Tropes of Fear: the Impact of Globalization on Batek Religious Landscapes

PublishedThis is the final version of the article. Available from MDPI via the DOI in this record.The Batek are a forest and forest-fringe dwelling population numbering around 1,500 located in Peninsular Malaysia. Most Batek groups were mobile forest-dwelling foragers and collectors until the recent past. The Batek imbue the forest with religious significance that they inscribe onto the landscape through movement, everyday activities, storytelling, trancing and shamanic journeying. However, as processes of globalization transform Malaysian landscapes, many Batek groups have been deterritorialized and relocated to the forest fringes where they are often pressured into converting to world religions, particularly Islam. Batek religious beliefs and practices have been re-shaped by their increasing encounters with global flows of ideologies, technologies, objects, capital and people, as landscapes are opened up to development. This article analyzes the ways these encounters are incorporated into the fabric of the Batek’s religious world and how new objects and ideas have been figuratively and literally assimilated into their taboo systems and cosmology. Particular attention is paid to the impacts of globalization as expressed through tropes of fear.Research from 2012–2013 have been supported by a generous dissertation fieldwork grant from the Wenner-Gren foundation in New York

Environmental Spirituality

It is difficult to address the crises of ecology and relevance in religion where the culture is increasingly secular, disbelieving, and unable to ground itself in local experience. This paper proposes that church leaders have the opportunity to change perspective from one that is “other-worldly” to one which focuses on the environment as earth-based, sacred, and which ultimately requires our respect. Indigenous Australians led the way in this regard. Only by making the world sacred, by turning the earth into creation, can we approach the problem of the environmental crisis and work toward repair

Comparative Evaluation of Clinical Presentation and Management of Equine Asthma by Climate Region

Equine asthma, including both mild and severe forms, is a prominent respiratory disease impacting the health and performance levels of affected horses. The objective of this study was to conduct a comprehensive assessment of a broad equine population, analyzing various disease aspects in relation to prevalence and severity across the nine climate regions in the United States. The methodology followed a survey-based research design, utilizing convenience and voluntary response sampling methods. Data collection involved 86 respondents across these regions. Quantitative and qualitative questions explored prevalence rates, diseases manifestation, risk factor of age, seasonality components, and diagnostic and management strategies from each region. Statistical analyses compared quantitative data between the climate regions and between the two severity levels of equine asthma. Results indicated significant variations in both prevalence and severity across different regions, and in age at diagnosis between severe and mild forms. The findings also revealed diagnostic and treatment patterns within specific regions, as well as consistent trends in age and seasonal impacts extending beyond geographic boundaries. This project emphasized the intricate nature of equine asthma, and the necessity for future research in considering environmental and geographic influences on the development and exacerbation of the disease

Animism and Interconnectivity: Batek and Manya’ Life on the Periphery of the Malaysian Rainforest

Animism and Interconnectivity is an ethnographic study of Batek Dè’ and Manya’ religion on the periphery of the Malaysian rainforest. In the twenty-first century, the lives of these two small-scale groups of former hunter-gatherers take place on the interconnected frontier between forest and the outside world, a nexus of different ideas, peoples and objects of diverse origins. Through an examination of specific events occurring in particular places on the forest periphery, the thesis highlights changes and continuities in shamanistic practices, myths, cosmologies and relations with other-than-human beings in the transformed physical and social landscape. Each chapter presents ethnographic vignettes and case-studies as a means of providing concrete examples of how contemporary Batek and Manya’ animism is shaped by ongoing socio-economic, political and environmental change in twenty-first century Malaysia. Recent approaches to animism have frequently focused on constructions of distributed agency and personhood within local environments while downplaying, or even ignoring, complex historical and contemporary interactions between indigenous peoples and other social groups. This thesis rebalances this through an examination of contemporary forms and practices of animism within a context of political exclusions, environmental degradation and marginalization. In theorizing animism through interconnectivity, the thesis draws attention to the multiple and convoluted entanglements which emerge on the interconnected zone of the forest periphery. For Bateks, these entanglements entail oscillating between connectivity and separation, integration and rupture. Connectivity is both empowering and debilitating, the various modalities it takes must be understood as shaping animistic forms and practices within a context of shifting political and ecological conditions

Press Section White Water Reuse

In today\u27s economy, more and more papermills are becoming increasingly concerned with white water reuse. White water is most frequently used for fan pump dilution, and consistency regulation. This white water usually comes strictly from the tray boxes of the paper machine. It was suggested that the white water from the press section could be reused. It was suggested to me by Dan Kaiser, of Ronningen-Petter, that this could be accomplished by using their Cyclospray filter. The testing run showed that the unit is very effective in removing the fibrous contaminants from the press section water. I found the unit to be very easy to run and relatively maintenance free. This means that it would not put an extra burden on the mill personnel. I then did further work at Ronningen-Petter to verify my original results. The results of this testing can be found in the addendum at the end of this report

Growing Three-Dimensional Corneal Tissue in a Bioreactor

Spheroids of corneal tissue about 5 mm in diameter have been grown in a bioreactor from an in vitro culture of primary rabbit corneal cells to illustrate the production of optic cells from aggregates and tissue. In comparison with corneal tissues previously grown in vitro by other techniques, this tissue approximates intact corneal tissue more closely in both size and structure. This novel three-dimensional tissue can be used to model cell structures and functions in normal and abnormal corneas. Efforts continue to refine the present in vitro method into one for producing human corneal tissue to overcome the chronic shortage of donors for corneal transplants: The method would be used to prepare corneal tissues, either from in vitro cultures of a patient s own cells or from a well-defined culture from another human donor known to be healthy. As explained in several articles in prior issues of NASA Tech Briefs, generally cylindrical horizontal rotating bioreactors have been developed to provide nutrient-solution environments conducive to the 30 NASA Tech Briefs, October 2003 growth of delicate animal cells, with gentle, low-shear flow conditions that keep the cells in suspension without damaging them. The horizontal rotating bioreactor used in this method, denoted by the acronym "HARV," was described in "High-Aspect-Ratio Rotating Cell-Culture Vessel" (MSC-21662), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 16, No. 5 (May, 1992), page 150

Panentheism and the undoing of disenchantment

In this article I draw on historical and conceptual arguments to show, first, that disenchantment and the influential view of the relationship between science and religion to which disenchantment gives rise are rooted in the metaphysics of theism. I then introduce the alternative metaphysical position of panentheism and identify Jungian psychology as an important, if implicit, mid-twentieth-century instance of panentheistic thought. Using the example of Jungian psychology, I demonstrate how the viewpoint of panentheism undoes the implications of disenchantment for the relationship between science and religion, promoting greater opportunities for dialogue and reconciliation between science and religion. I note, however, that these closer relations may depend on understanding science and religion differently from how they are understood under disenchantment. While the original tension between science and religion is eased, another tension – between panentheistic and disenchanted understandings of science and religion – is exposed. I conclude by reflecting on some implications of this discussion for sociology