Author Archives: Kymberley Chu

Kym is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Princeton University. Her dissertation research focuses on a wide range of human-monkey interfaces that take place in Malaysia's plantations and other types of peri-urban landscapes. Collaborating with scientists and plantation workers, Kym examines the intersection of scientific paradigms such as behavioral ecology and the structural dynamics of land governance in shaping their encounters with free-ranging monkeys. As a contributing editor, Kym's areas of interest include: anthropology of capitalism, built environment, dialectical materialism, ecological politics, scientific knowledge production, multispecies theory, and livelihood/land governance.
kym@princeton.edu
A wild boar (sus scrofa vittatus) is covered in mud and roams a forest in Pahang, Malaysia.

Viral Entanglements in Malaysian Porcine Worlds

Kymberley Chu May 12, 2022
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Content warning: This blog post contains photos of factory farming that viewers may find distressing. Pigs squeal and scream as they lie down in group pens. The humid air in the foreground, the farm’s pipes churn out pig waste into the nearby river. This is Kampung Selamat, an industrialized area known for factory farming in mainland Penang, Malaysia. Its river, known as Sungai Kreh, is the living chronology of industrialized pollution. Since the 1980s, the river has turned from bright blue to lime green as 72 pig farms discharge antibiotics, pig feces, and pig carcasses into the water. The foul stench and waste reveal how intertwined pig lives are with the personal livelihood of Kampung Selamat’s villagers over time. (read more...)

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