Fadzilah Majid Cooke

Fadzilah Majid Cooke is Associate Professor in Environmental Sociology at the School of Social Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) an appointment she has held since 2003. At UMS she was Head of the Ethnography and Development Research Unit from 2005 until 2008. Before joining UMS, from 1995 to 1997, she was a Lecturer at the Faculty of Arts, University of Wollongong, Australia. From 1998 to 2002, she won two fellowships, a postdoctoral at RMIT and a research fellowship at The Australian National University (2000 to 2001). She has undertaken research and published in the area of agricultural development, environmental change, customary land and the politics of civil society for close to 15 years starting with her PhD work at Griffith University. She has published nationally and in Europe, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

State, Communities and Forests In Contemporary Borneo »

Edited by: Fadzilah Majid Cooke

Publication date: July 2006

The name ‘Borneo’ evokes visions of constantly changing landscapes, but with important island-wide continuities. One of the continuities has been the forests, which have for generations been created and modified by the indigenous population, but over the past three decades have been partially replaced by tree crops, grass or scrub. This book, the first in the series of Asia-Pacific Environmental Monographs, looks at the political complexities of forest management across the whole island of Borneo, tackling issues of tenure, land use change and resource competition, ‘tradition’ versus ‘modernity’, disputes within and between communities, between communities and private firms, or between communities and governments. While it focuses on the changes taking place in local political economies and conservation practices, it also makes visible the larger changes taking place in both Indonesia and Malaysia. The common theme of the volume is the need to situate local complexities in the larger institutional context, and the possible gains to be made from such an approach in the search for alternative models of conservation and development.

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