Description
This comparative study of the peoples of central Borneo offers an unusually detailed description of a pre-colonial society. Professor Rousseau analyses a region characterized by great ethnic diversity and unravels the relation between ethnicity, social organization, language, and culture among its peoples. Geographically, central Borneo is divided into several river basins, each of which forms part of a different country. Because of this, the area has traditionally been dealt with in a fragmented way by academics. Yet the records of scholars, missionaries, and administrators that have been kept since the area came under colonial control at the beginning of the twentieth century provide ethnographic and historical data virtually unmatched in the rest of the insular South East Asia. Professor Rousseau's extensive survey of the available literature and archival material, backed up by many years of fieldwork in the region, challenges some long-held views and assumptions. First he shows that, while ethnic identity is normally expected to act as a divider between social groups, this area of great ethnic diversity actually forms a single society. Secondly, although it is thought that small-scale, stateless societies tend to show little evidence of social inequality, he demonstrates that the communities of central Borneo have until recently had a clearly hierarchical structure. The uniquely detailed evidence presented in this study and its comparative approach shed an entirely new light not only on central Borneo, but also on the fundamental nature of societies.Table of ContentIntroduction; I: Orientation: The peoples of Central Borneo; Colonial influence on Central Borneo; II: Ethnicity: Ethnicity; Ethnicity and culture: some definitions and queries; Ethnic categories as taxonomies; Ethnic identity; Changes in ethnic ascription; III: Social Organisation: The Social System at the Community Level: The individual, the household, kinship, and marriage; Settlement patterns and groupings; The village economy: Food production and related activities; The economic system; Stratification, inequality, and political structure; General features of the stratification system; Political and judicial process; Social inequality; Nomadic hunters-gatherers; IV: Regional Organization: Relations between nomads and swiddeners; Trade; General relations between nomads and swiddeners; Sedentarization; Relations between Central Borneo agriculturalists; Headhunting and warfare; Relations with Malays; Conclusion; Appendices: The regions of Central Borneo; Migrations; Languages of Central Borneo; References
