SWIDDENING IN SOUTHEAST ASIA : ENVIRONMENTAL COGNITION

Abstract

This exercise in cultural geography is concerned with the environmental cognition of swiddeners in Southeast Asia. Using ethnographies written in English, this study explores the environmental themes of 22 swidden societies as identified in their oral traditions and folk cultures. In analyzing swiddeners' cognition of the physical environment in terms of the spiritual, personified, emotional and symbolic meanings, three broad themes emerge. The first theme shows that swiddeners' environmental cognition is very much locked into the "supernatural" powers that permeate all aspects of nature. In their views of nature, they do not make a distinction between the animate and inanimate aspects of nature. Rather, nature is differentiated in two other ways. Firstly in terms of aspects of nature which are safe to be in and those that one ought to avoid. Night time forest is one aspect in nature that swiddeners consciously avoid because of the belief that evil spirits particularly congregate here. The second way swiddeners differentiate nature is by making a distinction between aspects of nature that is "theirs" ( for example, the village) and those that belongs to nature spirits. The view that spirits have domains in nature places swiddeners in an environment where a spirit based land tenure system is observed whenever swiddeners make use of any aspect of nature or use land for their agricultural cycle. The second theme shows swiddeners' close relationship with the physical environment in anthropocentric terms. This conception is clearly underscored in their creation myths as well as in their notions of after-life. Swiddeners believe that upon death their souls are reborn as plants and animals that populate their surroundings. But for many groups, rice is the ultimate aspect of nature that is most personified in human terms. This study also demonstrates swiddeners despite the fear of forest as a spirit infested domain view the forest materially as a tropical Eden of earthly delights. Specifically, the forest is a place of abundance, plenitude and fertility. This study concludes by attempting to dispel the notion that swiddeners relate to their environment in a purely destructive way.