In 1990, shortly after a Malaysian politician announced that the boundaries of Kinabalu Park, a primary tourist destination, were to be expanded to include the species-rich tropical forest known locally as Bukit Hempuen, most of the area was burned to the ground, allegedly by local people. What would motivate the people who had for generations hunted and gathered forest products there to act so destructively? In this volume, Amity Doolittle illuminates this and other contemporary land-use issues by examining how resources were used historically in Sabah from 1881 to 1996 and what customary rights of access to land and resources were enjoyed by local people. Drawing upon anthropology, political science, environmental history, and political ecology, she looks at how control over and access to resources have been defined, negotiated, and contested by colonial state agents, the postcolonial Malaysian state, and local people. The study is grounded in methodological and theoretical advances in the field of political ecology, merging the traditions of human ecology and political economy and looking at environmental conflicts in terms of the particulars of place, culture, and history. Doolittle assumes that environmental problems have causes that are complex and changing and that solutions must be specific to time and place. Using a political ecology perspective allows her to focus on the root causes of environmental degradation, exposing the underlying political, economic, and social forces at work. The challenge in the twenty-first century, she writes, is to move beyond blaming local people for resource degradation and to find ways to achieve equitable access to natural resources and more sustainable land use practices. Property and Politics in Sabah, Malaysia has great relevance to development studies, political ecology, environmental planning, anthropology, and legal studies in natural resource management.

In 1990, shortly after a Malaysian politician announced that the boundaries of Kinabalu Park, a primary tourist destination, were to be expanded to include the species-rich tropical forest known locally as Bukit Hempuen, most of the area was burned to the ground, allegedly by local people. What would motivate the people who had for generations hunted and gathered forest products there to act so destructively? In this volume, Amity Doolittle illuminates this and other contemporary land-use issues by examining how resources were used historically in Sabah from 1881 to 1996 and what customary rights of access to land and resources were enjoyed by local people. Drawing upon anthropology, political science, environmental history, and political ecology, she looks at how control over and access to resources have been defined, negotiated, and contested by colonial state agents, the postcolonial Malaysian state, and local people. The study is grounded in methodological and theoretical advances in the field of political ecology, merging the traditions of human ecology and political economy and looking at environmental conflicts in terms of the particulars of place, culture, and history. Doolittle assumes that environmental problems have causes that are complex and changing and that solutions must be specific to time and place. Using a political ecology perspective allows her to focus on the root causes of environmental degradation, exposing the underlying political, economic, and social forces at work. The challenge in the twenty-first century, she writes, is to move beyond blaming local people for resource degradation and to find ways to achieve equitable access to natural resources and more sustainable land use practices. Property and Politics in Sabah, Malaysia has great relevance to development studies, political ecology, environmental planning, anthropology, and legal studies in natural resource management.

Reflecting new thinking about conservation in Southeast Asia, "Beyond the Sacred Forest" is the product of a unique, decade-long, interdisciplinary collaboration involving research in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Scholars from these countries and the United States rethink the translation of environmental concepts between East and West, particularly ideas of "nature" and "culture"; the meaning of "conservation"; and the ways that conservation policy is applied and transformed in the everyday landscapes of Southeast Asia. The contributors focus more on folk, community, and vernacular conservation discourses than on those of formal institutions and the state. They reject the notion that conservation only takes place in bounded, static, otherworldly spaces such as protected areas or sacred forests. Thick with ethnographic detail, their essays move beyond the forest to agriculture and other land uses, leave behind orthodox notions of the sacred, discard outdated ideas of environmental harmony and stasis, and reject views of the environment that seek to avoid or escape politics. Natural-resource managers and policymakers who work with this more complicated vision of nature and culture are likely to enjoy more enduring success than those who simply seek to remove the influence and impact of humans from conserved landscapes. As many of the essays suggest, this requires the ability to manage contradictions, to relinquish orthodox ideas of what conservation looks like, and to practice continuously adaptive management techniques.

"Contributors." Upik Djalins, Amity A. Doolittle, Michael R. Dove, Levita Duhaylungsod, Emily E. Harwell, Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells, Lye Tuck-Po, Percy E. Sajise, Endah Sulistyawati, Yunita T. Winarto