ORCID
- Ivan Tacey: 0000-0001-9659-1359
Abstract
In Southeast Asia, Indigenous worlds have long been shaped through entanglements with outsiders. But how do such relations intersect with shamanic, place-making, and mythopoetic practices? Focusing on the Batek of Malaysia, this paper explores how their cosmopolitical engagements unsettle colonial mappings of land, history, and identity, while creating space to contest environmental degradation, economic marginalization, and political exclusion. It traces how origin myths are tied to land claims, how animist imaginations echo pre-colonial and colonial encounters, and how cosmopolitical practices appropriate foreign imagery and transform traumatic histories. Rather than viewing Indigenous actors as locked in the past—or cosmopolitics as a clash between incompatible worlds—I show how the Batek navigate multiple ontological frameworks, interweaving pasts, presents, and futures to challenge linear, state-imposed temporalities. Southeast Asian cosmopolitics thus emerge within a transtemporal zone, where shamans mediate relationships with diverse human and nonhuman actors, forging new forms of alliance and agency.
DOI Link
Publication Date
2026-04-20
Publication Title
Ethnos
ISSN
0014-1844
Acceptance Date
2026-03-18
Deposit Date
2026-03-10
Funding
This work was supported by Wenner-Gren Foundation [grant number 8551].
Keywords
Cosmopolitics, Indigenous Futurism, Orang Asli, Batek, Animism, Shamanism, Landscape, Place-making, TEST KT
Recommended Citation
Tacey, I. (2026) 'Cosmopolitical Trans-temporalities: Relational Landscapes, Shamanism and Indigenous Futurism in Southeast Asia', Ethnos, . Available at: 10.1080/00141844.2026.2650472
