Draft: 6 March 2013: A paper delivered at the 2nd Southeast Asian Studies Symposium, Project Southeast Asia, University of Oxford, 9-10 March, 2013.
Abstract
This paper focuses on a
rapidly expanding field of research in the social sciences in Borneo. There has
been a noticeable focus on the multidisciplinary, multidimensional study of
identities and ethnicities in Borneo in the last two decades, even though the
identification of units for analysis and the labelling of ethnic groups or
categories have enjoyed a long history in Borneo Studies. An important stimulus
for the more recent increase in scholarly interest was the major conference
held in Sarawak in 1988 which explored issues of ethnicity and then the
publication by the Sarawak Museum of four volumes of papers in 1989, organised
primarily in terms of the major ethnic groups identified in the state (Chin and
Kedit, 1989). Other key moments in this developing interest was the publication
of Jérôme Rousseau’s Central Borneo:
Ethnic Identity and Social Life in a Stratified Society (1990), Anna
Lowenhaupt Tsing’s In the Realm of
the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place (1993) and
Bernard Sellato’s Nomades et
Sedentarisation à Borneo.
Histoire Economique et Sociale (1989) and Nomads
of the Borneo Rainforest (1994). A
more recent manifestation of this expanding interest is the edited book by
Zawawi Ibrahim Representation, Identity
and Multiculturalism in Sarawak (2008a, 2008b), and
Peter Metcalf’s The Life of the
Longhouse: an Archaeology of Ethnicity (2010). This paper, which attempts
an overview and analysis of the field, arranges the contributions (by no means
exhaustively) into seven categories: (1) the nation-state, majorities and
minorities; (2) religious conversion and identities; (3) the media, identities
and nation-building; (4) borderlands, margins, migrations and identities; (5)
inter-ethnic relations and violence; (6) arenas for identity construction in
tourism and museums; and finally (7) emerging middle classes, lifestyles and
identities in urban settings.
This is a revised
version of a paper which was delivered at a workshop entitled ‘Borneo Studies:
the State-of-the-Art and Future Directions’ hosted by the Institute of Asian
Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam, 30 November-1 December 2012. A much
earlier and extended version of the paper was published as Culture and Identity: Some Borneo Comparisons, Institute of Asian
Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Working Papers series No 1, 2012.
Wider
contexts
In
Southeast Asia interest in what was traditionally referred to as ‘ethnicity’
has a long history. Going back to the early post-war period anthropologists
were already examining the ways in which identities (using such alternative
terms as ‘tribal’, ‘indigenous’, ‘native’, ‘minority’, ‘cultunit’ or
‘culture-bearing unit’ and so on) are constructed; and are not carried
unchanging from the past and anchored reassuringly
in some distant ancestral time and space. Rather, it was argued, they are
products of social interaction and cultural construction. Indeed, as a ‘resource’ they can be
‘switched’, ‘manipulated’, ‘deployed’ and ‘used’, and many anthropological
studies have focused on the strategic ways in which particular communities
adopt, change and discard identities, and the role-playing and behaviour
associated with them, according to circumstances, needs and interests (Nagata,
1975, 1979; Dentan, 1975). Individuals can also carry multiple identities and
deploy these as different situations and interactions demand (Dentan, 1976: 78;
King and Wilder, 2003:196-200; Nagata, 1979). This is especially so in
situations where minority populations have to come to terms with more powerful
majorities (Dentan, 1975). Having said this I do not subscribe slavishly to an
interactionist perspective on identity and I would also wish to argue that
there is also some merit in the view that there are elements in identity
formation for certain communities that are, in some sense, primordial, or at
least are more persistent and long-established.
We
could well make a case for Southeast Asia as the major site in global terms for
the development of theories and concepts of cultural identity. A most
significant and early contribution to these debates was Edmund Leach’s Political Systems of Highland Burma: a Study
of Kachin Social Structure (1954) which emerged from his doctoral thesis
submitted to the LSE (1947) where he argued that identity had to be examined as
a historical process; he demonstrated this with regard to interactions between the village-based pagan Kachin and their Buddhist Shan neighbours and the fact that the
social forms and identities of the upland-dwelling tribal Kachin were forged
and transformed in relation to the valley-dwelling Shan who were organised into
hierarchical states. Kachin socio-political organisation and identities were
therefore unstable and subject to change and were indeed used strategically in
relation the Shan. This gave rise to a whole stream of work on the relations
between upland and lowland populations in Southeast Asia and the ways in which
identities were constructed and transformed (see King and Wilder, 1982, 2003).
It has given rise, I think, to notions of centres and margins, to focal points
and peripheries, and to the concept of the formation of identities in the
context of interaction and encounter across borders and boundaries. We should
also note at this juncture that Leach’s important and ambitious overview Social Science Research in Sarawak
(1950), commissioned by the Colonial Social Science Research Council, took
elements from his Highland Burma study, and very much influenced my approach
and that of some other anthropologists to the study of social structure,
identities and inter-ethnic encounters in a Borneo context (see, for example,
King, 1978, 1979, 1982, 1985).
Another
more general and important contribution to this debate, though not specific to
Southeast Asia, was the edited book by Fredrik Barth Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: the Social Organization of Culture
Difference (1969) in which Barth argued for the importance of focusing, not
on the cultural stuff which expresses and is used to define ethnic identity (which
in any case is never homogeneous) but rather the boundaries between units
defined as separate and different and the process of crossing boundaries. Nevertheless,
I think work in Southeast, which pre-dated Barth, had already demonstrated the
importance of boundary crossing, though it had not been conceptualised specifically
in the terms in which Barth presented it to us.
I
first became involved in these deliberations in the 1970s when I was grappling
with the problem of how to define and label an ethnic group in the Upper Kapuas
region which I came to refer to as ‘Maloh’ and to weigh the competing claims of
this Iban-derived ‘exonym’ with a range of locally-derived ‘endonyms’ (which
included Embaloh, Taman, Kalis); the conclusion I reached was that ethnic
boundaries were never neatly drawn; people cross boundaries, express their
identities according to context, scale and level, and embrace new identities
whilst sometimes retaining a previous identity; moreover cultural exchange and
contact has given rise to hybridisation and syncretism; identities whilst
presented as ‘fixed’, ‘stereotypical’ and ‘enduring’ are instead rather more
fluid, relational and contingent; (see my Ethnic
Classification and Ethnic Relations: a Borneo Case Study, 1979, and 1982,
1985, 1989, 2001, 2002, and the edited journal issue with William D. Wilder Ethnicity in Southeast Asia, 1982, and
with Michael Hitchcock, 1997a, 1997b).
Our earlier concerns with ethnicity have been translated into or perhaps
have been embraced more recently by the more general concept of ‘identity’ or
‘cultural identity’ which has been increasingly viewed in the context of what
has come to be called ‘cultural politics’, an arena in which identity is
constructed, debated and contested, particularly in relation to minorities and
the nation-state (see, for example, Kahn, 1992, 1995, 1998, 1999).
With
regard to the Borneo literature on identity I still remain convinced that we
need to reconceptualise the concept of ‘centres’ and ‘margins’ in relation to
changing identities and that, in Leachian mode, we can conceive of Borneo societies
as gaining form and identity in their interrelationships with focal points of state-based
power and influence, whether indigenous or foreign (King, 2001). This in turn
requires a shift to the study of interactions in urban centres (Boulanger,
2009), changing social class and ethnic configurations, the emergence of a
politically aware, modern, educated elite, and the effects of urban-generated
media and lifestyles on rural populations.
Culture and Identity
I
have already argued elsewhere that the concept of identity (or cultural
identity) is closely related to that of ethnicity (King, 2012) and that, in
some contexts, they are used interchangeably in that they both refer to the
realm of values, behaviour and cultural meaning. Nevertheless, I think we
should see ethnicity as a special kind of identity attached to particular
groups, categories or communities which command larger scale forms of
allegiance and loyalty. In its specifically ethnic dimension identity is what
distinguishes or differentiates a particular category or group of individuals
from others. Ethnicity is frequently expressed as unifying and differentiating
people at varying levels of contrast, and with the process of separating or
distinguishing some from others by using certain cultural criteria (Hitchcock
and King, 1997a, 1997b).
Therefore,
the concept of identity is bound up with processes of cultural construction and
transformation and the various forms and levels of identity can never be taken
to be complete and firmly established.
They are always in the process of ‘becoming’ and are invariably located in a world of competing, conflicting
and interacting identities made more intense by the impacts of globalisation
and media technology, nation-building, and trans-national movements and
encounters (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983; Anderson, 1991). Identities are also
forged and transformed in situations where power and the ability to exercise
one’s will and discretion are differentially allocated in hierarchical social
formations (Wertheim, 1964, 1967, 1974, 1993). In this regard Jenks says ‘There are no societies in which
the quality of life is not differentiated by complexes of class, status and
power, and as societies become more complex this differentiation becomes more
marked, but also more subtly encoded in networks of symbolic cultural
representations’ (1993: 99; and see Clammer, 2002: 32). These issues of
hierarchy, inequality and contention are in turn closely connected to
Foucault’s concept of ‘discourse’ and
the role of knowledge, ideas, images and cultural categories in exercising
control, regulation and domination over others (1977, 1980).
It
is sometimes difficult to anticipate what elements will be given significance
in establishing similarity and difference, but the processes of identifying and
differentiating ‘us’ from ‘them’ are deeply cultural (Kahn, 1992: 159). Obviously
those who study ethnicity and identity have to examine the criteria which can
be used to unite and differentiate people and choose which make sense and are
most appropriate and useful in their analyses. These may or may not correspond
with the criteria which the people under study themselves use, the so-called
‘subjective’ dimension of identity (Nagata, 1974, 1975, 1979) or in Chua’s
terms ‘native exegesis’ (2007). But an outside observer in attempting to
construct wider ranging classifications for comparative purposes might well
choose to emphasise certain criteria, say language, rather than local
principles of identity. The establishment of identities can also entail a range
of active interactions (cultural exchange, social intercourse including
possibly intermarriage, trade and commerce, political alliance, and even
peaceful assimilation) across the boundaries between different or separate
groupings or they may involve processes
of exclusion, avoidance, non-recognition, or hostility, the latter sometimes
resulting in political subjugation, economic exploitation, forced acculturation
or in extreme cases violence and genocide. In the case of the construction of
national identities we can see how politically dominant groups, or in more
abstract terms ‘the state’, attempt to promote, disseminate and sometimes
impose on others their notions of identity and what that identity from a
national perspective comprises.
Bornean identities:
reorientations
It
is in the cultural realm (in the construction and contestation of identities [see
Appadurai, 1986, 1990, 1991, 1996] and the relations between identity formation,
nation-building and globalisation), and the discourses which are generated in
the interfaces between people and the nation-state on which we need to focus. There
are three points in relation to these issues in Borneo and the ways in which
Borneo researchers have positioned themselves in regional studies. First, up to the 1990s Borneo specialists
tended to conform to the boundaries that had been set by the colonial powers;
we worked either in the former British dependencies or in former Dutch
Borneo. We usually did not cross borders;
even those between Sarawak, Sabah and Brunei Darussalam. This territorial confinement presented major
problems in understanding cultural identities and historical interconnections
which cut across artificially created imperial borders. There was not a great
deal of research that took a boldly comparative perspective across the whole island
or major parts of it up to about 1990, though I have to single out the work of Jérôme Rousseau (1990) and Bernard Sellato (1989,
1994) as pioneers in this field, consolidated in the later work of Winzeler (1997a), among several others. I
tried to do the same broad sweep in the co-authored book with Jan Avé People of the Weeping Forests: Tradition and
Change in Borneo (1986) and in the general book on The Peoples of Borneo (1993a). What has happened in the last two
decades is a rapidly increasing amount of work on Kalimantan, which was
certainly not the case in the 1970s and the 1980s which has helped us in our
understanding of both historical connections between populations across Borneo but
also about the formation and transformation of identities which cut across
artificial divides.
Secondly,
once we have begun to grasp the complexities of Borneo history, cultures and
identities we can then locate the island within the nation-states which incorporate
it (and although Brunei Darussalam appears to be an exception here, it does not
make much sense to study it without examining its relations with neighbouring
areas of Malaysian Sarawak and Sabah, and historically with the southern
Philippines). In my view the study of Borneo identities, unless it is content
to lapse into a kind of parochialism, needs to address the connections between
Kalimantan and the wider Republic of
Indonesia and the policies of the central government in relation to its outer
island dependencies; and in the Malaysian Borneo territories to examine the
consequences for identities in Sarawak and Sabah of the policies and practices
of those who control and administer the state in Kuala Lumpur and Putra Jaya and
organise patronage systems within Kuching and Kota Kinabalu. In the case of
Brunei, it has to be considered in relation to those neighbouring territories
and peoples to which the sultanate was historically connected and with which it
maintains social, cultural and economic relations. Indeed, it has been one of
my main contentions that to understand the forms, composition and processes of
what I refer to as ‘Brunei society’ then one must examine cross-border
relations and comparative cases which demonstrate important similarities between
political, economic and cultural ‘centres’ like Brunei (or more specifically
Bandar Seri Begawan) and the populations which surround them (1994, 1996,2001).
Thirdly,
apart from the work of political scientists and economists which has
occasionally connected Borneo to the two nation-states with which the major
parts of the island are connected, there has been an interesting turn more
recently in studies of identities. There are at least seven strands to this
(though a rather more intense review of the literature might find others and
will certainly demonstrate that there is overlap between some of these strands
or categories of research and publication). The first category comprises the
movement from a preoccupation with a circumscribed population to a perspective
which sees this population in relation to the nation-state and associated dominant
groups through which it has to negotiate its identity and resources. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s work on the Meratus
Dayaks is an early example of this approach (1984, 1993; and see also Winzeler
[1997a, 1997b] and Sillander [2004]).
A
second strand has focused on religious identities and religious conversion
primarily to Islam or some form of Christianity (see, for example Chalmers,
2006 and Asiyah, 2011; and Connolly, 2004), or to emerging indigenous religions
such as Kaharingan in Central Kalimantan (Schiller, 1987, 1997). The literature
on religious conversion and on transformations in religious ideas and practices
is becoming increasingly substantial and, of course, particular religious
configurations, specific beliefs and practices, and the connections established
between myth, cosmology and ethnic origins are important ingredients in the
construction and maintenance of identities. A significant segment of this
literature has emerged from Christian missionary activity going as far back as
Conley’s proselytising work on Kenyah conversion in Kalimantan (1976). Much
later we have had the detailed studies of Bidayuh conversion by Harris (2002)
and Chua (2007, 2012), among others.
The
third strand of research has taken the media route to nation-building and asked
the question ‘How are populations in Borneo responding to media-generated
nation-building in Malaysia and Indonesia?’ Research in the field of media
anthropology by John Postill (2006), Fausto Barlocco (2008) and Poline Bala (2007),
among others, has explored these dimensions of identity formation and the
different ways in which different minorities are responding to the
opportunities and constraints presented by their inclusion in a nation-state
structure.
A
fourth area of research has examined Indonesian border populations and the
responses of these territorially marginal communities to the pressures of a
perceived remote central government (which is seen as dominated by culturally
and ethnically different populations with different cultural and ethnic
priorities); the work of Eilenberg and Wadley (2009) is important here.
Research on the Sarawak side of the border has also focused on territorially
marginal populations and their ambiguous and shifting relations with the nation-state
(see Ishikawa, 2010; Bala, 2002; and Reid, 1997); this work also presents us
with a range of case-studies which complement those on media-generated
nation-building and minority responses.
A
fifth strand has emerged in response to the violent inter-ethnic conflicts in
West and Central Kalimantan in the 1990s and the relationship between the
construction, transformation and expression of ethnicity, the politicisation of
identity, the reasons for conflict, and its cultural patterning and local
interpretation, in the work of many social scientists, particularly
anthropologists, historians and political scientists, including Davidson
(2008), Dove (2006), Harwell (2000), Hawkins (2005), Heidhues (2001), Peluso
and Harwell (2001), König (2012). I think it important to note that this
dramatically violent expression of identity and inter-ethnic relations has also
served to increase academic and popular interest in the whole area of ethnicity
and culture.
The
next category comprises arenas for constructing and expressing identities in
what might be termed leisure pursuits and entertainments; these comprise such
activities as tourism (the Sarawak Cultural Village demonstrates how identities
are constructed and represented) and exhibitions and presentations within and
sponsored by regional museums. Examples of this work are provided by William
Kruse (2003) and Heather Zeppel (1995) on tourism, selling ‘wild Borneo’ and
authenticity, and Christine Faye Kreps (1994) and Dianne Tillotson (1994) on cultural construction in museums.
Finally,
there is an emerging, though still rather nominal interest in identity
construction in urban areas and the lifestyles of an expanding middle class
(see, for example Boulanger, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2009). All seven strands have,
in one way or another, tackled issues of identity and change.
Identities and
Ethnicities: some cases
What
has been achieved in the last couple of decades in this field? Are their
significant moments in the study of identities in Borneo? If we turn to any anthropological study of
Borneo, whether it focuses on ethnicity or not, there is very likely to be some
discussion of the problem of identity and ethnic labelling. We have the well
known four-volume collection as a
special issue of the Sarawak Museum Journal (Chin and Kedit, 1989) arising from a 1988
conference in Kuching and a series of ethnic-based seminars around the country to
demonstrate the importance of ethnic identities in Sarawak and how they might
be managed and transformed. The Cultural Heritage Symposia gained a momentum
and has resulted in five events (1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2009) which have
brought together representatives from the officially sanctioned ethnic
categories in Sarawak (Chua, 2012: 48). The
inaugural event was a monumental enterprise and one which, in my view,
emphasised the importance of ethnicity and identity in both academic research
and in government policy. But very few of the deliberations at that gathering gave
explicit attention to the ways in which social transformations are thought
about, discussed, and debated within and between the different constituent
ethnic groups of Sarawak and in relation to representations generated at higher
levels of the nation-state and beyond. This is hardly surprising in that the
cultural heritage seminars to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of
Sarawak’s independence within Malaysia, were designed to encourage ‘the various
communities…to examine their respective cultures to determine what to discard
in the interest of “development” and “unity” and what to preserve and
incorporate into a national (Malaysian) culture’ (Winzeler, 1997c: 201; Chin
and Kedit, 1989). Here we have an apt illustration of what inspires my current
deliberations, in that culture and identity are constructed and subject to the
demands and interests of the nation-state; they are politicised. Indeed the
Sarawak government delineated those ‘ethnic divisions’ which would debate their
future roles in the state: Bidayuh, Iban, Melanau, Orang Ulu, Malay, Chinese
and Indian (Jeffrey Jehom, 2008).
There
also seems to have been little attention to the political dimensions of these
concerns in the four-volume proceedings arising from the sixth biennial
conference of the Borneo Research Council in Kuching in 2000, although there
was considerable attention paid to issues of ethnicity and culture (Leigh,
2000). However, the appearance since the 1990s of several studies which examine
the responses of local populations to the policies and practices of state representatives
enable us to draw out similarities and differences in those responses and
discourses. These emerging interests were consolidated and brought together in
the Borneo Research Council’s 11th international conference in
Brunei on the themes of ‘Identities, Cultures, Environments’. Some of the key
variables in explaining differences in responses and discourses appear to be:
(1) the time frame and changes in government and its policies; (2) location of
the communities under study (whether close to urban centres or more distant,
whether near an international border or not, whether some members of an
identified group live and work in an urban area or not): (3) the character and
history of inter-ethnic relationships: (4) local economic structures and resource
use; (5) demography and population profiles; (6) and relative physical mobility
of both men and women.
(1)The Nation-state, Majorities and Minorities
One
of the first major studies of the effects of national policies and the actions
and attitudes of a lowland majority on a minority community and the local
responses to these pressures was undertaken not in Sarawak (where one might have
anticipated an earlier interest) but in South Kalimantan. Interest
in local identities in the context of a nation-state was marked above all by
the appearance of Anna Tsing’s study In
the Realm of the Diamond Queen which examined the ‘cultural and political
construction of marginality’ (1993:5), though this was based on an earlier
doctoral thesis (1984). I should add
here that, although I combine the concept of nation with that of state, I
recognise that they are conceptually distinct and in certain cases may not
cohere (Thongchai, 1994). Tsing’s study
demonstrates how the Meratus Dayaks (an exonym for those diverse indigenous
populations which live in the Meratus Uplands, and perhaps this lack of
differentiation is a problem in her argument) of South Kalimantan are
marginalised not only by the policies and practices of the state but also by
their neighbours, the lowland Banjar Malays, and how the Meratus people challenge,
negotiate, reinterpret and explain their lowly status. I should add that subsequently Mary Hawkins
has examined the Banjar side of the story and demonstrated that their dominance
as a Muslim community has not only generated marginality among minority groups
but has also encouraged members of upland communities to assimilate to the
ethnic category ‘Banjar’, a familiar story in majority-minority relations
across Borneo and indeed Southeast Asia (2000: 24-36).
We
are familiar with Tsing’s perspectives from other studies of outer islanders in
Indonesia, and, of course, in the work of James Scott on ‘weapons of the weak’
(1985) and ‘the art of not being governed’ (2009). But, to my knowledge, this
is the first detailed and sustained attempt in a Borneo context to analyse the
interrelationships between the discourses and practices associated with
civilisation, modernity, progress, order and power on the one hand and the
primitive, traditional, backward, nomadic, disordered, untamed and displaced on
the other. We should, however, make reference to Douglas Miles’ pioneering
study of Banjarese-Dayak relations in South Kalimantan and the politicisation
of Muslim and non-Muslim identities from the early part of the twentieth
century (1976).
During
the past couple of decades there have been several other studies of different Borneo
populations examining how both colonial and post-colonial actions have served
to divide populations off from each other and create separate, marginal
populations and how these in turn talk about and represent state power
(Steckman, 2011). In the case of the Meratus Dayaks under Suharto’s New Order this
representation of the state was expressed and identified in terms of violence, terrorism,
government ‘head-hunting’, ceremonial building projects in the name of
development and the political preoccupation with establishing ‘order’ (ibid:
76ff). I would also link the detailed work of Kenneth Sillander on the Bentian
Dayaks of East Kalimantan with that of Tsing (as Sillander does himself), in
that he examines some of the consequences of being on the margins or on
‘several peripheries’(2004:48ff). However, he does state from the outset that,
although originally
he had planned ‘to make a study of ethnicity’, he then found that he was unable
to gather sufficient data on this topic mainly because ‘of the relative
insignificance of ethnic identity and ethnicity as criteria for social action
among the Bentian’ (2004: 3; 1995). Even so Sillander does provide us with the
kind of information and analysis which suggests to me that we can situate the
Bentian within the literature on ‘centres’ and ‘margins’ and on the processes
of constructing marginal identities in interaction with powerful centres. In this
connection Sillander explains how the Bentian as a recognisable unit of
identification was constructed but interestingly he argues that ethnicity is
not a significant factor among the Bentian and the Luangan (1995).
We
have also seen, in the case of the Punan/Penan of Sarawak, a case to which
Tsing refers, how the media and other external observers including politicians,
government agents, and NGO activists (and even anthropologists) choose to
represent and ‘construct’ these ‘out-of-the way’ peoples in the context of
commercial logging and the undermining of a nomadic way of life (see for
example Bending [2006]; and for a review King [2006]; and Brosius, 2007; and
Thambiah on the Bhuket/Ukit, 1995). A major recent study which focuses on the
‘images’ and identities of the Punan Malinau in East Kalimantan is that by Lars
Kaskija (2012); Kaskija, building on the work of Sellato (1994), Thambiah
(1995) and others, develops notions of Punan identity in their engagement with
more powerful neighbours on the bases of a foraging ethos, openness, sociality,
flexibility and opportunism, immediate return and sharing, variability and
diversity, and ‘code-switching’. Kaskija’s findings and his characterisation of
the Punan as ‘stuck at the bottom’ and
as adopting strategies to engage with dominant others reminds me very much of
Tsing’s observations on the Meratus. But in the case of the Punan Malinau there
is interaction with and response to several dominant others and not just one as
in Meratus-Banjar relations.
Another
very important development in the Tsing theme is Robert Winzeler’s edited book
(1997a) which examines the encounters between the post-colonial state and
minority groups and the range of local responses to external pressures, which
‘have often involved a mixture of dependency and acceptance, on the one hand,
and of hostility and resistance, on the other’ (1997b: 2; Zawawi, 2000). Winzeler’s
book is something of a bold departure in Borneo Studies in that it embraces the
Malaysian Peninsula, and Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo. What he also draws
our attention to is the increasingly interventionist policies of the
post-colonial state in comparison with the colonial experience in that
[t]he
national policies and projects carried out by postcolonial governments in
regard to the indigenous peoples involve efforts at social and cultural
transformation……[they] generally seek to promote a common national culture,
religion, and language and to eradicate what are regarded as backward or savage
beliefs, customs, lifestyles, and modes of adaptation (1997b: 1-2).
Winzeler identifies the indigenous responses to
these interventions in predictable fashion: ‘dependency and acceptance’,
hostility and resistance’, ‘peaceful protest’, ‘accepted forums’, ‘passive
noncooperation’, ‘sabotage’, and ‘open rebellion’; again all very James Scott
(ibid:2-3). The consequences for identity are clear; in situations of pressure,
tension and conflict minorities have a different attitude to their ‘cultural
patterns and traditions’ in that what was previously ‘implicit’ have become
‘objectified or externalized’ (ibid: 3). Winzeler explores some of these issues
in relation to the Bidayuh, and in noting their much more intense relations
with those in power because of their proximity to Kuching (the Brunei Malays, the Brooke Raj, the
British colonial regime and the representatives of the post-colonial Malaysian
federal authorities in Kuala Lumpur and their agents in Kuching) Winzeler remarks
that the Bidayuh are ‘involved in the creative cultural process of maintaining,
restoring, discovering, and, in some instances, creating traditions’ (1997c:
216). They have done so, among other agencies, through the Dayak Bidayuh
National Association which has been concerned both to modernise the Bidayuh and
to retain the core elements of Bidayuh identity and tradition which include the
men’s house (ibid: 222-223). It is above all about identity, but as Winzeler
notes it is part of an overall process of ‘cultural objectification’ in
Malaysia following the need for the government to formulate a national cultural
policy in order to promote national unity and identity (ibid: 225-226). In
order to survive cultures (and in this regard identities) have to be formalised
and promoted, and this is especially pressing for those populations under
threat, particularly the Bidayuh, and their need to overcome the construction
of the Bidayuh in the colonial and early anthropological literature as passive
victims of modernisation and the aggression of others (ibid: 227).
(2) Religious
Conversion and Identities
Religious
conversion is another significant consideration in the maintenance and
transformation of identities. We are fortunate in having major studies of ‘traditional’
religions, including, among many others, Stephen Morris’ posthumous study of Melanau
religion in The Oya Melanau (1997), Jéröme Rousseau’s Kayan Religion: Ritual Life and Religious Reform in Central Borneo
(1998), Peter Metcalf’s A Borneo Journey
into Death (1982), Eva Maria Kershaw’s
A Study of Brunei Dusun Religion: Ethnic Priesthood on a Frontier of Islam
(2000), Sian Eira Jay on Shamans, Priests
and the Cosmology of the Ngaju Dayak of Central Kalimantan (1991) and Ann
L. Appleton’s Acts of Integration,
Expressions of Faith: Madness, Death and Ritual in Melanau Ontology (2006).
All of these important and detailed studies also announce and demonstrate
cultural identities.
To
return to the issue of religious transformation, and following Conley’s early
study of Kenyah religious conversion (1976), we now have several more recent
studies, mainly examining processes of conversion and its social and cultural consequences, of
Annette Harris on Sabah in her The Impact
of Christianity on Power Relationships and Social Exchanges: a Case Study of
Change among the Tagal Murut of Sabah, Malaysia (1995); in Kalimantan Anne Schiller’s work on the Ngaju and
Kaharingan in The Dynamics of Death:
Ritual Identity, and Religious Change among the Kalimantan Ngaju (1987) and
Small Sacrifices: Religious Change and
Cultural Identity among the Ngaju of Indonesia (1997); Larry Kenneth
Thomson on The Effect of the Dayak
Worldview, Customs, Traditions, and Customary Law (adat-istiadat) on the
Interpretation of the Gospel in West Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo (2000);
and Jennifer Connolly Becoming Christian
and Dayak: a Study of Christian Conversion among Dayaks in East Kalimantan,
Indonesia (2004); in Sarawak there
are Fiona Harris’ Growing Gods: Bidayuh
Processes of Religious Change in Sarawak, Malaysia (2002), Liana Chua’s Objects of Culture: Constituting
Bidayuh-ness in Sarawak, East Malaysia (2007) and The Christianity of Culture: Conversion, Ethnic Citizenship and the
Matter of Religion in Malaysian Borneo (2012), Tan Sooi Ling’s Transformative Worship among the Selako in
Sarawak, Malaysia (2008), and Pamela Lindell’s The Longhouse and the Legacy of History: Religion, Architecture and
Change among the Bisingai of Sarawak (Malaysia) (2000); and finally in
Brunei , among others there is Asiyah az-Zahra Ahmad Kumpoh’s Conversion to Islam: the Case of the Dusun
Ethnic Group in Brunei Darussalam (2011).
Clearly conversion to a particular religion is also
implicated in political processes and nation-building. Conversion in the Borneo
territories is invariably to one of the world religions, particularly Islam
(see, for example, Chalmers, 2006, 2007, 2009; and Asiyah, 2011) and various
forms of Christianity (Chua, 2012), or in parts of central and south-eastern
Kalimantan to the Dayak religion referred to as Kaharingan which is recognised
by the Indonesian government as an official religion and categorised as a
version of Hinduism (Schiller, 1997). The indigenous religion of the Ngaju has
been codified and its ritual standardised in the process of gaining acceptance as an
official religion. It is also deployed
by the Ngaju and others as a central element in their identity and their claims
to modernity in the Indonesian nation-state.
Schiller’s study provides a template for many of the prominent and pressing
issues to be considered in conversion processes: embracing modernisation but
without converting to the majority religion, and embracing modernity by
converting to an officially recognised religion. But the whole process of
conversion and deciding what to convert to is deeply political.
Two studies of the Bidayuh in Sarawak have also,
among other things, explored the relationship between conversion and identity
(Chua, 2009, 2012; Harris, 2002), and Winzeler, who has examined processes of
identity change among the Bidayuh, has also considered conversion among
minority populations more generally in Southeast Asia, and the economic, material,
magical and spiritual, and the ethnic and identity reasons for it (2008; and
see Winzeler for material expressions of religion and its transformations
[2004]). Clearly culture has been subject to increasing essentialisation or
objectification in Sarawak in the context of the political imperative to promote
multiculturalism. Yet, as Chua argues, we should not be so seduced by the
political dimensions of conversion (though I would argue that this is a vitally
important element of what we are witnessing in Borneo and throughout Southeast
Asia), but instead we must approach the issue of ‘cultural consciousness’ from
the perspective of those we study who ‘not only act in the world but also
contemplate, speculate about, and debate various notions about which
anthropologists are also concerned – such as “culture”, “religion”,
“(dis)continuity” and “Christianity”’ (2012: 29). What is clear is that
conversion to Christianity has enabled Bidayuhs to continue to connect with
their past and to claim through Christianity a Bidayuh identity. Chua’s work in
particular, also draws our attention to the issue of whether or not conversion
requires and results in ‘rupture’ with the past in the realisation of a new set
of ritual practices, and, perhaps for some, a new spirituality, or whether
there is the possibility of a continuing connection with the old religion. With
some notable exceptions she proposes that there is continuity and that gawai adat is still connected and, for
some, meaningful to the religious lives of the Bidayuh. Chua says with great
conviction that religious conversion ‘did not only generate discourses of
change and difference, but also gave rise to a strong, and in many ways, more
pervasive, sense of connection with the past: of continuity and contiguity
between adat gawai and Christianity’
(ibid: 104).
(3)
The
Media, Identities and Nation-building
A
third major area of developing interest is in the media, which in turn focuses
on ‘agency from below’, and whether in national terms it is a positive or a
negative response. Anderson’s excursion into the mechanisms of nation-creation – print
media, census, map and museum - in the
period of early modernity, has to be augmented by attention to the effects of
diverse forms of electronic and print media in the era of late-modernity
(1991). One of the few researchers to address
this subject in a Borneo context is John Postill. In his study of the
relationships between the media and nation-building in Malaysia, he examines
the ways in which the Sarawak Iban have responded to and been affected by state-led and media-directed Malaysianisation processes
(1998, 2006). What for me is intriguing about Postill’s body of work, which he
locates within the sub-field of ‘media anthropology’, is that he interweaves
the consideration of the roles and consequences of conventional media forms –
in newspapers and other published material, television and radio – with an
examination of the changing attitudes to and implications of devices (like
wristwatches, clocks, calendars, television sets) in the conceptualisation and
arrangement of time, place, identity and tradition (2001, 2002).
Following
John Comaroff (1996), Postill, though critical of some of Comaroff’s
propositions, addresses the phenomenon of global communications and the ways in
which global cultural flows generate reactions and mediations on the part of
the representatives of the state and responses on the part of constituent
ethnic groups (like the Iban) in the arena of cultural politics and identity
construction and change within the nation-state (2001: 147; and see 1998, 2008).
Postill carefully and subtly examines historically different media forms
(literature [including school texts and indigenous language publications],
radio, television) during the post-war period in Sarawak and tries to determine
to what extent and in what ways the Sarawak state and Malaysian national
governments have been able to manage and control media productions (through
mass education and a national language policy as well as the control of certain
information sources) in order to build a
national culture, and how their actions have impacted on the development and
transformation of Iban identity (2001: 148).
In
particular, the dissemination of cultural information, bearing in mind the
distinction between oral and written forms of information and between oral and
literate traditions, has generated tensions among minority groups to both modernise and retain their identities based selectively on
elements of past traditions. In this
process identity is both constructed and transformed and re-invented but the vital issue is whether or not minority
languages are permitted in written and other forms through, for example, school
instruction and newspapers. In the era of interpersonal communication,
particularly the internet and email, these devices which enable criticism and
resistance, become even more important
when other major outlets of information are government-controlled. Postill’s
main conclusion is that there is a need ‘to understand ethnicity not as an
isolated category of analysis but as part of a broader context of social,
economic, and political relations’ (2002: 118). His significant contribution is
to investigate the diverse modes in which information, ideology and forms of
knowledge are conveyed and how these in turn are incorporated, changed and
responded to by individuals and communities in constructing and transforming
their identities. He also asserts that through media-disseminated
nation-building ‘Malaysia has become an unquestioned reality amongst the Iban
of Sarawak’ as has their participation in ‘mass public culture’ (2006:
192-193). Even more positively, though this might be contentious if we wish to
encompass all Iban in Sarawak, he asserts that ‘state-led media efforts have
been amply rewarded for the Iban of Sarawak have become thoroughly
“Malaysianised”’ (2006:3). This, of course, depends on what we understand by
the concept of Malaysia and its relationship to development and modernity (for
example is it primarily in cultural terms or political-territorial terms?).
Media-generated
nation-building in Malaysia seems to have produced a different result among the
Kadazandusun in the neighbouring Malaysian Borneo state of Sabah, which
demonstrates that, according to context, state propaganda can have both positive
and negative effects. Fausto Barlocco examines
the encounters between members of a
local community of Kadazandusun in the
village of Kituau in the Penampang region of Sabah and the
Muslim-Malay-dominated federal authorities in Kuala Lumpur and their surrogates
in Kota Kinabalu (2008, 2009, 2010). Certain observations are extended to the
wider Kadazandusun population. The specific focus is on the ways in which
Kadazandusun identities have been constructed
and transformed and the
situational manipulations of identities in the context of the post-independence
Malaysian nation-building project. In this regard, and as with Postill’s study,
a major area of interest is the use of the media by the representatives of the
state in presenting its images and visions of the nation and the ‘national
culture’ and the problems and issues which this presents for a marginalised
Kadazandusun minority. The analysis of the practices and discourses surrounding
identity formation and change and resistance to state-generated priorities
leads Barlocco to address some of the
general and Southeast Asian-specific literature on ethnicity, identity,
modernity, ‘the invention of tradition’, ‘imagined communities’, and the media
and consumption.
Barlocco
focuses on the sense of belonging of the Kadazandusun and on two major kinds of
collective identification: the nation
and the ethnic group. In contrast to the Iban of Postill’s study Kadazandusun
villagers (and we must acknowledge that this, as with Postill’s Iban study,
probably does not apply to all Kadazandusun) usually reject the state’s
promotion of a national identity and are unwilling to identify with the Malaysian
nation. They more often identify themselves as members of their ethnic group or
village which, in Kadazandusun eyes, enable greater participation than at the
national level. Yet the Malaysian nation-building project is profoundly
ambiguous: it seeks to promote a national culture and identity whilst at the
same time differentiating its citizens into separate ethnic categories and
treating them differently. In this situation (though it conforms to what we
know about the situational operation of identities in other cases) the Kadazandusun
villagers identify themselves as Malaysian, Kadazan, Sabahan and members of
their village according to context. Nevertheless, according to Barlocco they
feel themselves to be a marginalised population and their sense of belonging is
rooted at the local rather than the national level. Barlocco argues that the
official state discourse and practice of ethnic and religious differentiation
has been deeply internalised by the Kadazan and is a primary reason for their
opposition to the state, because of their experience of being treated as
marginal and second-class citizens (and see Reid, 1997).
A
similar experience is recorded for the Bidayuh of Sarawak. Chua gives us
considerable evidence that the Bidayuh, whilst embracing modernity and wishing
to benefit from it, are, in an important sense, ambivalent about it. She, like
Postill in the Iban case, confirms that the Bidayuh are ‘part of the wider
Malaysian nation’. But, in contrast to
Postill’s conclusions, she proposes that this process of constructing a nation
in Muslim-Malay terms ‘has certainly generated a widespread sense of alienation
from its institutions and the powers-that-be’ and for the Bidayuh have led to
their realisation that modernisation and development has become ‘inescapably
ethnicized’ (2012: 42-43).
In
another rather different study of nation-building and of the process of drawing
minority populations into the national fold, Poline Bala has examined the processes
and consequences of the introduction of the e-Bario development programme
(Information Communication Technologies, comprising telephones, computers, Very
Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs) and the internet) in the Kelabit Highlands
from the year 2000. Bala was herself engaged in the implementation and monitoring of the programme and she explores
various issues to do with local responses to state-generated development, and
the opportunities, tensions and constraints surrounding what we have come to
refer to as ‘action anthropology’. Bala’s recurring theme is that in contrast
to the critical positions taken by a number of prominent and distinguished
social scientists on the dimensions of power, control, hegemony, exploitation,
marginalisation and dependency in development discourse and action (notably in
the work of Arturo Escobar, 1995), in the Kelabit case there is a more
optimistic story to tell. She argues that, during several decades of exposure
to the outside world both during the late colonial period and the period of
independence within Malaysia, the Kelabit have engaged in a positive quest for
development and progress and a desire to embrace modernity. Development is seen
in local cultural terms as a resource, a product to be consumed and used. They embraced Christianity, formal education,
and opportunities in the world beyond their homeland in the remote uplands.
In
a later paper Bala is a little more equivocal in examining some of the problems
and issues which will face the Kelabit as a Christian minority in Malaysia
(2008: 139-150). Yet overall Kelabit are depicted as makers of their own
futures: problem-solvers and decision-makers, who observe, learn, evaluate and
make choices, though, of course, within certain parameters. The Kelabit search
for status, success, affluence and respect, the means of acquiring these
qualities and the meanings attached to them have changed with the increasing engagement of
the Kelabit with the outside world. Nevertheless, there does appear to be areas
of change in which the Kelabit are rather more powerless: the threats posed by
commercial logging and by the pressures on land and native land rights, and in
broader political terms the exercise of power by a Malay-dominated federation,
and, in Sarawak, a Melanau-Malay-dominated state which categorises marginal minorities
as ‘other indigenous’ or ‘orang ulu’, and ensures that the main benefits of
economic development do not go to them. We know that there are successful,
prominent, and outward-looking Kelabit, but we have to ask what power and
influence do they wield? Nevertheless, as with Postill’s Iban study the
Kelabit, through their access to media and in this case their use of modern
electronic technology, appear to be embracing modernity and the national
agenda. But we have to emphasise that there are others in Malaysian Borneo who
are not so engaged and that the commitment to the Malaysian nation-building
project is decidedly equivocal.
(4) Borderlands, Margins, Migrations and Identities
We
all recognise that territorial borders, as artificial political constructs
determining sovereignty, citizenship and the reach of state laws and
jurisdiction, are not necessarily impermeable or even necessarily formidable
barriers to movement. This is especially so in the case of the border between
Indonesian Kalimantan and Malaysian Borneo (Fariastuti, 2002; Riwanto, 2002). Nevertheless,
borders define states and, depending on the capacities of central governments
to monitor, police and secure their borders then they can and do make a
difference. Noboru Ishikawa’s study of the borderland Malay community of Telok Melano in the Lundu
district of Sarawak explores how nation-states are made and sustained and how
those who live at or near borders ‘deal
with the most concrete manifestation of the nation-state – its territorial
boundary’ (2010: 4-5; 1998). It demonstrates, in extended historical
perspective, how the occupation, deployment and symbolism of space and human movement across it are interrelated with
the formation, maintenance and transformation of different interrelated levels
of identity – national, ethnic, and community/village. What is especially important about the study
is the way in which the focus moves from understanding the activities of the
nation-state (and the problematical connection between ‘nation’ and ‘state’)
not simply in terms of incorporating people and space, forging an identity
which transcends the local, and instilling a sense of belonging but also for
those at the borders how these larger activities also produce social
dislocation, ethnic displacement, marginalisation, heterogeneity and
unevenness. It shows too how trans-national movements both serve to strengthen
and undermine the national project.
Eilenberg’s
work (2012) and his jointly written papers with Wadley (Eilenberg and Wadley,
2009; Wadley and Eilenberg, 2006) must be read in conjunction with Ishikawa’s
study. Operating at a different section of the border and on the Indonesian
side, focusing on the Iban of the Emperan (or the former Dutch-named ‘Batang-Loepar-landen’)
their work serves both to confirm some of Ishikawa’s findings and perspectives
and to take this field of research into different directions. Eilenberg demonstrates,
as does Ishikawa, the porosity of the border between Sarawak and West
Kalimantan. However, he considers the
increasingly strengthened position of what he terms the ‘border elite’ in West
Kalimantan, particularly since the post-Suharto government’s policy of
decentralisation and the decision to grant more autonomy to the regions, as
well as the political, cultural and psychological distance which these
Indonesian border populations, in this
case the Ibans, feel towards not only Jakarta but also the provincial capital
of Pontianak. Experiencing this sense of marginalisation, their orientation is
across the border to Sarawak and their Iban kin, friends and ethnic cousins
where they frequently go to visit and work, and where some also settle
permanently. In other words, rather than
seeing themselves as citizens of an Indonesian nation-state, the Indonesian
Iban feel closer, as do the Kadazandusun in Sabah, to those who share a particular
ethnic identity (even though this too has been constructed by political
centres). But the interesting dimension to this issue in West Kalimantan is
that the core of Iban ethnic identity is found across a national border and not
as in the Kadazandusun case in easy reach of the state capital. Eilenberg says,
‘For many, their connections over the border are often stronger than those with
their own nation’ (2012: 23). This leaves open, however, the question of what
the orientation of the Kalimantan Iban was and is to the Sarawak state and the
Kuala Lumpur federal government.
Although
in a rather different context looking across the border from Sarawak to
Kalimantan, Poline Bala also emphasises the importance of the social, cultural
and historical connectedness between the Kelabit and the Lun Berian, their
close relatives (lun ruyung) on the
other side of the border (2002; and see Amster, 2006: 218). However, in this sector of the border it
would appear that this political and territorial demarcation has made a real
difference in that, despite cross-border relationships these have been
distanced over time and that the perceptions of the border and the people who
live on the other side have changed so that there is an emerging
differentiation of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. This was especially strengthened
during Sukarno’s ‘Confrontation’ with Malaysia in the early 1960s when borders
hardened and made a difference. This set of findings is also supported by
Matthew Amster’s work on the Kelabit when he proposes that they have ‘a
positive understanding of the relationship to the nation and state’ (2006:
222). In Eilenberg’s, Bala’s and Amster’s studies there is also a sense of
the economic and status differentiation between those who live on either side
of the border; Malaysians are more wealthy, and in Sarawak have greater freedom
of cultural expression. Indonesians cross the border to find work where they
can, usually in menial jobs. Nevertheless, the cross-border perspectives and
interactions which are active and ongoing do make a difference to the efforts
of political elites at the centre to build a nation and national consciousness.
They also encourage us to re-conceptualise the nature of the state and the nation, and to engage with the
nation-state as both an idea and as everyday practices (Eilenberg, 2012: 50).
This
important and emerging literature on the issues posed for nation-states and by
its populations at the margins, engendered by the inevitable existence of
borderlands, draws attention, among other things, to the importance of the
relationship between territory and identity and the process of colonising space.
It is at the margins that the arrangement and demarcation of space takes on a
particular resonance.
(5) Inter-ethnic Relations and Violence
There
is an interesting body of work which has examined the construction and demarcation of identities
through state action, the politicisation of identities and the association of
identities with particular territories, and the competition for resources. Nancy Lee Peluso examines some of these dimensions
of ethnicity in her analysis of the Dayak-Madurese conflicts in West Kalimantan
in 1996-97 (2008; and see Peluso, 2003, 2006, and Davidson, 2008),
which also builds on the work of Emily Harwell (2000; and see Peluso and
Harwell [2001]). It is clear that there was a relationship between violence and
identity but Peluso also suggests that ‘[b]ecause ethnicity or “race” was the
basis by which territory, authority, and land rights were allocated under Dutch
colonial legal pluralism, territory and ethnicity had become conjoined in new
and unprecedented ways, most importantly in the ways individuals were allowed
access to land or governed’ (2008: 56). Ethnic differences were the product of colonial
and post-colonial policies and actions, and cultural identities were the
subject of more recent government attention to ‘revitalise and reconfigure
“culture”’ (ibid) which in turn served to give form and substance to a wider
Dayak identity (ibid: 64). The explanation for violent conflict in terms of
competition for resources between native Dayaks on the one hand and Chinese,
Madurese, and private and public sector logging and plantation companies on the
other has assumed some importance in the literature (Heidhues, 2001, Dove,
2006, Bertrand, 2004).
Jamie
Davidson’s work focuses on the politicisation of Dayak identity in rural
Kalimantan promoted by such NGOs as the Institut Dayakologi and Pancur Kasih
with such publications as the Kalimantan Review
(2008; and 2002) arguing that the Institute along with other NGOs have
identified with Dayak frustrations about marginalisation under the New Order
and the perceived advantages enjoyed by other ethnic groups, including the
Madurese. The government-generated stereotypes of Dayaks as isolated, backward
and left-behind people also contributed to the solidification of identities and
the increasing consciousness of a Dayak identity, a distinctive adat and an aboriginal sovereignty as
against more recent mainly Muslim immigrants from other parts of the
archipelago (Schiller, 2007; Van Klinken, 2004, 2007; Bertrand, 2004). We
should also note the involvement of a Dayak, Christian mission-educated
intelligentsia in these Dayak movements which argued for Dayak empowerment
(Heidhues, 2001: 141); and the early role of the New Order government in
encouraging the development of a Dayak identity in support of their
anti-Chinese, anti-communist campaigns in West Kalimantan. In other words, a
pan-Dayak identity has been constructed over a long period of time, though it
has been increasingly embraced and reinforced by the Dayaks themselves. This
consciousness of an identity separate from others has also resulted in several
doctoral theses written by local scholars on the theme of identity and social
change in Indonesian Kalimantan (see Syarif Ibrahim Alquadrie, 1990, Johannes
Kustanto, 2002, and Kumpiady Widen, 2001).
Rather
than political or economic factors in the explanation, or at least the
understanding of inter-ethnic conflicts, a recent doctoral thesis examines the
cultural dimensions of Dayak-Madurese violence in West Kalimantan (König, 2012;
and see Schiller and Bambang Garang, 2002). König therefore concentrates more
on the cultural expression or the character of violence – why did it take the
form it did among the Kanayatn Dayaks and how do they explain and perceive
their actions? What is the cultural logic underlying these acts of violence? Her
approach is rather more subtly argued
than culturalist approaches which have
invoked such explanations as a Dayak ‘culture of violence’ which relates to a
return to the raiding and head-hunting
traditions of the past (De Jonge and Nooteboom, 2006; Loveband and Young,
2006).
(6) Arenas for Identity Construction in Tourism
and Museums
The
island of Borneo is fortunate in having a number of important and well-managed
museums. These too are the locus of identity construction. Prior to the
foundation of universities in Borneo the museums were the major sponsors and
coordinators of research, the best example being The Sarawak Museum. But they have always been influential in
presenting particular interpretations of culture and identity by demarcating
ethnic groups and categories and attaching items of material culture to them. Perhaps we might argue that their role in
relation to the general public and to tourist visitors has become more
important as state governments have seen museums as a significant element in
tourism promotion. It is clear from the work of Dianne Tillotson (1994) and Christina
Kreps (1994) that museums are important agents for constructing and presenting
culture, and as departments responsible to government they usually present a
nation-state view of what ethnic groups are important and how they are defined. Indeed, Tillotson posed the question in her
thesis ‘Who invented the Dayaks?’ In tourism too, cultures and identities are
constructed and staged particularly in ethnic or longhouse tourism. William
Kruse has demonstrated the ways in which Iban culture, for example, is
presented to tourists in ‘selling wild Borneo’ (2003), and Heather Zeppel has
also examined issues of authenticity and the staging of the most obvious
manifestations of Iban culture (or what is presented as Iban culture in tourism
promotion) (1994). I like to think that I kick-started an interest in tourism
research in Borneo with the panel which I organised at the BRC conference in
Sabah in 1992 (see King 1995), but, of course, there was already some work
being undertaken on tourism by, among others, Heather Zeppel.
.(7) Emerging
Middle Classes, Lifestyles and Identities in Urban Settings
This
vital concern with identity construction and transformation is especially
important at a time when there has been the growth of a multi-ethnic, disparate
young middle class in Borneo and the wider Malaysia and Indonesia (and indeed in Brunei) - educated, urban-based,
consumerist - and notable evidence of the development of civil society.
Junaenah Sulehan and Madeline Berma have made reference to these young
professionals and consumerism in Sarawak for example without specifically
analysing the phenomenon (1999: 68-71). In this connection I am thinking of the valuable work of such
researchers as Kahn and Loh Kok Wah (1992; and see Kahn, 1995, 1998; Abdul
Rahman Embong, 1996, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c, 2001d, 2002, 2006a, 2006b; and see
King, 2008a, 2008b; and King, Nguyen and Nguyen, 2008) in Peninsular Malaysia
and Loh in relation to the Kadazan of Sabah (1992) which might serve as an
appropriate model for Sarawak. Maznah and Wong have also contributed to this
agenda (2001a, 2001b), and Zawawi Ibrahim and his contributors, in his edited
book on Sarawak multiculturalism, also acknowledge the importance of this field
of research in cultural politics and the politics of identity (2008a, 2008b;
and see Zawawi, 1999). They have managed to push this agenda forward, but much
more needs to be done in the Sarawak (and Sabah) context on the study of
identities in changing class situations in Malaysian Borneo. Even more needs to
be done in Kalimantan
One
might also expect that concerns about globalisation would surface most directly
in studies of urbanisation in Borneo where local people experience some of the
most immediate manifestations of global processes and late modernity, through
encounters with the state and bureaucracy, nation-building symbols and actions,
the media, technology and consumerism, international tourists, and
representatives of other ethnic groups. However, attention to the urban context
in Borneo has not been substantial. Among the most important studies have been
Lockard’s social and economic history of Kuching (1987), Sutlive’s
anthropological work on Rejang Iban migration to Sibu (1972, 1977), and Hew Cheng Sim’s
focus on female migration and women’s circumstances in urban settings (2001, 2003,
2007a, 2007b). However, even these studies were done without any explicit
attention to identity formation. One researcher who does attempt, to my mind, to
situate her work in the arena of identities and culture is Boulanger (which I
have summarised earlier) with her interest in changing Dayak urban identities
and the implications of modernity and ‘being modern’ for the identification
with and conceptualisation of Dayak traditions and religion, distinctions
between the present (the future) and the past, between the urban and the rural,
and between urban and rural representatives of different Dayak ethnic categories
and groups (1999, 2000, 2002, 2008, 2009).
She also identifies three dimensions of modernity among urban Dayaks:
Christianity, education and entrepreneurship (1999). Here we return to the
theme of identity through religion, but also the importance of being modern
(moden) (see, for example, Chua, 2012: 40-44). The disjunctures between
traditional and modern (with specific reference to the discourse of
developmentalism) and the issue of boundary maintenance are also explored by
Edey in the context of urban Sarawak (2007).
Conclusions
The
relationship between culture and identity and the potential which a focus on
the concept of identities in motion has in the development of research on
Borneo, and particularly comparative research is significant, I would argue.
The conceptualisation of at least some of the relations in a Borneo context in terms of ‘centres’ and ‘margins’ or
alternatively ‘cores’ and ‘peripheries’ may
also be of some analytical value. In a similar vein Ishikawa has said, in
relation to his study of a Malay borderland community in Sarawak, that ‘The
emergence of a centre-periphery relationship in the making of the geo-body of
the territorial state has been a crucial factor for the uneven expansion of
national life’ (2010: 92; 135-137). We can examine these relations in spatial
terms (or rather in terms of the occupation, consolidation, construction and
symbolism of space) or in terms of cultural hierarchies or layers (nations,
ethnic categories and groups, local communities and so on), and their
relationships to power and wealth, keeping in mind that these layers in
relation to centres and margins are also relative (Horstmann and Wadley, 2006).
In other words, margins have different orders of magnitude from relatively
remote minority groups to larger urban populations so that for certain purposes
residents of Kuching can be seen as marginal or peripheral to those of Kuala Lumpur
or Putra Jaya. In admittedly rather crude terms I also posed the question some
time ago of why the state of Sarawak has been ‘peripheral’ to the powerful
centres of Peninsular Malaysia (King, 1990: 110-129).
In
this connection we have an expanding literature on marginal or peripheral
populations and identity construction and transformation among minorities in
Borneo. But in certain respects, and, as I and my co-editor Michael Parnwell
argued a couple of decades ago in a book on ‘margins’ and ‘minorities’ in
Malaysia, ‘there is often an ethnic, and specifically a cultural dimension to
the feature of marginality ….[so that] ….uneven development also comes to be
expressed in cultural terms’ (1990:
2-3). In a very similar vein Joel Kahn,
in his analysis of the relations between uplands and lowlands, core and
periphery, the powerful and the marginal, and the rich and the poor in
Indonesia draws attention to the state-generated process of ‘culturalising’
relationships in Suharto’s Indonesia which might otherwise be thought of in
terms of unequal access to resources or unequal access to power and wealth
(1999). In this connection too König has recently culturalised inter-ethnic
violence (2012).
Perhaps
the comparative study of cultural identities across Borneo, (taking in the
range of cases and circumstances to be found in different locations and
political units) might prove rewarding in not only continuing to embrace the
wider perspective which the field of Borneo Studies should provide for the
study of the whole island, but also to bring the wider nation-states within
which the major areas of Borneo are situated into our frames of analysis.
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