ENGINEERING INDIGENOUS CLAIMS TO LAND: TECHNOLOGIES OF POWER IN SABAH'S OIL PALM FRONTIER AND ITS EFFECTS

There is an enduring debate in human and political ecology about how there is a need for those working in conservation and natural resource use to go beyond the social construction of nature by the state, non government... [ view full abstract ]

There is an enduring debate in human and political ecology about how there is a need for those working in conservation and natural resource use to go beyond the social construction of nature by the state, non government organisations, and indigenous activists (separately or together) to examine the material effects of the social production of local surroundings (Paige 2006) . This paper examines the material effects of management technology of by looking at the large scale consolidation of lands claimed by indigenous peoples of Sabah as ancestral lands, into lands available for conversion to commercial agriculture. While discourses of titling (individual or collective) are produced by state as well as indigenous communities, the practice of consolidation of lands claimed under Native Title are assisted by management technologies that promotes the strengthening of state power via legislative amendment and the introduction of new administrative rules to land that make land use change amenable to large scale oil palm commercial agriculture, with rights claims still respected, but only in a fashion. In a high modernist state such as Malaysia (Scott 1998), such effects are felt right down to the details concerning entitlements, namely, who are entitled to be included in the list of participants to land, considerations about 'genuine' community members versus those who have moved away, pure 'Dusun' versus those who are descendants of mixed marriages, mixed marriages having been a very prominent practise in a relatively open society among indigenous communities in the Sabah hinterland.