"Hearing the 'Forest City' beyond the Trees: Multi-sited ethnography, collaborative science, and Indigenous soundscapes in East Kalimantan [Indonesia]"

Walter DePuy describes an ongoing research program with scientists from Cornell University and Universitas Mulawarman to study Indonesia’s plan to relocate its national capital from Jakarta — a city increasingly vulnerable to sea-level rise — to the island of Borneo.  

Located in East Kalimantan province, the new capital aims to be a “forest city” grounded in sustainable, green development. This raises the question of how such a city will, and can, be envisioned, and what its impacts will be on the peoples and places around it. They will combine multi-sited ethnography, bioacoustics surveys and collaborative science to answer this.  

By centering Indigenous soundscapes as reservoirs of local knowledge and indicators of social-ecological change, we hope this work can ultimately help foster more empowered communities and promote resilient biocultural conservation.

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Walker DePuy is an environmental anthropologist who has conducted research on the politics of conservation in mosaic landscapes and with Indigenous peoples and local communities across the Global South. This includes post-graduate fieldwork in Kenya and Indonesia, as well as consultancies with the Center for International Forestry Research, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the Alliance for Conservation Evidence and Sustainability.

David Brokaw

Melikian Center: Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies

480-965-4188

[email protected]

https://melikian.asu.edu