Orang Asli in Peninsular Malaysia: Successes and Challenges in Development

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-968-1_22How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Orang Asli; Successes; Challenges; Sustainability; Postmodern

Abstract

The Orang Asli communities are at a crossroad in development. Although they are marginalized and viewed as poor and backward, this is just one of many perspectives of them. In fact, the Orang Asli’s existing culture shows many environmentally friendly practices, which are so important as Malaysia embraces the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) approach as we embrace modernization and development. Despite their high levels of poverty above the national average, they have shown resilience as they balance between modernization and the preservation of their cultural beliefs, values, and languages. This paper has outlined some of their successes and challenges as they move forward in development and modernization. Secondary data materials were used to write this paper, and keywords such as “Orang Asli successes”, “Orang Asli challenges”, “Orang Asli sustainability”, “health Orang Asli”, “education Orang Asli”, “Jakoa” were used to search for relevant articles on the Internet. Finally, this paper concludes that the Orang Asli communities should not be viewed as backward because their existing culture embodies sustainability practices which are much favored in our postmodern society. In truth, the Orang Asli should be viewed as ‘postmodern’ in some aspects because they have the necessary knowledge and practices of environmental sustainability, which are highly cherished in view of today’s global environmental crises.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Siew Mun Ang
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/28
TI  - Orang Asli in Peninsular Malaysia: Successes and Challenges in Development
BT  - Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Business, Accounting, Finance and Economics (BAFE 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 303
EP  - 315
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-968-1_22
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-968-1_22
ID  - Ang2025
ER  -