Akinabalu: Sacred Mountain, Tourism and Struggle

This book focuses on one area which is Dusun community in Sabah, Malaysia with several updates during past few years, and hopefully will be continued by publishing the other books on the struggle of Kasepuhan Ciptagelar in West Java and Urak Lawoy (Chao Lay) in Phuket, Thailand. The basic idea of the research was started from a deep sympathy for indigenous groups which are often neglected, and even displaced from theirancestral land for the sake of various modern and global interests such as “economic development”, conservation projects and many other contemporary discourses, including a Dusunic group living on the foot of Mount Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. However, another main spirit of the book is; believing that marginalized indigenous groups are not merely passive in dealing with pressures coming from external forces, but they are productively creating tactics and strategies to response those pressures throughout their histories. In Sabah, Bundu Tuhan Dusun community has exercised, borrowing Foucoult and LeFebre term; heterotopic tourism as a conscious strategy to deal with the majority religio-political group, state policies and also tourism industry itself.