This article delineates a hitherto eclipsed labor history of the Northwest Borneo oilfields. In 2018, Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP) in an unprecedented move, released to Brunei's national archive two labor registers of the British Malayan Petroleum Company (BMPC-renamed BSP in 1958), with entries dating between the 1940s and 1950s. These registers provided a rare glimpse of the workers who were recruited to the Brunei oilfields as labor, a category distinct from staff. As BMPC labor they worked to rehabilitate the company town and the oilfields that were destroyed during the Second World War by the Japanese army and allied bombing in the British protectorate of Brunei. Like colonial records that amassed information for the control and rule of colonized subjects, each entry in BMPC's ledger meticulously noted the date of engagement, place of employment, wages, work history, as well as some biographical information about its workers. Inadvertently, these entries also revealed modes of worker resistance and assertions of agency, thus providing a glimpse of the hidden transcripts of a labor history shaped by the policies of BMPC in this colonial outpost. My article draws on these two BMPC labor registers to trace a micro-spatial history of “Dayak” labor in the emergent Borneo oilfields. Often obscured in historical records, the registers made visible the ways in which Indigenous workers negotiated and resisted the company's control of its labor force. I explore Dayak labor recruitment within the context of the 1880s-1941 when state borders irrevocably shifted and regional economies were increasingly drawn into a global market. In doing so, I chart migrant labor routes across varied regional economies in Northwest Borneo, BMPC's management of a multiethnic labor force, and company workers' agency.

Rigiolepis and Vaccinium of Borneo are revised, and their characteristics are discussed. Brief comments on distinguishing Vaccinium and Rigiolepis from related genera in the Ericaceae are made. Vaccinium sect. Bracteata is now considered the only section of Vaccinium occurring in Borneo. The chief reason for reinstating Rigiolepis as a genus is the distinctive 10-locular ovary whose structure has been overlooked in recent studies, while the supporting characters of multiple axillary flower buds, flower size, anther shape and fruit colour provide for easy recognition. New keys are provided to all 42 species, and all accepted taxa are described. Ten taxa are new to science and 17 new combinations are made. An addendum gives the combinations to be used for the two species of Rigiolepis presently known to occur outside Borneo.

This article presents a comparative anthropological approach to studying the bureaucratization of Islam in contemporary Southeast Asia. In line with this approach, the article understands the bureaucratization of Islam not simply as a formalization, expansion, and diversification of Islamic institutions and legal frameworks; rather, bureaucratization is investigated as a social phenomenon that transcends its organizational boundaries and informs dynamics of socio-legal change alongside transformations of the meaning(s) of Islam in state and society. The article centers the state's “classificatory power” and its societal coproduction and contestation, and it takes both functional and hermeneutic modes of analysis into consideration. While the bureaucratization of Islam is always embedded in and shaped by power-political constellations, it simultaneously produces social and doctrinal meanings that are unique to its locally specific discursive arenas. Therefore, more conventional functional perspectives on bureaucratic Islam can be beneficially enriched by a more hermeneutically oriented anthropological analysis, as the article illustrates, based on ethnographic data gathered in Brunei and Singapore.

The article first introduces the anthropology of bureaucracy and elaborates on the absence of such studies on state-Islam relations in Southeast Asia, as well as the potential of bringing these streams of scholarship into a fruitful dialogue. Second, it presents the Bruneian case study, focusing on postcolonial Islamization policies, the bureaucratization of a national ideology, legal reforms, and their workings on the microlevel. Third, it moves on to a regional comparison, by illustrating how Islamic knowledge and meaning-production inherent to the bureaucratization of Islam unfolds quite differently in Singapore, despite partly overlapping functional patterns. While anchored in Brunei and Singapore, the article offers a conceptual framework and analytic vocabulary for a wider study across and potentially beyond the region.

Since 1984, the Sultanate of Brunei Darussalam has chartered its post-independence course through its proclaimed ideological compass of MIB (Melayu, Islam, Beraja). All three pillars of MIB - Malay culture, the religion of Islam, and the institution of an absolute Monarchy - are traditional, long standing Bruneian features, which have been expertly crafted in the last two decades to act as the filter by which modernisation and development can occur. As the ideology is all-encompassing, law has not only been one of the vehicles for implementation, but is being shaped to accord with the tenets of MIB. This can be seen in legislation, legal institutions and processes for dispute resolution with the promotion of a more distinctive Malay character as well as a discernible Islamization agenda. The paper explores each of these as well as processes of enacting laws in this Sultanate where, in the absence of an elected democratic parliament, all law emanates from the monarch.

The present study reports on range extension of the suctorian species Praethecacineta halacari and Thecacineta calix to the region of Brunei Bay, Brunei Darussalam, Borneo.

Plants can develop novel adaptations for nutrient acquisition in nutrient-limited ecosystems. These adaptations include colonization by roots of tree trunks and logs that can act as nutrient reservoirs. Termites may facilitate this root colonization by digging tunnels and accelerating decomposition in logs and tree trunks. We measured the frequency with which above-ground tree root colonization co-occurs with the presence of termites or their tunnels inside living trees above 20 cm dbh (n = 178) and dead tree trunks and logs at least 15 cm in diameter (n = 146) in a Bornean tropical forest. Roots above the soil surface co-occur with termite tunnels 39% more frequently than expected by chance in trunks of living trees and 17% more frequently than expected by chance in logs. By categorizing logs according to hardness through ease of penetration, we found that softer logs at a late stage of decay did not show co-occurrence of termite activity and roots to the same extent as harder logs. This suggests that trees forage where termites have removed physical barriers to colonization. In this fashion, termites may accelerate nutrient cycling in tropical rain forests.

Natural tree canopy gaps allow sunlight to penetrate to the forest floor, a major environmental component and resource for many tropical rain-forest species. We compare here how butterflies use sunny areas created by the natural gaps in canopies in comparison with adjacent closed-canopy areas. We chose butterflies as our focal organisms as they are taxonomically tractable and mobile, yet habitat sensitive. Previous studies have shown that butterfly diversity in tropical forests responds to varying degrees of canopy openness. Here we assess butterfly behavioural responses to gaps and equivalent sized closed-canopy patches. Butterfly occupancy time and behaviour were simultaneously observed 61 times in gaps and 61 times in equivalent sized closed-canopy patches across four sites in a tropical rain forest in northern Borneo. Out of the 20 most frequently recorded species, 12 were more frequently recorded or spent more time in gaps, four occurred more frequently in closed-canopy areas, and four showed no significant differences. Overall agonistic, basking, patrolling and resting were more common in gaps compared with the closed canopy. Many butterfly species have complex behavioural requirements for both gaps and closed canopies, with some species using these different areas for different behaviours. Each butterfly species had particular habitat requirements, and needed both canopy gaps and closed canopy areas for ecological and behavioural reasons, emphasizing the need for natural light heterogeneity within these systems.

The submerged coral reefs of Brunei, little-impacted by human activity and characterized by high live coral cover, have no recorded history in recent decades of the presence of the crown-of-thorns (COT), Acanthaster planci. This sea star, first recorded on Brunei reefs in 2008, attained outbreak densities in 2010. At Littledale Shoal its impact on corals at permanent transect sites has been quantified; mean live coral cover reduced by half from 2006 to 2010 due predominantly to predation. Line intersect transect data confirm a predisposition for tabular Acropora species, a prominent feature at this site, although other scleractinian taxa were also predated. Other regional outbreaks are reviewed, including episodes, and their timing, within the neighbouring Coral Triangle (CT). Mounting evidence implicates nutrient-enhanced increases in primary production as a primary cause of COT outbreaks. However, this stands in contrast with a report of global oceanic phytoplankton decline in the past century, and there is little evidence of such a link in the CT, even though this region is characterized by high precipitation, erosional plumes and seasonal upwelling-associated phytoplankton blooms. Furthermore, until survivorship and competency for a wider spectrum of mass-spawned invertebrate planktotrophs in relation to elevated phytoplankton densities is better understood, such evidence, suggesting release from food limitation as the principal cause of enhanced COT recruitment, should be interpreted with caution.

Bukit Belalong, Brunei, is a small mountain (913 m) of uniform shale lithology with continuous primary rain forest from its base to its summit. Three 0.25 ha plots were established at each of three altitudes (200, 500 and 850 m) to investigate the altitudinal zonation of the soils and the vegetation. One soil profile from each altitude is described and chemical analyses of the soils indicate that they are similar at all altitudes. In each plot all trees ≥10 cm dbh were measured and identified as far as possible. Maximum tree height was greatest at 200 m (60 m) and least at 850 m (33 m). Tree density (number of individuals ha−1) increased with altitude. The forest at 850 m was the most species- and family-rich, but since the ratio of species to individuals did not vary significantly among altitudes, the higher species richness is attributed partly to the larger number of trees sampled. The Dipterocarpaceae was the most important family in terms of basal area at all altitudes, but its proportion of basal area was much smaller at 850 m than at the other altitudes. The Dipterocarpaceae was the most diverse family at 200 m and 500 m, but at 850 m its diversity was exceeded by the Lauraceae, Myrtaceae and Euphorbiaceae and equalled by the Clusiaceae. The forests at 200 m and 500 m are classified as lowland rain forest and that at 850 m is classified as a lower montane forest.

Dryobalanops rappa (Dipterocarpaceae), a dominant tree in wetland forests in Borneo, often produces vegetative sprouts in its juvenile stages (trees less than 25 m in height), a characteristic that is believed to be rare in tropical forest trees. We investigated the growth characteristics of this species in a tropical forest in Merimbun Heritage Park, Brunei, to verify the hypothesis that the vigorous sprouting ability enables it to grow in a wetland forest with soft soils that promote stem decumbency and to assess the adaptive significance of vegetative sprouting in the context of its regeneration. Reproductively mature trees developed buttresses and were rarely decumbent. However, if they became decumbent, they died without sprouting. Juvenile trees were frequently decumbent, and their decumbent shoots sprouted vegetatively. Therefore, vegetative sprouting acted as a countermeasure to decumbency and death on the soft wetland soil. A decumbent shoot produced only one sprout in most cases. Decumbent shoots grew little and eventually died, but new sprouts showed rapid growth. This suggests that there is translocation of resources from decumbent shoots to sprouts. If decumbency occurs, a D. rappa genet ramifies into sprouts, and helps sustain the population in the wetland environment. This vegetative life history strategy is important for regeneration in wetland forests with soft soil.