Troubled landscapes, troubling anthropology: co-presence, necessity and the making of ethnographic knowledge

Abstract

One humid, windless afternoon in 2010, in a village four hours’ trek from the nearest road, I found myself sitting with a Bidayuh friend indulging in that classic anthropological speciality: a good bitch. I had arrived at Emmi’s house hot, bothered, and sunburnt, having walked from another village in the midday heat, past slopes of felled trees, bamboo stumps, and other vegetation that used to shelter the path. Emmi told me that all these had come down as part of an ongoing ‘biomass clearance’ exercise: the latest stage of a dam-construction project that would ultimately flood most of her village. ‘It’s happening everywhere,’ she said. ‘They got a “contract” from the government to cut down the trees to prepare the land for inundation. They’re felling the ones over there next week. I can’t even get to my farm to plant corn because of the logs blocking the way!’