Abstract: "Before a Step Too Far: Walking with Batek..."

Moving
Uploaded by Lye Tuck-Po

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 T. Ingold and J. J. Vergunst, pp. 21-34. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate Publishers.

This chapter explores a seeming paradox in the walking practices of the Batek of Malaysia. They are forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers who, at least in Pahang state where I have done all my work, are largely mobile. By ‘mobile’ I mean that the Batek are always on the move, whether from camp to forest and back again in the course of a day’s activities, from camp to camp as they shift locations around their traditional territories, or from forest to the outside as they seek purchased goods, work opportunities, or excitement in local villages and small towns. Even in a sedentary settlement, they move sleeping places and houses around as they do in a forest camp. If anyone can be said to have a walking life, they can.

The paradox is this. On the one hand, the Batek are confident and even proud of their ability to make their way around the forest. They walk with the assurance of people who are comfortably at ease in their home ambience. On the other hand, listening to Batek talk about their emotions, what is most commonly voiced is fear – of specific dangers in the forest, and of particular kinds of walking experiences – giving the impression that fear is everywhere around and even inside them as well. How, then, can we reconcile these expressions of fear and confidence? Is fear a deterrent? If it does deter the Batek from walking in the forest, then it is operating very subtly indeed! Walking is one of the primary means for interacting with the forest, but it also engenders an awareness of its dangers. Where walking takes the body forward, fear draws it back, and it is this tug between opposing directions of movement that characterizes the practices of hunting and gathering.

The problematic I have set up implies an analytical disjunction between body and mind, knowing and fearing, self and environment, and coming and going. My ethnography, however, suggests that this is a false disjunction, or that the dichotomies at least need revision. I will nevertheless hold to it, at least provisionally, in order to clarify what walking in the rainforest is all about and what it means to these hunter-gatherers. Like many indigenous peoples, the Batek are excellent ethnologists and so, following their habitual way of stressing a point, I shall use my own experiences for illustration and comparison.

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