning about resilience. 1st National Seminar on Environmental Humanities, Equatorial Hotel, Penang, 16-17 December, 2010.

Research

Projects

Weavers of the forest: Studying the transmission of environmental knowledge (USM Short-Term Grant, 2011-2013)

The effects of environmental change on indigenous communities in Malaysia and abroad (USM Incentive Grant, 2011–2012)

"Contemporary Ethnography" of the Murum HEP, a project of the State Government of Sarawak (consultancy, 2009–2010)

Environment, knowledge, and memory in Sambor Prei Kuk, Cambodia (Asia Fellowship granted by the Asian Scholarship Foundation, 2005–2006.

A social history of protected areas management in Peninsular Malaysia (research funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awarded through the project, "The Institutional Context of Biodiversity Conservation in Southeast Asia: Trans-national, crosssectoral, and inter-disciplinary approaches” [Michael R. Dove and Percy S. Sajise, principal investigators], 1998–1999)

Comparative studies of protected areas in Malaysia and Japan (postdoctoral research supported by a grant from the Japan Ministry of Education and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, 1998–2000)

Identification of Potential Protected Areas, Sabah Biodiversity Conservation Project, Malaysia (WWF-Sabah, providing technical assistance to the state government of Sabah, 1997–1998)

Information flow in a hunter-gatherer society (Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1995–1996)

Knowledge construction in a Malaysian hunter-gatherer society (John D. and Catherine T.MacArthur Foundation and the East-West Center, 1995–1996)

Fellowships

Visiting Fellow, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University (2007)

Visiting Fellow, Resource-Management in Asia-Pacific programme, Research School for Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University (2001)

JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow attached to the Center of Excellence project of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University (1998–2000)

Visiting Fellow, Institute of East Asian Studies, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (1998)

Degree Fellowship, East-West Center (1992–1997)

Teaching

Courses in planning

SAU323 Anthropology and the Environment


SAUXXX Ethnography (with Nor Hafizah Selamat)

2011–2012

SEA303 Societies and cultures of Southeast Asia


SDA591 Research methodology

SKW122 Social research: Quantitative and qualitative methods (with Ong Beng Kok)

Previously taught

SAU213E Gender, ideology and power (2011, with Shariffah Suraya Syed Jamaludin)

Guest lectures

"Kaedah penyelidikan antropologi." SKW122 Social Research: Quantitative and qualitative methods (2011).


"Economic Anthropology". SAU218E/4 Economic sociology (two lectures, 30 September and 6 October 2010)

Previous teaching and training experiences

Field methods training for students of the Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom Penh (Kampong Thom province, 2006)

Randolph-Macon Womanʼs College Faculty Development Seminar in Malaysia (2005)

William F. Quillian Visiting International Professor, Randolph-Macon Woman's College (2003–2004)

Outreach Coordinator, the Mobilizing Malaysians on Climate Change awareness raising campaign, Centre for Technology, Environment and Development, Kuala Lumpur (2002–2003)

Resource person on Certificate Training Courses in Applied Ethnobotany, WWF-UNESCO-Kew People and Plants initiative, Southeast Asia programme (1997, 1998)

Supervision

Current supervisees

Khairun Nur Mohd Fazmi, Masters in International Studies (European Studies)

Yap Wei Choong, Masters in International Studies (European Studies)