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Podcast: New Books in Anthropology
Episode: Faizah Zakaria, "The Camphor Tree and the Elephant: Religion and Ecological Change in Maritime Southeast Asia" (U Washington Press, 2023)
Description: Recurring tropes about fragmented communities living on frontier forestlands living in Southeast Asia are that they are either guardians of flora and fauna their destroyers. In much analysis gravitating to one or other position in this dichotomy the role of organised religion is absent.But as Faizah Zakaria shows in The Camphor Tree and the Elephant: Religion and Ecological Change in Maritime Southeast Asia published by the University of Washington Press (2023) shows conversions from animist belief systems to Islam and Christianity enabled human-centric views that helped alienate the natural world from Batak communities for wealth. Using a wi...