This is to certify that the dissertation entitled THE MATERIAL PROVISIONING 0F MUALANG SOCIETY IN HINTERLAND KALIMANTAN BARAT, INDONESIA presented by RICHARD ALLEN DRAKE has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for 7L,m 224W fiajor professor Date 10-6-82 MS U i: an Affirmative Action/Eq ual Opportunity Institution 0-12771 MSU LIBRARIES .—_. RETURNING MATERIALS: Place in book drop to remove this checkout from your record. FINES will be charged if book is returned after the date stamped below. THE MATERIAL PROVISIONING OF MUALANG SOCIETY IN HINTERLAND KALIMANTAN BARAT, INDONESIA BY Richard Allen Drake A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Anthropology 1982 © Copyright by Richard Allen Drake 1982 ABSTRACT THE MATERIAL PROVISIONING OF MUALANG SOCIETY IN HINTERLAND KALIMANTAN BARAT, INDONESIA BY Richard Allen Drake This dissertation is a study of how Mualang society is immerially provisioned. The Mualang pe0p1e are near-subsist- mum3 swidden-rice cultivators inhabiting the Belitang and Ayak River valleys of the middle Kapuas River in West buimantan, Indonesia. An analysis of the social organiza- tflfllof Mualang society precedes the analysis of the arrange- man for provisioning it and the economic context in which rupvisioning takes place. The organization of material provisioning is sought by usecHSthe conventional categories of production, exchange, (fistribution, and consumption. Special status is accorded tocfistribution because it is in distribution that the logic byiflfich economic behavior is integrated with social organi- zation more widely is revealed. Performance data on material provisioning is used not on1Yto reveal the overall strategy of material provision- ing behavior, but also to test the applicability of Marshall Sflfldns' "domestic mode of production" theoretical framework whereby the community's profile of household production per- formance is eXplained by the particular way in which the MMflety puts economic exchange to political PUTPOSBS- The Richard Allen Drake relationships suggested by Sahlins' scheme were found to hold in this case. The focus on forms of reciprocity and distribution not only provides a systematic understanding of Mualang economic life, but is also relevant to several problems of Bornean ethnology more generally. In particular, the tribal model has been problematic, and it has been difficult to specify the place of kinship organization in these societies. Both of these theoretical issues are here taken to be related to the lack of a kinship polity and the unusual relationship between economic reciprocity and political process. Mualang social order is an order specified in customary law, not a political "peace" negotiated on the basis of the manipula— tion of political resources. In such a context, kinship, although important in social organization, plays a very small social structural role. With respect to the applicability of Sahlins' tribal model, it is argued that for the economic dimension the tribal and peasant models are not sufficiently constras- tive. Instead, the prOper contrast is primitive against peasant economic life and the economic context under study is characterized as primitive. Kepada Orang Suku Mualang iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study is based on research funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation for the Improve— ment of Doctoral Dissertation Research (BNS76-19016). The research was sponsored in Indonesia by the Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia to which I am most grateful. My wife and I both express appreciation to the Board of Educa- tion of the Lansing, Michigan, Public Schools for granting her a sabbatical year that permitted her to accompany me in the field. I would like to thank the members of my dissertation guidance committee for their assistance. Professor Joseph Spielberg taught me how to write research prOposals and was always supportive of my work. Professor Robert McKinley was instrumental in the formulation of the research project from the start and remained enthusiastic about it throughout. I thank my Committee Chairman, Professor Harry M. Raulet, for his confidence in his students which draws out the best in them. In making preparations for the field, I received the assistance of Professor Alfred B. Hudson and Judith M. Hudson who invested their personal time and energy into teaching five of us the Indonesian language privately. Professor Hudson also provided constructive critism for early efforts to formulate this research problem, for which I am appreciative. Dr. Herbert L. Whittier and Dr. Patricia iv Whittier were generous in their assistance in every stage of my fieldwork preparation, data analysis, and disserta- tion writing in addition to being supportive friends. Specifically, Dr. Patricia Whittier helped with the figures and editorial tasks. Dr. George N. Appell kindly assisted me with my research proposal in a draft form and generously shared his ideas and analyses of his own work with me. Dr. H. C. Bittenbender, a good friend, contributed his research experience in Indonesia as well as his expertise in statis- tics, for which I am grateful. In Indonesia many peOple helped me at various stages of the research, and I regret I can only acknowledge a few by name. Professor Dr. Sajogyo, Chairman of Lembaga Penelitian Sosiologi Pedesaan at the Institut Pertanian Bogor, kindly arranged the details of my research under the Sponsorship of this Center. Dr. William L. Collier, Associate of the Agricultural Development Council, Inc., took an interest in my research and provided several valu- able introductions in West Kalimantan. Dr. Arie Kusumadewa of the Direktorat Tata Guna Tanah, whose family on several occasions took my wife and me into their home while we were in Jakarta, helped save the project from an early financial demise. I also wish to mention my longtime friends, Dr. Slamat Sudarmadji and Dr. Maria Astuti of the Universitas Gajah Mada and Dr. Michael Zakaria, Bapak Gunardi, and Dr. Hadi Karia of the Institute Pertanian Bogor, who shared their culture with me and taught me their language. At V the Universitas Tanjungpura in Pontianak, I was assisted by Bapak Wariso Ram, Dr. Soehartoyo, and Bapak Pasifikus Ahok in the selection of a fieldsite. Nearer the fieldsite itself, the C. and M.A. mission- aries and the M.A.P. pilots' families based at Kelansam were most considerate to us. At Balai Sepuak, the Reverend Dudley Bolser and Nancy Bolser were most hospitable and generously shared their understanding of life in the Belitang Hulu. In the village itself we are, of course, indebted to everyone for so openly and unassumingly accepting my wife and me into their lives for one and one half years. The kinds of data contained in the body of the dissertation make it obvious that we imposed upon them a great deal. Special thanks are given to Bapak Matheus Biong of Sekadau, acknowledged authority on Mualang folk songs and stories for his consultation, and also to Sister Jeanne- Marie Pg. of Sengkawang for giving me a copy of her Mualang language word list. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the uncountable contributions of my wife Doris, who was always patient and followed me to the Belitang Hulu to take part in the re- search. In so many ways this is her work too. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES LIST OF FIGURES Chapter I. II. III. IV. INTRODUCTION The Problem Geographical Setting Cultural Setting Political Setting THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Definition of the Economic Field The "Formal Model of a Possible Economic System" The Special Status of "Distribution": "The Way Mutual Dependence is Structured" THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF MATERIAL PROVISIONING The Village Community The Bilik Family Kinship and Marriage PRODUCTION ORGANIZATION Introduction The Technological and Social Relations of Production Production Activities Through the Agri- cultural Cycle Rice Production Subsidiary Food Production Handicraft Manufacture Rubber-Tapping Pepper Production Sawing Boards THE COMMUNITY ECONOMIC CONTEXT OF MATERIAL PROVISIONING Rice Production Cash Crop Production Rubber-Tapping Pepper Production Terms of Laboring vii Page ix xi OOOHH 124 127 127 129 129 131 132 142 142 146 148 VI. VII. VIII. TABLE OF CONTENTS (cont'd.) Non-Monetized Forms of Production The Character of Trade The Terms of Trade National Government Emanations PRODUCTION PERFORMANCE OF THE DOMESTIC UNITS THE MATERIAL PROVISIONING OF SOCIETY: CONSUMPTION, EXCHANGE AND DISTRIBUTION The Organization of Consumption Personal Consumption Provisioning The Social Order The Organization of Exchange Transactions The Organization of Distribution APPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY TO MODELS OF TRADITIONAL ECONOMIES AND TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES Problems with the Tribal Model in Hinter- land Southeast Asia The Continuum of Intensities of Exchange on the Market The Comparison of Primitive and Peasant Types of Articulation with the Market Problems with Sahlins' "Domestic Mode of Production" "The Way Mutual Dependence is Structured" in Mualang Society APPENDICES I.A. 1.8. II. III. Glossary List of Measures Figure Al. Residence Plan of the Longhouse at Sungai Mulau Table A1. Durable Property Inventory REFERENCES CITED viii Page 162 168 180 190 193 228 228 230 233 265 273 274 285 292 300 304 309 312 313 314 326 Table 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. LIST OF TABLES Comparison of Village and Bilik Sizes. Census of the Biliks of Sungai Mulau. Composition of Biliks. Kinds of Kinship Links Between Bilik Families. Inter-relatedness of Bilik Families of Sungai Mulau. Comparison of Kinship Interrelatedness. Trend for Marriage with Kin. . Trend for Marriage Within the Longhouse. Post-marital Residence Choice. Composition of Bilik Family Labor Teams. Division of Labor (after Freeman 1970: 228-229). Degree of Weeding Participation of Adult Males. Rice Production in Sungai Mulau During 1978-79. Yield Samples of Rice Varieties. Comparative Data on Dry-Rice Yields. Acreage per Worker (after Freeman 1970: 248). Labor Input for Rice Cultivation 1978-79. Returns to Labor for Rice Cultivation. Rubber-Tapping Yields During May, 1979. Prices of Key Products and Money Wages in Rupiahs. Domestic Unit Consumer-Worker Ratios. Worker Coefficients. ix Page 53 70 80 91 92 93 95 96 96 106 108 121 133 135 138 139 140 141 143 177 195 200 Table 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. Al. LIST OF TABLES (cont'd.) Consumption Coefficients. Domestic Unit Rice Production Performance. Chronology of Rubber-Tapping Activity. Estimated Rubber-Tapping Yields. Fifty-two Week Rubber-Tapping Income. Value of Rice Yield. Productive Property Inventory. Annual Net Income of Biliks. Bilik Production Performance Comparisons. Per Capita Annual Rice Consumption (1974). Subsidiary Rice Consumption. Seed Planted (September 1979). Church Contributions (1979 Season). Gawai Expenses: Harvest Gawai, 9 May, 1979. Padi Loan Transactions in Gantangs. Durable Property Inventory. Page 201 202 204 206 208 209 210 212 213 232 234 235 236 237 253 314 Figure 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. LIST OF FIGURES Indonesia in Southeast Asia. . The Kapuas River System of West Kalimantan. . The Sungai Mulau Area of West Kalimantan. Plan of a Mualang Longhouse. . Master Geneology of Sungai Mulau. . The Agricultural Cycle. Trader's Perspective on the Three Price System. Percent Sufficiency of Rice for Each Bilik. . Rice as Percent of Net Income for Each Bilik. Hectares Cultivated Per Worker for Each Bilik. Gantangs Yield Per Worker for Each Bilik, Net Income Per Worker for Each Bilik. Empirical Line and Chayanov Line Compared. Net Income Per Consumer for Each Bilik.. Continuum of Intensities of Exchange on the Market. A1. Residence Plan of the Longhouse at Sungai Mulau. xi Page 10 11 12 46 89 115 185 216 217 218 219 220 224 242 287 313 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The Problem The Mualang are near-subsistence dry rice agricultural- ists living along the Belitang and Ayak tributaries of the middle Kapuas River in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Dry rice cultivation is practiced here in the manner called "swidden," or more descriptively, "slash-and—burn" or "shifting" agri- culture. Although the recent introduction of rubber as a cash crOp has been a significant addition to this roughly 2000 year old technological repertoire, still it is dry rice cul- tivation that dominates the technoeconomic basis for sustain- ing Mualang social life and culture. Until recently a child's age was reckoned not as a sum of years but in terms of where the family made rice fields that year. Among the Mualang life continues to be perceived as an ordered series of swidden cultivations, each uniquely defined by the composition of the family labor force for that year as well as the location of the fields and the degree of success enjoyed. Earlier studies of swidden agriculturalists in Southeast Asia have provided a good understanding of this technoenvironmental adaptation (Conklin 1961; Freeman 1955; Geddes 1954; Izikowitz 1951; and Padoch 1978), as well as some generalizations about its ‘- .. -.~, 0. 'u 0-... associated sociocultural context (Barney 1970). The present study contributes to this literature by focusing on the perform- ance dimensions of economic behavior in an analysis of economic life in suchacommunity. This study of village economic life was motivated by an interest in certain ethnological problems. The hinterland Bornean ethnographic cases have, for the most part, fit rather uncomfortably the ethnological models developed from research in other areas of the world. The place of kinship in their social structure has been problematic (Appell 1976: vii) as has the applicability of the tribal model of sociocultural integration (e.g., Sahlins 1968). Not only are these socie- ties not organized as kinship polities, but further, the house— holds of a community appear economically autonomous rather than integrated by exchange into a tribal polity. These difficul- ties have been cogently expressed in the works of Marshall Sahlins (1965, 1968, and 1972). Following his lead, the re- Search of a village economic context was planned that would be not only of interest in its own right, but would also be useful for analyzing these issues of the character of material recip- rocity between households and the place of these exchanges in the community's sociopolitical organization. Based on the a~I>parent applicability of Sahlins' "domestic mode of production" (DMP) scheme for the hinterland Bornean cases, the research was designed to quantify domestic unit economic performance di- rectly with the end of putting this scheme to use. It turned out that the production performance data of indi- Vidual domestic units that is required to apply the DMP scheme ————_ _._____. »-~ ... .not I... o t .v.... i . 0.. c. o , --| ”-- has analytic usefulness far beyond that suggested by Sahlins. Being the view from the microeconomic perspective, it provides the means for quantifying such concepts in the theory of sub- sistence economics as "demand ceiling," family self-exploita- tion, and peasant-style assymmetrical linkage to a market economy. Consequently, in the final chapter this study can argue with the force of quantification the issue of to what extent it is useful to characterize such cases as this as 'fiarimitive" or "peasant" economic contexts. Furthermore, the cicnnestic unit production performance data provides the means :fIJr understanding the degree to which society is being mater- .iailly provisioned beyond the material requirements of its I>I13ducing units and the place of wealth and personal consump- t:i<3n in the sociopolitical order. This examination of economic life provides performance <1611:a from the macroeconomic perspective of analysis as well; i--ea., the community economic context in which the domestic Ilrliis take decisions about provisioning themselves. With 1Zhis data it is possible to inquire into how the various forms ()1? production, dominated by dry rice and rubber, are inter- related in the Mualang's particular scheme of material pro- visioning and how these relationship change in response to IDITice changes. Of Special interest here are the relation- £5hips revealed between a household's consumer/worker ratio, 1:}1e intensity of weeding the rice fields, and the tapping of 1Pl—lbber during the weeding phase of the agricultural cycle. Irlueanalysis takes the understanding beyond the "bottleneck” illlabor demand problem (e.g., Clark and Haswell 1966: 42) to the delineation of particular strategies of material provi- sioning appropriate to particular intervals of the consumer/ worker spectrum. Sahlins' DMP theory exhorts us to be heedful of the nuances of material exchanges between households, and economic life in Mualang society is found to illustrate several impor- tant principles in this regard. An array of culturally in- Stituted forms of reciprocity from "negative" to "generalized" :is identified. Not only are the terms of exchange qualified b)r kinship relations, but also conventional forms of exchange zizre found to be appropriate for particular phases of the Eiggricultural cycle. While the characterization of the rela- t:j.ons between households as "balanced reciprocity" is sub- SSt:antiated both as ideology and in the redistributional sense, ‘tlle results of the analysis make a telling point about the sOcial valence of balanced reciprocity. All forms of reciprocitylunnza sociopolitical dimension. Balanced reciprocity builds and maintains social ties as 5surely as does generalized reciprocity. As Sahlins has put it, balanced reciprocity serves instrumentally "as formal social c:Cmijpact. Balanced reciprocity is the classic vehicle of IPEBace and alliance contracts, substance-as-symbol of the trans- :EVDrmation from separate to harmonious interests" (1972: 219- 20). The point illustrated by this study is that balanced 1“eciprocity in primitive society is qualitatively different ifrom balanced reciprocity in peasant society. In peasant Society, it builds and maintains sociality while in primitive ”Al N... u-a.. . g . "or. "n.. .l‘.. society it carries heavy political organizational weight as well. It should be emphasized at the start that it is not merely the relations of "distribution" and political intensi- fication that provide an understanding of the community pro- duction profile. More importantly, this quantitative data links up with the central features of Mualang society and culture as sketched out in Chapter III: the household mode (3f production; the high degree of household social autonomy; pualitical egalitarianism; primus-inter:pares community leader- SIlip; and an inordinate reliance on the jural basis of order. In a sense Sahlins' explanation of the high level of 11(31156h01d autonomy for the hinterland Southeast Asian cases 845 being the consequence of disposing of household rice sur- I>1145es externally in trade with more advanced economic centers (31S968: 47)is born out by the analysis. It will be argued that in is useful for understanding several of the unusual features C’f7 the hinterland Bornean peoples to consider how they have eVolved on the cultural margins of state-level societies as $11ggested by F.K. Lehman (1963: 225). It would be wrong, hOwever, to mistake these relationships with the more complex s5C>cieties as variations of a peasant-style economic surplus eKtraction. The household surpluses traded for traditional heBirloom valuables such as ceramic vases, brass gongs, beads, E313c. are nonetheless invested in the reproduction of the I)I‘imitive sociocultural order. There is no "surplus" produc- tion in primitive economics because these societies are (Drganized to produce only the material requirements for reproducing their traditional society (Diamond 1974). Conse- quently, "subsistence living" (cf., Wharton 1963:47) in primitive society is qualitatively different from subsistence living in peasant society. In primitive society subsistence production provides the complete replication of their tradi- tional society, but among peasants the assymmetrical linkages With the encapsulating commercial market economy reduce the caffectiveness of their production "to the point where the Huerely biological functions of the cultivator are replicated, tvigthin a constricted range of social functions" (Diamond 1974: Ju3). These points of Stanley Diamond's are central to the <:C)nsideration in the final chapter of the applicability of ‘tlle primitive-peasant economy distinctions to the Mualang czatse. Throughout the analysis, the distinctions between primi- tlirve and peasant society prove instructive. Today the Mualang fiilid themselves caught up in change in nearly every dimension ()1? their sociocultural life as the young Indonesian nation attempts to integrate them into the national fabric. This Study, predisposed as it is to attend to ethnological problems, <1(Des not focus on that change directly but some understanding ()1? it is possible in terms of how the data squares with the ‘Blld points of the transition from primitive society to peasan- trry_ In recent years there has been considerable scepticism (ELg., Dalton 1971), as well as marked indifference, about the uSefulness of models on the scale of primitive society and ‘Deasantry. This study uses these models explicitly because ' 9 I" .. o 100-. :o.. I... on. k. key relationships for understanding Mualang economic life are posited by them. The view is taken here that the Mualang case is a strategic case for the application of these models by virtue of the historical conditions under which the hinter- land Southeast Asian peoples have accomodated themselves to state-level societies. The intended outcome is to appreciate .Mualang society material provisioning in its own terms rather than in ours. That primitive economic order is not merely tinderdeveloped versions of our economy, but instead is quali- tzatively different, performing in accordance with fundament- aLlly different principles, has been a motivating presumption c>f’economic anthropology since the time of Malinowski's {igygonauts of the Western Pacific (1922). In Marshall Sahlins' Eijgone Age Economics (1972) we now have a systematic set of IDITinciples specifying how primitive economics is different lbzised on domestic production for use. Economic behavior is here defined as that socio-cultur- a~11y instituted behavior that materially provisions society. I)tiéjpicting these instituted arrangements for Mualang society i~S the focus of this study. This organization of economic life is pursued from two directions. First, the categories c>f production, exchange, distribution, and consumption are 1laken as generating a formal question set to be put to the <1ata collected to draw out the particular organizational ?features of economic life directly. Second, and indirectly, an analysis of the economic performance of households reveals Certain features of economic organization. 4., This "formal" approach to economic organization has its rationale in the "substantivist" objective, that is, to under- stand economic behavior in terms of the sociocultural insti- tutions in which it is embedded and which provide its ration- alization. A fortunate conjunction in the work of Maurice Godelier (1972) and Scott Cook (1973) facilitates such an approach by universalizing these categories and concepts of (:onventional economic discourse. By using this formal model 111 the manner of an abstract analytical system (Appell 1973: 4J7), a substantive understanding of economic behavior of some (ziross-cultural applicability seems a genuine possibility. This study is an analysis of the economic behavior and czcxntext of a single community although it is believed to be I?expresentative of Mualang society more widely. The research <>r1 which it is based entailed nearly eighteen months residence at the field site. Aspiring to carry out research that would IDES relevant to these larger ethnological issues, the search 3fc>r a field site specified a community located in the inter- ior where communicational infrastructure is poorly developed a11d hence the articulation with the market economy minimal. :111 such a near-subsistence setting there is greater likeli- h00d of being able to examine the more traditional forms of reciprocity and redistribution in the context of more tradi- tional economic organization and performance. Geographical Setting is a Mualang village in the hinterlands of An Sungai Mulau1 Kalimantan Barat, Indonesia (see Figures 1, 2, and 3). understanding of its economic circumstances properly begins with a consideration of its geographical location. Kalimantan Barat is the West Bornean province defined largely by the drainage basin of the Kapuas River, Indonesia's longest. The Mualang are a Dayak tribe inhabiting the valley of the Beli- tang and Ayak Rivers, righthand tributaries of the Kapuas in the Middle Kapuas Basin. Pontianak, the populous coastal city of 451,680 in the Kapuas River Delta, is the site of the Ixrovince's central offices. Administratively, the province is; divided into six Kabupaten and one Kotamadya (municipality Of’ Pontianak). Each Kabupaten is composed of many Kecamatans thi h administer the affairs of the villages. Sungai Mulau is one of the 100 villages in the Kecamatan Belitang Hulu in th e Kabupaten Sanggau . The equator passes through Pontianak and so the province laisected by this imaginary line symbolizing the extremes Heavy rainfall, averag- is Of discomfort of life in the tropics. ing; 125.9 inches per year at Pontianak, causes excessive leaching of soils exposed by the removal of the tropical rainforest for agricultural purposes and so lack of soil fer“tility is a serious problem. Only on the narrow, relatively . 1Sungai Mulau is a pseudonym. Likewise, the names of living members of the villages have been changed to comply With.requirements of the University Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects. -10- .mflm< ammozwsom :fi mfimoaowcH .H ouswfim 5.35.9.2 no Dd s V .‘ Q. 0 D 3.03%? 00 i s. o (.3282. . fihv O ./ nflv nu nunu .’v .I./ €00 0. a Q §§u 1. - s , .. [I J R i. 2.9.3 .m I / .z<»z‘4§ t .I. If. f /. . . .. 0 .\ .. .4 .. s. 800 b Pu_.>\\ ’ o a a M5333» ... . .3 ~ I mind-4.2.. M. m x .4... 9252:; m ., . .. Em -11.. 'Serukam Sanggau 0 WEST KALI MANTA Figure 2. The Kapuas River System of West Kalimantan. -12- Sun cl A 0'00. h" . Palm Halon Nulu Putt Mulau HIIIr Dom... R I I Figure 3. The Sungai Mulau Area of West Kalimantan. -13- fertile coastal strip between Pontianak and Sambas can there be found wet rice (sawah) and plantation agriculture to any extent. The rest of the province is dominated by dry rice agriculture and small-holder cash-cropping of rubber and pep- per. Indonesia is among the 25 poorest countries in the world in terms of their 1977 per capita income of US $170 (1979 Asia Yearbook: l6), and the province of Kalimantan Barat is underdeveloped even by Indonesian standards. Census figures for 1971 specified that the population is 10 percent Chinese, 33 percent "ethnic Malays," 40 percent Dayaks and the remainder immigrants from other islands; especially Java, Madura, and South Sulawesi. Containing only 1. 2 percent of Indonesia's population over its third largest PIWJvincial area, it has been the object of government projects t0 tencourage resettlement of wet-rice agriculturalists from UVexrcrowded Java to the sparsely inhabited outer islands. The Chinese and immigrants are found living mostly in thee larger river towns and coastal cities along the populous Coaisrtal strip north of Pontianak. The Chinese dominate the large-scale trade in the province and before the anti-Chinese uPrisings on the part of the Dayaks in 1967, the Chinese also donuinated the sawah and plantation agriculture of this fertile StIfiip. Since 1967 they have, for the most part, abandoned their land and have become refugees in the coastal towns, eSpecially Pontianak. During the Malaysian communist insur- gency problems of the early 19705, the small-scale Chinese traders living along the right-hand tributaries of the Kapuas ..‘ -14- were required by the government to move to the Kapuas River towns for "security" reasons, seriously disrupting the hinter- land trade network. The recent immigrants, except for the Javanese in govern- ment service and those participating in the transmigration pro- jects, swell the services sector of the economy as begak (pedicab) cyclists,handcartpullers, street vendors, and sam- pan paddlers providing ferry service across the bridgeless Kapuas. The lack of bridges is one illustration of the extremely poor level of infrastructure here. Lacking roads, the rivers remain the important transport connection between .Pontianak and the hinterlands. The ethnic Malays also enjoy positions in government Serrvice and some find employment in coastal towns. Most, hopvever, live in small villages strung along the Kapuas and its; Inajor tributaries. As such they are situated intermediate bthtveen the towns and the hinterland. Much of the small-scale trzacie is in their hands. The Malay villager combines fishing, dr)r-vrice agriculture,:nuicash-cropping for a livelihood. In the sparsely settled interior are found the Dayak Pe<31>les whose history, since the suppression of headhunting by ‘the Dutch colonial government in the later decades of the 19t11 century, has been marked by the gradual but continuous deciline of tribal sovereignty. This decline has been brought abCHJt first through the agency of the Malay sultanates based in the larger river towns, later by the Japanese conquerors during World War II,zuulfinallylnrlndonesian nation-building. -15- Hinterland isolation has permitted the survival of a subsistence-style economic order in which the cultivation of dry rice looms larger than in downriver locations. Further- more, in the context of significant forest resources cash- cropping assumes a less important place in the organization of the material provisioning of Dayak societies. The village of Sungai Mulau lies on the Mulau River, a branch of the Belitang (see Figure 3). The Belitang River is nearly always naviable below Balai Sepuak, the exception being an unusual drought during the dry season. Above Balai Sepuak river travel is a sometime thing. At Sungai Mulau 'the water level is so low that the villagers do not use even tJIe delicate dug-out canoes characteristic of the region. Akast travel is by foot over the narrow forest paths. None- theless, after a heavy rain over the span of a couple of d£1)rs, the water level does rise sufficiently to allow passage (r6 a boat, and so itinerant traders occasionally travel this The village chief maintains a boat and motor allowing All fElI‘. hiqni to engage in trade with Balai Sepuak sporadically. Villages beyond Sungai Mulau lack river travel altogether. For the average villager, travel beyond Balai Sepuak, a ssix hour walk, is quite rare. Such trips would be made Onlqy by children going off to school or by someone seeking more sophisticated medical care than is available at the Eynskesmas (government clinic) in Balai Sepuak. On the other haxui, most adult males have a few times made the trip over the Kalingkang mountain range into Sarawak, Malaysia, to trade for highly-prized Sarawak goods. -16- Swidden cultivation (ladang in the Indonesian language and uma in Mualang), the central feature of Mualang economic life, is a most common form of agriculture found throughout the tropical world. Pierre Gourou has said that "there are few such clear instances of identical response by man to similar environment" (1953: 32,cited in Fisher 1964: 70). Swidden agriculture is a most controversial subject beginning with concern over its "prodigality" of forest resources and potential for environmental degradation. The Indonesian government, for example, holds this form of agriculture in ‘very low esteem and makes serious efforts to encourage a sliift to wet rice (sawah) agriculture which, by contrast, omzcupies smaller areas of continuously cultivated padis cap- at>1e of being flooded and drained of water. Keen interest arid.:research into these topics continues unabated as concern Wiutli the effects of the shrinking of the trOpical forests CH1 'the entire earth's ecosystem mounts (Raven 1981). A re- Vicetv of the major characteristics of swidden agriculture as Practiced in hinterland Southeast Asia will place the economic Orciear of the village under study in the technoenvironmental Cornditions of this disputable form of agriculture. The forest is felled by axe and the undergrowth cleared by Iase of a long knife. After a period of drying of the cut anti slashed vegetation, the plot is burned. Planting by use Of 21 dibble stick takes place after the soil has cooled sufficiently. The fire kills many weed seeds if the trees are large, and the ash provides some short-lived fertility. -17- Weedingcfifthe plot, at least once, is typically the most de- manding phase of cultivation in terms of labor input. Also at weeding time crude fencing and animal traps may be con- structed to lessen the depredations of wild animals. Commonly, a field hut is also constructed in order that the family can be on guard at the plot as the crops ripen and during harvest. Harvesting of the rice, which matures in from four to six months depending upon variety,:h5typically accomplished stalklnrstalk with a small blade held clamped in the hand. The timing of the harvest is staggered over the community bothlnrthe communal planting of the plots sequentially and also by the fact that each family plants about a dozen different varietiescflfrice, their favorites among the three dozen or so varieties commonly planted in.that particular community. The ecological diversity and helice the agricultural stability of theswiddenplot is further hetigflitened by the intermixing of many vegetable crOps, almost raJIciomly, among the several different varieties of rice. Such di\re>rsity, randomness, and sequencing are important hedges aga inst diseases, pests, and bad weather. Depending upon the innate fertility of the soil, the plot Wilfll have to be abandoned in one, two, or three years to allow the grasses and weeds that make weeding so difficult to be replaced by bushes and trees that shade out the weeds and Pr0\ride a renewed potential fertility. This fallowing period Canvary from seven to 25 years, depending upon the fertility of the soil, and is an important determinant of the settlement Pattern of hinterland swidden communities. Longer fallowing I... .:,. vih! -18_ periods correlate with much larger areas of tropical forest required to support a given community, more frequent reloca- tion of the living site to be near the land under cultivation, and more sparsesettlementof such a low soil fertility region. There is an inherent demographic centrifugality to the system as increases in population must emigrate to prevent the short- ening of the required fallowing period and the consequent lessening of productivity. Such an ecological adaptation has been almost irresist- able to peoples living in the tropical hinterlands for several reasons. A very simple technology involving an axe, a knife, a dibblestick, and a few baskets and mats handwoven from readily available jungle products, permitszihigh level of eccmomic independence. Since, by virtue of the vast expanse (Jf tropical forest, land is not scarceznulthe tools required aqre few, simple and easily acquired, labor becomes the "limit- iJig factor" in the hinterland swidden economic adaptation. AJI interesting feature of swidden agriculture is its higher r'eturns to labor compared with intensive forms of agriculture. A1though the yields per hectare are low compared with inten- SGive rice cultivation, the returns per day of labor are tYpically higher (Clark and Haswell 1966: 33; Utomo 1967: 297). The average yield for dry-rice in Kalimantan Barat is 940 Kg Egg/hectare according to Ward andWard (1974: 34), while 1~,600 Kg pagi/hectare yields are attained in permanent fields 11tilizing checkbanks on the coastal plans, though they guess Tlhe latter figure sounds too high. h“ -19- Another feature of swidden cultivationtflun:is especially appealing is the opportunity for intercropping. By scatter- ing the supplementary cultivated vegetables over the swidden plot, a separate garden need not be prepared. In addition, fruit trees, cassava, sugar cane, and even rubber as a cash- crop can be planted on or near an abandoned rice field without laborious preparation of the soil with a hoe. Several other features are characteristic of the hinter- land Southeast Asian swidden ecological adaptation. Hunting and collecting food from the forest can be important supple- ments to the cultivated food. Chickens and pigs are domesti- cated to provide eggs and meat for ceremonial occasions. Such domestication, like plant cultivation, is "extensive," tflie animals being fed the minimum to keep them about the The Vi llage and provide some protection against predators. Ct>1lection of jungle products of value in the lowland economy t)fipically provides some economic articulation. In this trade, tile interior tribes have traditionally received iron tools, C110th, jewelry, brassware, ceramic vases, etc. which serve 345 a store of value and a source of prestige. It is usual for the household to serve as the predomi- heint economic unit, i.e., the primary production and consump- tUion unit. By membership in a village, the household obtains LlSe rights to the land required for its economic well-being. Trlle village holds residual rights to the land which constitutes j-ts more or less clearly defined territory, and it is a U ' . - labor reserve" so necessary for the critical phases of ._.‘ -20- agriculture when a particular task must be executed without delay. Commonly, indigenous political organization does not extend beyond the village. Such a technoeconomic base is typically associated with the tribal level of sociocultural integration. Cultural Setting The Mualang tribe is one of the "Ibanic Malayic Dayak" tribes (Hudson 1970). They are found near the center of the distribution of these tribes which is over the middle reaches of the Kapuas and the near areas of Sarawak. Linguistic re- search by A.B. Hudson has led him to postulate that many of the Dayak tribes of Kalimantan speak languages close to the .MaJay language by virtue of evolving with Malay from a proto- hkalayic language. Several related tribes, of which the Iban 'tribe is the "type case," constitute the Ibanic Malayic Dayak Irranch of this Malayic language family (Ibid.). The Malayic Dayaks have avoided Islamization and integration into Malay Clllture by various tactics -- the most important of these being migration and retreat into the sparsely inhabited in- terior. The Iban have received considerable attention among Eiinthropologists, the work of Freeman (1955, 1958, 1960, 1961, and 1970), Fortes (1969), Jensen (1974), Morgan (1968), and S"lltlive (1978) being of greatest relevance to this study. It 5-5 fair to characterize them as one of the best documented tIibes in all of Southeast Asia. European interest in the -21 - Iban extends as far back as the establishment of the Sarawak Rajahdom of James Brooke in 1841 in return for aid in suppress- ing the "Sea Dayaks" (=Iban) whose pirating activities were so troublesome for the Sultan of Brunei. The expanionist character of the Ibanic peoples in the hinterland of Sarawak caused them to receive extraordinary attention from the Sarawak government over the years. Since the suppression of their ardent commitment to headhunting, they have been of great interest to missionaries, anthropologists, adventurers, and government officials alike for the vitality of their romantic, primitive longhouse life-style as well as their eagerness to grasp new adaptational opportunities. In fact, Iban culture con- tinues to be of keen interest to anthropologists because of an iritriguing combination of cultural traits. Especially notable aJre: "Opposed yet supportive families" (Sutlive 1978: 39),"the tdioroughgoing egalitarian ethic . . . holding in dynamic ten- stion competition and cooperation," (Ibid.); and an intense awihievement orientation in the context of severe egalitarian- 13111. The uncommon ease with which the Iban move between the 143nghouse and the city (Appell 1976: 12) and their success ‘13 international travelers are manifestations of their '1 . . liberal conservatlsm": in situations of change, the Iban have suffered neither a debilitating social disorganization nor a traumatic cultural disorientation. Rather, with a remarkably 'liberal conservatism' they have shown a positive inclination toward change which predisposed them to seek new experiences and to think new thoughts, quite purposefully engaging in 'the dialectics of social life' (Murphy 197l)(Sutlive 1978: 3). -22- The Mualang are a tribe in the sense of a self—conscious sociocultural entity characterized by common customs and law,2 a distinguishable language, and a sense of common his— tory and destiny. Like all the Ibanic tribes, their folklore specifies that their ancestral home is the Sai River, a branch of the Ketungau River in its headwaters. Here in the gigantic original village of Tampun Juah all the Dayak tribes lived together in harmony until they were bothered by a satanic nation of people. After prolonged struggle (the final straw being the turning of all their food into feces), they aban- doned the site for points downriver with plans to reunite by following signs left along the course of travel, but the signs were altered by the swift current of the flood waters and the cunnfusion resulted in the various parties getting separated :Erom each other. One of these emigrant parties, consisting (If descendents of Bedjit Manai under the leadership of Gujau 'Tenwnggung Budi, became the Mualang. Passing down the Sai Iiiver and the Ketungau River as far as the mouth of the pre- =5ent-day Mualang River, they were forced by customary travel ITrohibitions to halt their journey when a man named Mualang died. They found excellent fishing holes in this river, and after some time had passed waiting for favorable omens, they eXplored the river in hunting expeditions to the headwaters. -\~______ 2To someone unfamiliar with the hinterland Bornean ethno- Eiraphic cases the term "law" may appear incongruous with tribal- evel sociocultural integration. In what is to follow, this Ilnusual development of the jural dimension will be related to 'those other features of Bornean societies that are inconsistent ‘Vith the tribal level. -23- Resuming their journey, they crossed over the hill Bukit Rambat and moved into the Belitang River valley to found the first Mualang village at Tanah Tabuk which exists to this day. Expansion over the years through the Belitang and Ayak Rivers has produced two subtribes; the Mualang Hulu (upriver), to which the village under study belongs; and the Mulang Hilir (downriver) located along the Ayak River. These years of emigration and expansion were the age of headhunting. Though the broad Belitang River valley was nearly uninhabited at the time they entered it, and the Mualang continue to expand on the northern edge of their territory to this day, the Mualang Hilir did encounter some meagre re- Sistance from the Menane in the upper Ayak River. In those days headhunting set every tribe against every other. The Rhialang were completely encircled by enemies; the Benan and Ihagau on the north, the Ketungau tribes on the east, the Seberuang and Desa on the south, and the Jangkang on the VVest. But, above all, the Iban were the most troublesome e‘Ilemies for all the tribes of this area. The Mualang had a SDecial relationship with the Kantuk tribe to the northeast (Elnother arch-enemy of the Iban) that allowed them secure Ilassage when launching an attack against the Iban. The Mualang were clearly less aggressive people than tjfle Iban, and by some accounts were in danger of dwindling Esfiiriously in numbers because the Iban regarded them as "easy }1 offering the three grades of school permitted by the Dutch QCDlonial government. Many of the present village chiefs were e"Ilucated in this school and tell with considerable pride the S‘tory of how they attended the third grade four times, a sub- tWarfuge to obtain the equivalent of a sixth grade education. By about 1943, all of Sungai Mulau were Christian and 'tlle strain between the Christians and the uncoverted in -26 - most other villages had led to their splitting into separate Christian and unconverted villages; Pakit Mulau Hulu/Pakit Mulau Hilir and Engkudu Mulau/Engkudu Kerumai are just two examples. There is perhaps no better illustration of the importance of consensus in a Mualang community (a point I will develop in Chapter III) than this. Inexorably, conversion proceeded until the last village, Pakit Mulau Hilir, capit- ulated in 1967, but the Japanese invasion of the island in 1942 and its brutal occupation during the Second World War provided some impedence (cf. Ricklefs 1981: 137)- Reverend Mouw had managed to escape ahead of the occupation forces but one of the two Bible teachers was killed in a concentration camp at Mandor, near the coast. Attending church was abso- lJJtely forbidden by the Japanese. Upon the withdrawal of the tlapanese troops at the end of the war, Reverend Mouw returned tn) Balai Sepuak and expanded the school facilities. By this ‘tirm interest in education was widespread and schools were SSpringing up spontaneously throughout the Mualang Hulu area. Among the Mualang Hilir, the course of events was quite Clifferent. Conversion to Christianity had spread only very slowly into the Ayak River by the late 19405 when the Catho- Zlic Capuchin missionary Donatus Dunselman turned his atten- tion to this area. During the early 19505 Father Dunselman (Zonverted the Mualang of.this river system to Catholicism Ifrom his base at Pakit Engkuning. The differences in the con- ‘Version experiences of the two subtribes are striking. Father IMnselman was keenly interested in the native culture and, -27- with admirable skill, collected and published important folk songs and folklore (see King 1978 for a bibliography). To this day the people of Mualang Hilir continue to learn and preserve this cultural heritage. By contrast, the Mualang Hulu began to view their cultural heritage as unbefitting their modernizing condition and the songs and stories of their heroic ancestors began to be excluded from their gawai celebrations. The young people learned Christian hymns and Bible storiesinstead of the enormously long and musically less stimulating songs and tales about the goings-on among the extraordinary beings of the lost village of Pangau. .Being the most Christianized and among the best educated IDeOple of the middle Kapuas area, the Mualang Hulu have seri- <3twly accepted the important role assigned them by the mission- Erries in helping spread Christianity through the reluctant Ileighboring tribes. To this end, many of the young people Situdy at the Bible school, now located at Kelansam on the I(apuas River, to become preachers. A high percentage of them cliscover, after practical field experience, that life as a nlissionary among an alien tribe indisposed to support them at 1the level they had hoped for is not congenial to them and so 'they return to their village to half-heartedly assume the life they had hoped to avoid by getting an education. In all fairness, it should be noted that the education provided at the Bible school is the least expensive available and, for that reason, an attractive opportunity for young people as- piring to a higher level of living than is typical for the -28- village. The difficulty that the missionization effort has had with building institutionalized Christianity at this level of community material support of the minister's family and church property illustrates a prominent feature of the analysis of this economic organization. The economic life of these communities is not organized to produce a "surplus" that can be extracted to support people who do not provision them- selves. Elementary school is available at Kalveri, a church- School community just ten minutes walk from the longhouse ‘within the Sungai Mulau longhouse territory. A new, three Classroom elementary school was built here by the government 1111977. The community includes the Kalveri church, the homes C f the preacher and six teachers, and eight dormitories for tile children of the eight villages that are too far away for tile children to walk each day. In these dormitories, the clhildren care for themselves for the six days of the school ‘Vfieek entirely without supervision, though, of course, the FTreacher's and teachers' families are located nearby. For this reason, it is understandable that children do not begin E5Chool until the age of eight and, if they must stay in a dOrmitory, perhaps as late as ten or eleven. Grades seven, eight, and nine are available at Balai Sepuak and, of course, students walking in from as far as Sungai Mulau must live in a dormitory. These dormitories, like those for elementary students at Kalveri, are very modest affairs, not much more than large field huts. This school -29- was, until two years ago, privately supported and its two classrooms were woefully inadequate for the educational needs of the children in the area. The government is in the process of erecting a new school on this site. At present many students from the area venture as far as Sintang, Sekadau, or Sanggau to attend these grades where the facilities are better. After these middle school grades, Bible school is available at Kelansam, teachers school is available at Sanggau, and high school and trade schools are available at Pontianak. A few students from the Sungai Mulau area have been trained as nurses at the Baptist hospital in Serukam on ‘the west coast where they have good connections. In these Circumstances where the student must find a way to support llimself in a distant town or city, connections already Eistablished by previous students are imperative. As much as Einything else good connections account for the relatively high leavel of education attained by the children of Sungai Mulau. Sungai Mulau and its daughter village, Sungai Antu Rangah, wGare among the first Mualang villages to have their young People seek their fortunes as far away as Pontianak and St-Erukam. Political Setting The Mualang see themselves as impatiently poised in a State of readinessfor economic develOpment, as they are in- Vited to see themselves. They have, of course, only the vaguest conception of what economic development might entail, -30 - butthey pressume it will come from the government. The govern- ment they know is the kecamatan staff at Balai Sepuak: the camat and his five assistants (wakil camat). The five assis- tants attend to the Specialized functions of government. For example, one is in charge of the federal government finan- cial subsidy deveIOpment projects (uanggsubsidi), another supervises the temunggungs, etc. The temunggungs are Dayak Specialists in native law (adat) who resolve disputes appealed beyond the level of the village chief (kepala kampung), espec- ially cases involving disputants from two different villages. A temunggung will have authority over an area of about ten Villages. He is the highest level native government official. 'To serve above this level one would have to graduate from the Egovernment services training academy (A.P.D.N.). Several £§overnment ministers (menteri) are appointed by the camat to Sdach specialities as health, education, agriculture, etc. without any particular qualifications and, in this hinterland Sietting, are little more than part-time gatherers of govern- nDent statistics. Unofficial statistics available from the camat's office, 1Dased on the June 1979 census, revealed the kecamatan popula- 'tion of 17,326 to be composed of 75 percent Dayaks, 15 percent Malays, 9 percent Chinese, andl percent other. Of these, 60 Percent were Christian (the Indonesian term for Protestant), 20 percent Islamic, 15 percent Catholic, 2 percent Confu- cianism, and 2 percent Animist. This population over the -31- l,218.75 square kilometers of the kecamatan gives a density of 14.2 persons per square kilometer. Each kecamatan has a medical clinic (puskesmas) with a doctor, a nurse, and a paramedic. The nurse also operates the government family planning clinic (B.K.I.A.). A police force (polisi) of seven officers and a post of the military arm of the government (koramil) manned by three soldiers keep the peace. In addition to these government offices the town of Balai Sepuak has two small elementary schools, a small middle School, a Protestant church, a Moslem prayer house (surau) and three storekeepers (tuke). Downstream, at the abandoned site (Df the original Bible school, are the homes of the missionary E11nd the area church superintendent. Middle school children Ilave taken up residence in the abandoned Bible school dormi— tories. The economic "development" expectations of the villagers c>2IE'Sungai Mulau, located some 25 miles from this seat of IIidonesian government authority, are quite abstract. In the Clase of any particular government project there typically deveIOps an element of skepticism about its feasibility if Ilot.downrightconfusion and suspicion about the government's iintention. Mualang society is a pacific, non-conflictual Order, it will be argued below, but, at this level of political Organization, there prevails an uneasy peace, a lingering grudgingness of the loss of tribal sovereignty. CHAPTER II THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Definition of the Economic Field This chapter situates the theoretical framework of the study of economic behavior in the village of Sungai Mulau within the context of the basic presuppositions essential for doing economic anthropology. Foremost among these is the definition of the economic field. The position here is to Side with the substantivists in defining the economy "as an linstituted process of interaction between man and his environ- IDent, which results in a continuous supply of want satisfying Inaterial means" (Polanyi 1957: 248). This is commonly referred two as the "material provisioning of society" definition and C3eorge Dalton has expressed it this way: "the need for all CNDmmunities--whatever their size and technology--to organize nnaterial life so as to assure the sustained, repetitive pro- \Iision of food, shelter, and the items necessary for community Ilife" (1971b: 15). Maurice Godelier has pointed out that this <1efinition "is the one that, in reality, all economists apply in their practice. That is why the dispute about the defini— tion of what is economic-has only a limited significance" (1972: xv). This dispute between the formalists and the substantivists is one expression of the persistent philosophi— cal debate that began with the "divorce of philosophy, from -32- -33- mythology, religion and theology that took place in the West beginning in the sixteenth century"(Weisskopf 1971: 39) where- by substantive reason was separated from formal reason. Sub- stantive reason means to reason from "substance" or "content," specifically, the content of values and ends prevalent in a particular society. Substantive reason, in contrast to formal reason which is concerned only with means, encompasses both ends and means. Ends being outside the scope of formal rea- soning, formalist economics defines as economic "the alloca- tion of scarce means to alternative ends"; thus, economic rationality is reduced to implementational expediency. The "substantivists" debate with the "formalists" is, of <:ourse, much more than contention about a universally applic- Eible definition of the economic field. There is the important Sissue of the applicability of the categories and concepts of fiarmal economic science to other than capitalist commodity eEconomies. The substantivists have generally taken formal e”zonomic theory to be a substantive theory of capitalist com- “Lodity economy and not really a formal theory of economy as Claimed. The "Formal Model of A Possible Economic System" Are we then confined by substantivism to the impossibil- ity of a universally applicable economic science? George Dalton has argued that it may be possible to analyse the per- formance of all economies by "the concepts of conventional economics" but no such universal theory is possible for “u. "I. ~ I...‘ \ -34- understanding the organization of economic order (1969: 66). Godelier, on the other hand, envisions a general theory of economic science unfolding from substantive analyses that apprehends the real differences between economic systems (1972: 279-303). What is at issue here is the problem of levels of abstraction of formal analytic categories and concepts: "grand theory”; middle range theory; and substantive concepts and categories. I agree with Godelier that this philosophy of science impasse can be broken by using an "abstract analyti- cal systems" approach, a technique that George Appell has described as follows: "Such analytical systems contain cate- gories of discrimination that are found in all societies. 'They are composed of universal entities and the necessary ‘reflations between such entities, thus forming an integrated S)rstem" (1973: 31). Godelier argues that we already have a‘V'ailable to us the universally applicable categories and cioncepts of production, distribution,auuiconsumption and discusses how they can be systematically related to yield a 'Vformal 'model' of a possible economic system" (1972: 279). B'Y'such a technique not only the data, but also the analysis C>f the data, can be cross-culturally applicable (cf. Dumont 1975: 156). There is, unfortunately, a difficulty with this approach, ‘3ne that has bedeviled economic anthropology from its incep- tion. If economic behavior in non-market contexts is embedded in sociopolitical institutions rather than differentiated out into an integrated economy, it may not be "systematic." As \ 'p.... I "a u.‘ . "'Ob. . "I...- . "'“oh: . . " u.- .. .o..~.' .,.... -35_ Marshall Sahlins has put it: "to speak of 'the economy' of a primitive society is an exercise in unreality" (1972: 76). How far is this problem a threat to using the formal model of a possible economic system? The problem is surmounted by the explicit definition of the economic field. This definition permits not only specification of the internal systematic relations of the entities of the formal model, but also, specification of their articulation with other systematic entities in their embeddedness. The formal model of a poss- ible economic system is not a general theory; rather, it is a provisional analytic expedient permitting cross-culturally Useful work in the absence of a general theory and enabling ‘uS "to avoid falling into the rut of empiricism" (Godelier 11972: 263). More£1"problematique"tfluuia theory, "this 'model' Ilrovides the guide-lines of economic analysis, that is, a Sieries of questions giving direction to one's interrogation of the facts" (Ibid.: 278) . The recent work of Scott Cook (1973) complements the work c>2E'Godelier in making more explicit this formal model of eco- Ilomicbehavior. Consequently, for the entities and relations <>f the model this study will rely heavily on their work. There 1Temains to be resolved, however, what continues to be an in- tractable problem for economic anthropology. This is the set Of'Suppositions about the way economic behavior is embedded in the sociocultural order. Embedding economic behavior in socio- Cultural institutions has generally taken two trends in eco- nomic anthropology. One group from Mauss, through Polanyi, ,. ~36- Dalton, and Sahlins has taken exchange as the kind of economic behavior more likely to be carrying social, political, and ideological components. The other group, including prominent- ly those who make use of the Marxian theoretical framework, ascribe to production this special embeddedness importance. What is at stake here is an argument about causality in socio- cultural phenomena and the motive forces of history. This study sides with neither trend. In accordance with the formal model, presuppositions about embeddedness are inappropriate. Instead, such relationships are anticipated to be exposed in the course of analysis inhering in the substantive context rather than assumed in the model. The important point here has been made by Aiden Foster-Carter (1978: 242); that is, production, ex- Change, distribution, and consumption are a system and reproduc- tion of the total sociocultural system should be the focus of inquiry. The Special Status of "Distribution": "The Way Mutual Dependence Is Structured" The embeddedness problem expresses itself in the formal Inodel as difficulties in specifying the relations between the Categories of exchange and distribution. These categories have not been used with precision in the economic anthropology lit- erature; and so both their definitions and their relationship to each other are at issue here. Generally speaking, those who have taken exchange as the "core event sector" [to use Cook's phrase (1973: 812)] in economic analysis, have given very '0 -37- little attention to the topic of distribution, presumably re- garding it as merely the aggregate outcome of the socially instituted mechanisms of exchange. On the other hand, those taking production to be the "core event sector” treat exchange as merely another behavioral event sector and give some prom- inance to the category of distribution. Part of this differ- ence lies in the fact that there are two distinctly different kinds of things to distribute in a society: the factors of production and the products. The production-focused analyses tend to emphasize the importance of productive factors and the exchange-focused analyses tend to emphasize the exchange of products, based on their respective embeddedness biases. To complicate matters further, there have been two con- Ventional senses of "distribution” in economic science. One is "the process of apportionment by which the value of a pro- duct is divided and imputed to the various factors of produc- tion as payment for their use" (Webster's Third New Interna- tional Dictionary). It is with such relations that the "Worldly Philosophers" such as Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo agonized over 'the origins of economic value and Marx was able to identify his law of surplus labor value. This question of value haunted early efforts in economic anthropology as well: Toward the end of the 19205 there were lively discussions between the economists and anthro- pologists at the University of Chicago concern- ing economic behavior in tribal societies. These debates were led by Dr. F.H. Knight of the economics department and Dr. Edward Sapir of the anthropology department. The economists wanted to know what forces governed the distri- bution of goods and services and what determined -t . ‘t. n 0.. u '. M. . u-‘ a 'i. -38- exchange values in an economy with no organized markets and no money (Oberg 1973: xi). The second sense of distribution is as the "process that regulates the circulation of wealth in a given society, and underwrites the structure and dynamics of its allocation among the various status groups of the social 5ystem"(Cook 1973: 812). Admittedly these two definitions of distribution are not mutually exclusive. They perhaps reflect the key distinc- tion in the polar types of economy: disembedded-embedded. The Worldly Philosophers could address themselves to these rela- tions of value because they were analyzing a disembedded eco- nomy in which monetization and commoditization had placed all the factors of production into quantitative relationships to each other. By contrast, embedded economic order permits no ESuch possibilities. This is an important reason why the ex— ‘fllange event sector will not operationalize sufficiently to Prcaduce a useful definition of the economic field and so those th> construct exchange models, such as Polyani and Sahlins, are: forced to define the economy by material provisioning. My Possition here is to follow Cook (1973). I believe he has made Certain Operationalizing refinements of Godelier's position, especially with respect to the explicit definition and place- mentof exchange in the larger scheme of the formal model. The definitions of the categories of production, exchange, and Consumption will be detailed in the course of the analysisand are likely to incite little controversy. Distribution, how— ever, is a different matter because of the wide variance in its treatment in the literature. It is imperative that a more -39- extended consideration of this category be taken up in this exposition of the abstract analytical model. There has been a long-standing propensity in the economic anthropology literature to assign a special status to the category "distribution" although today this is a matter of some controversy (Clammer 1978: 7). Distribution has been considered the organizing principle of the economic order, not only integrating the economic categories of behavior into a system, but also, integrating to some extent the economic with the other sociocultural dimensions. As far back as Adam Smith, a "hidden hand" was posited to be guiding the economic life of market-dominated economies. Nearly a cen- tury later, in Marx's exposure of the structural logic of capitalism in his law of surplus labor value, distribution can be seen to enjoy this special analytic status of an under- lying organizational synthesis. More recently, Karl Polanyi attempted a typology of economic institutions based on modes of allocation of economic goods (reciprocity, redistribution, market exchange) which are essentially distributional dis- tinctions (cf. Godelier 1972: 276). In the same vein, taking Marshall Sahlins at his own word, he has characterized his seminal contribution to exchange theory entitled, "The Sociology of Primitive Exchange" as "a detailed analysis of distribution" (1972: 188). In Godelier's conceptual scheme it is in distribution that the logic of materially provision- ing society principally resides: -40- analysis of the different categories of structures of distribution has shown us the strategic role played in the func- tioning of societies by the operations and norms of the distribution of the factors of production. It is these that control, in the last analysis, the possi- bilities of action that a social system offers...possibilities equal or unequal, of power, of culture, of standard of living. As we shall see...it is these possibilities of different systems that are contrasted in the arguments about economic 'rationality' (Ibid.: 276-277). And as for the place of economy in the sociocultural order, he has said that in distribution "we shall discover this internal relation between social structures'(Ibid.: 268). Scott Cook has characterized distribution as "the process that integrates these sectors as a circular flow system and articulates this system with the larger sociocultural system" (1973: 812). Finally, most recently, Stephen Gudeman has proposed "for anthropological economics 3 new analytic framework, which focuses on production-distributiom'(1978b: 349). "For anthro- pology the task that follows from the adoption of this per- spective is to locate and specify culturally different patterns of distribution and to determine the forces that underlie them" (Ibid.). Curiously, substantivists and formalists, production— focus analysts and exchange-focus analysts all appear to have met on this common ground of economic distribution. George Dalton's expression "the way mutual dependence is structured" (1971: 237) is a tersely cogent way of expressing the concept of distribution in economic anthropology. The economic, social, political, and religious components of the resolution i. v- u v o .-.-.-- \fi u..>A~¥ . - u;'1 . it! "' 9--~ “ '5'5 . o... n ‘ .u-‘ . I ‘9‘”..H . °'--I»..a . "e V 3‘.‘ . .- ‘§. 'ng . . ‘5 ‘ ‘I ._‘ ‘ a "H \C - v .. ‘4 , . ~. \ "1‘ ‘7'!- I"- ._. 0' ‘g C. \|~‘ ”'4‘ :- 75» -41- of the problem of social order converge in this elegant and concise expression. Refractedthrough the analytic category of distribution, the recent work of Marshall Sahlins (1971, 1972) appears in a most interesting aberration. The "domestic mode of produc- tion," intended as an "ideal type" (1972: 75) and dubbed "structural substantivism" by Scott Cook (1974), is not so much a class of modes of production as it is a theoretical exercise in which the allocation of the factors of production sense of distribution is held constant while varying the transaction of products sense of distribution to illustrate how it can be correlated with sociopolitical organization in primitive societies, as expressed in production performance. Some justification for this exercise lies in the fact that in primitive societies the rudimentary character of technology in which everyone has easy access to the simple tools, material resources are not scarce, and the division of labor goes little beyond sex and age, the factors of production tend to be made directly available to the production units. Further, the low level of productivity provides little opportunity for men to exploit their fellows through control of the means of produc- tion; 50, access to the factors of production is conceded to those production units inertially bearing the weight of mater- ial sustenance. The production units themselves are at the same time multifunctional social units attending to many purposes beyond production. Under these conditions the tech- nical forces of production and the social relations of '.'.. s vvn '-.. . .. ‘ v 'u. ‘I .._~ .. ‘ x "‘ ‘v I ... Y Q . ‘4 -, n _ .1 ‘i . .“ . 'I-‘ ." q s - h‘h ‘ n \ \ " \ ui‘ . -s ‘5 i. ‘ l ‘- . - . g. . U . D . ‘ I . V S l .‘ K . - -. v u 4 '- ~ s 'A \ -42- production provide little 5c0pe for determinative articula- tion with the social, political, and religious dimensions of sociocultural order. Instead, interest lies in the exchange of products between social units for other than mere material purposes--i.e., the transaction of products sense of distri- bution. In both senses of distribution control over people is as much at issue as control of production factors and material goods. In the first sense, there is indirect con- trol over people through the instrumental requirements of production relations; in the second sense, control over peOple is direct through the manipulation of strategic social rela- tions (cf. Humphries 1969: 203). It may be useful to consider briefly the theoretical status of Sahlins' "domestic mode of production" since it is somewhat abstruse. As mentioned above, he has described it. as an "ideal type" but it must be kept in mind that it is neither a "mode of production" nor an ideal type of economy. Even its object, domestic production for use, does not exist in empirical reality. Domestic units producing for their own use is a contradiction in Sahlins' very conceptions of prim- itive sociocultural life. Although commonly in primitive societies domestic units organize and carry out production, domestic units never produce merely for themselves. Produc- tion for their own use would rein in production efforts at the mere level of household requirements, and the provision- ing of society would thereby be severely neglected. Sahlins' thesis is that this is a real contradiction at the most .0“..— - ..-. ,. \ .u...| "NO... s... . , . '\ ... .'- ‘. .. . \ ~ ‘\ ~ ‘ L1. . D. Q t 1“ . .‘ _- ‘. . '5 Q \ n ‘ ~ . . . >- -43- fundamental level of organization of primitive economic life, resolved differently in each particular case by instituted political process. The DMP then, is a theory about certain tendencies of the organization and performance of production in primitive societies in which production is predominantly in the hands of domestic units. As a theory, it is a system- atic set of hypotheses and can be tested only indirectly through the attempted validation of the individual hypothe- ses. The theory was instrumental in the conception of this research and in understanding the results. The research was not, however, conceived to test the theory. On the other hand, Sahlins has proposed a scheme of analysis of ”social profiles of domestic production" (Evans 1974), based on the relationships between domestic unit production intensity and the character of the community's political organization, which can be tested directly. The research was designed to provide the data to put this scheme to the test. Understanding the material provisioning of society in an institutional context that structures mutual dependence is the intention of this study. Taking heed of Sahlins' admoni- tion that "Between any economizing propensities of individuals and the economic process is a powerful third term: social, political, ideological--in brief, cultural--elements that order the latter and constrain the former" (1962: 1068), the attention must always be alert to apprehend this third term. With Godelier it is here presumed .\ .\‘ -44- that in every society, whether primitive or not, there is a definite field open to social competition, a field structured by the domi- nance of certain social relations over others (kinship, religion, etc.). It is this field that offers individuals the possibility of acting so as to maximize those determined and hierarchically ordered social satisfac- tions the necessity of which is based upon the particular way the social structure func- tions (1972: 292). The works of Sahlins and Godelier come together in the idea that institutional forces, expressing a hidden "ration- ality" of the sociocultural system, are determinative of the possibilities of behavior in that system. It is this "level of reality that exists beyond the visible relations between men, and the functioning of which constitutes the underlying logic of the system, the subjacent order by which the apparent order is to be explained" (Godelier 1972: xviii - xix) to which anthropological analysis should be directed. There is some basis for arguing that much of such logic is most likely to be revealed in the analysis of distribution. Proceeding by means of the formal model of a possible economic system the aim here is to realize some of this "promise of a new economics, distinctively anthropological, and more indebted to the structure of the societies with which it deals than to the categories of the one from which it comes"(Sahlin5 1971: 49). CHAPTER III SOCIAL ORGANIZATION The Mualang are a self-conscious ethnic entity speaking a common language and sharing a system of customary law and a common history, as was mentioned earlier, but the tribe is Inot a unit of social organization. There is no occasion when timetribe functions as a unit. The only two enduring units th social organization are the village (kampung) and the household (bilik). The Village Community The traditional Mualang village consists of a single l(Dnghouse (rumah panyai) of from 15 to 30 family apartments b1.1.i1t near the river. The serially aligned family apartments C 3Lawang) are built, maintained,:nulowned by the individual \b ilik families. Referring to Figure 4 below, note that each a'IDartment consists of a bilik portion and a ruai portion. The EELleik portion, or family room, is given over to cooking, sleep— ing, and other activities in which temporary withdrawal from ‘1}13 social milieu is desired. By contrast, the ruai portion Eibctends continuously down the entire length of the longhouse, Qlbnstituting, in effect, a roofed public passageway. Often Treferred to by Westerners as a "gallery," it is a most pleasant -45- ~46- Padang Omwmmo LI Tunnel. 'Figure 4. ’(Hl, Plan of a Mualang Longhouse. -47- respite from the intense tropical sun. The merits of defense and communality are frequently credited to longhouse architec- ture, but a single afternoon spent on the rpai of a longhouse would convince anyone familiar with the equatorial climate of the wisdom of the design with respect to physical comfort. The high roof and high air vents along the spacious, darkened- tunnel form of the £231 produce an ambience found only in the Dutch-designed buildings dating from the colonial era or the Sultan's palaces. The walls between the bilik family rooms Prevent, of course, this part of the apartment from enjoying Scmm of the ruai's advantages. The Mualang say that an apartment is, on average, 3 depah wide. The depah is a Mualang measure of length from the fing- eI'tips to fingertips when the arms are extended straight out 35710m the body at the sides. Since the relative size of the 3>:ilik has traditionally been a measure of the family's level C>zf well-being, the measurements of the longhouse under study Eal-tlre of some interest and can be found in FigureINlof the El]ppendix. A single door to the bilik opens into the luan where ssitbecial guests of the family are entertained, the females :uliay weave or sew and the sleeping mats are laid out at night. ISetween this room and the dapur is a short room (pelaboh) with ‘1 dropped floor to compensate for the low raintrough running Even with the dropped floor, It beetween the two roof gables. i1: is necessary to duck when passing through this room. ‘functions primarily for storage, but it also has a floor of ..OD-! . a 4“ n p 'oo-h 'tha ’- , . .'.‘ '- \ ‘5 5‘, . a \‘ _ u n ‘u \‘ _, ‘5 ' c '-.‘i L“ . “ ' ~ . ‘. - .‘ ‘A v “\ x . u . I . n ‘ _ -48- rattan-tied sticks where the washing of dishes and kitchen utensils, cleaning of vegetables and food-chopping can be done with abandon as garbage and splashing water fall through the floor to be fought over by the pigs and chickens that have taken up positions just below. Rainwater collected from the raintrough over this room can reduce somewhat the amount of water that must be carried from the river. The dapur contains the fireplace for cooking and the family typically eats in this room as well. Frequently a Window in the sidewall allows the residents of adjacent biliks to communicate with ease in the dapgr or luan. Also the wall Inay be missing in the pelaboh to allow easy access between Eidjoining biliks when the biliks concerned are close kin. A loft (padong) for the storage of padi (if the family Cloesn't own a rice barn) and padi farming equipment such as IJaskets, mats, and tools, extends from the inner half of the Fl—uan over the door and out over the inner half of the £331. I‘lotched log ladders are positioned at both the luan and £231 e:znds of this spacious loft. The {£31 or gallery resembles a roofed public street and 53 erves many functions essential for Mualang sociocultural JL:ife. Coming out the door of the bilik one steps down into a ES‘lmken sidewalk-like strip called the 33195. This is actually Ei- rice pounding platform and, if one should try to walk it, l‘le would soon stop because it is especially made to bounce VVith the stroke of the rice pounding pestle and to walk on it for any length is annoying. The remainder of the ruai is ‘liu. ”dun- v \ .... uh“ ' o 5“ ..~ -4g- firmly floored in the sense that it is laid with heavy boards over firm structural supports. These boards are not attached by any means, however, and create quite a clamor when walked over. It should be apparent to the reader that the longhouse is a very noisy place to live. An unforgetable feature of longhouse life for the Westerner is the approach to a long- house on a jungle path in the late afternoon. Far down the path one picks up the sounds of the pounding of rice on the springy, looseboard platform, then the counter-crowing of some Cocky roosters, and, finally, the cacophony is completed with the commotion of the smaller pigs being sent off squealing ifipm the piles of rice husks as the larger pigs root through Tlhem for any precious morsels of food they might contain. The ruai is the scene of much of the housework and handi- CIraft work of both men and women. The padi spread on mats for dcrying in the sun on the ganggang is guarded from hungry chick- ens risking a clout from a pole suspended by a rattan tie from tlhe edge of the roof by an operator enjoying the shade and C=<3mfort of the darkened ruai. Here hats, mats, baskets, traps, Ellndtools are fashioned from the jungle products in the company c5:1:"others, who, if they have no such project of their own under- ,“Viay, join in for the sheer sociality (berandau) of it. Beran- .SL533 means to have a casual conversation with whoever cares to 5 (Sin in. It is the predominant form of sociality among the Mhalang. It begins on the ruai in the early morning as people dsiscuss their work plans for the day and continues among those ‘left behind to care for the small children and perform the -50- domestic chores such as rice processing. The evening hours are dominated by berandau as those who have returned from the fields turn their attention to the making and upkeep of their handicraft products. Predictably some men will gather around the community forge in front of the village chief's bilik. If no one has need of the forge to smith a bushknife or axe, then someone will probably build a fire in it simply to ward off the chill the older men feel in their bones in the night air. On a typical evening, there will be three or four berandau Sessions available along the ruai composed mostly of men and l>oys as the women's preoccupation with cooking and cleaning irithe bilik has attracted their berandaus inside the bilik (Numbers. The genuinely social character of Mualang social 1.ife and how it is facilitated by the longhouse architecture, eEspecially its public ruai, cannot be over-emphasized. By Eikenuinely social, the point is to distinguish the amity com- ponent of sociality from the calculating components such as Elire generally attributed to material and political advantage. 17133 ease with which people socialize in a very low-key way, Inltativated by the sheer pleasure of the company of their fellows, i—ss a feature of their social life that will be related to S52ns, and inheritance settlements are timed, when possible, ‘to 'be proclaimed at this annual, large-scale gawai. Lesser gfiihggis, especially for marriages, occur throughout the year as re'Cl‘uired. The gawai always requires that each bilik in the 1°nghouse community make its contribution to sponsoring the fCstivities. Divorces and funerals, of course, do not follow tile pattern of the celebratory gawai. Divorces are, for the mOst part, solemn property settlements supervised by the vil- 1age chiefs and village elders involved in the presence of all interested parties. Such "witnesses" are paid a token witness -65- fee. Funerals, on the other hand, require the participation of the full village and suspension of work. The family of the deceased kills a pig and/or chickens to feed the village and any guests. The foregoing has attempted to show the extent to which the village is an extremely important unit in Mualang social organization. The repository of the resources essential for material provisioning, the locus of one's most important kin- ship and other social relations, the predominant unit of jural process and political order, and the unit of ceremony and celebration, it provides the social framework into which the other important unit of Mualang social organization, the bilik family, fits. The Bilik Family Domestic life in Mualang society is organized by and pursued in the context of the bilik family. Here the kinship- based procreative and enculturative family, the coresident household and the commensal domestic unit are coterminous. The name for this family unit derives from the private part of the lawang apartment where the family withdraws to cook and eat around its differentiating hearth (dapug). It is not uncommon for a bilik family to not possess a bilik, though this condition is considered temporary. Under more extreme circumstances of even a more temporary nature, the bilik family may be defined by the cooking of its own food at the hearth -66- and the storage of its rice in its own storage bin, taking responsibility for materially provisioning itself. It will be recalled that household management is an archaic meaning of the term "economic" derived from the Greek word oikonomikos. This relationship deserves emphasis in this study of economic order in a simple economy where the family is the predominant unit of production and consumption organization. The bilik_family makes claims to its share of community resources, manages its labor and tools to materially provision itself, calculates exchanges of its products, and enjoys the material level of well-being that results therefrom. This predominate unit of production for Mualang society organizes production largely on the basis of tradition. Traditional resources are utilized in a traditional manner by traditional tools in accordance with traditional techniques. The tradi- tional division of labor, to be taken up in the next chapter, is based on sex and age differences, as is typical for tradi- tional societies. The point to be emphasized here is that, beyond this traditional division of labor, there is an obvious effort within the bilik_to define distinctly different and complementary roles for each member. Same sex adults within the bilik almost always work at different tasks at different places, or different times. Such differentiation of tasks and roles is, of course, an important source of the complementarity of mutual dependence which is the raison d'etre for the family. Mutual dependence and the generalized '-.OI “'1‘. 23v” .5. v.‘ ‘\ .~~ . .__ . M.. .“ h“ . l . ‘ t . -'-I q "I .4 I “6 ‘i .O ‘- _ .- s. ‘ ‘Q ‘v .s ‘1‘ ‘5 . . \ -67- reciprocity necessitated by it are threatened by the calcula- tion of contributions that follow inevitably from comparable roles as will be made clear in the discussion below of the bilik_family deve10pmental cycle. Much interest these days attends the analysis of sex roles, especially with respect to how "the seemingly most intimate details of private existence are actually structured by larger social relations" (Ross and Rapp 1981: 51). As the analysis of the economic life of the community will show, sex roles are not used for the exploitation of one sex for the interests of the other; nor are there intergenerational con- flicts between males based on problems of access to the sexual services of females or the treatment of children as economic resources (cf. White 1975). The relations between the sexes and between generations are easy in this society. In keeping with the generalization that no anthropologist "has observed a society in which women have publicly recognized power and authority surpassing that of men" (Rosaldo and Lamphere in Harris 1980: 482), politics in Mualang society is almost ex- clusively a male responsibility. But, of course, it will be recalled that politics is quite underplayed and so there is little of it to apprehend.- As the discussion of the political dimension at the public level of the longhouse community tried to make clear, politics in the sense of manipulating people by aggression or domination in any form is unacceptable. Anyone can ignore not only the chief's entreaties, but also the gage-Hf 5va-itl . I" ’v‘ ’ h I 'I.~nl fl y! 5 V fl--O,.A. in bu‘v n) (I: (1- ‘2'1 ,‘M‘O . o..‘ ...‘.I .“ ‘5 -68- communal consensus. Furthermore, women are not only the equi- valent of men in jural reasoning, they are also quite capable of effecting their own particular position with respect to authority within the domestic unit depending upon the strengths of the personalities of the principals involved. "Masculinity" in the sense of the personality traits "aggressive, manipulative, fearless, virile and (dominating)" (Harris 1980: 490) is not developed in Mualang society. Defi- nitions of maleness and femaleness, as reflected in distinctly different social roles, are based on a clear, if not rigorous, division of labor. If pressed, such differentiation of labor would be rationalized by.the "practical reason" (Sahlins 1976) of sex differences too obvious to mention. As Eleanor Leacock has suggested, (1978: 248) sex roles may not be unequal--just different. And it is precisely in this being different that much of the understanding of sex roles lies, as Roy Wagner has explained so well: The fact that men and women in tribal, peasant, and 'lower-class' groups keep to themselves, develop clubs and lifestyles of their own, and interact only in fighting, banter, and sexual relations is not a peripheral 'psychological' problem to be explained away by theories of biology, function, or deprivation. It is central to their modality of creating social reality--it is the means by which their reality is created. Each sex differentiates itself from the other, in inventive, improvisatory, and often simply peculiar ways. By implicitly recognizing the character and qualities of the other, taunting it into being, as it were, it creates the sexual complementary on which social life is based (1975: 92). -69- Tnuadevelopmentalcycle of the bilik family can be revealed by a consideration of the composition of the bilik families of the village of Sungai Mulau. Table 2 describes the bilik families of Sungai Mulau in terms oftfluamembers' age, sex, birthplace,instrumental kinship link, mode of recruitment to the bilik family, etc.(after Izikowitz 1951: 118-125, Table 5). By "instrumental kinship link" I mean that kinship link that accounts for that member living in that bilik situated in that particular position in the longhouse community. The numerical composition of the biliks istabulated in Table 3 showing a mode of six members. It will be recalled from Table 1 that the mean is 6.3 persons per bilik. This reflects the fact that a mature bilik family is a "stem family;" i.e., "contains one, and only one conjugal unit (a married couple or the surviving spouse of a married pair) in each of at least two successive generations" (Hudson 1972: 132). Upon marriage the couple takes up resi- dence in the bilik of either the husband or wife. Here they will live and work to the benefit of this natal pilik until the intra-pilik_strife becomes too much to bear. This typi- cally occurs when a younger sibling of the natal member marries and begins to raise children as well. Commonly the older conjugal pair with children will establish a separate hearth, a separate rice storage bin, and begin to farm rice indepen- dently from the natal bilik. A partition within the lawang apartment is built to provide the newly founded bilik its ...-..-...( -\“-.-..-... s.» 3‘“ ‘cs .~.\b \.u I,-...-.s.~ -.‘ .v\.\~..~ -70- mo w m :oHH .0 mm m m and: .m H- N»\Nq mm a mesmem .s monfiuu mcmsuoeomv wcmswe em agape meshems mm 2 mapped .m xwafic :=m\w:msmc HH EHm\q2 mcsaocoz me w #0» .N woumuomhoucfi\omm mamas OH xa-an mace emcee“ on mumps ow .xowmmm pom wcwac Nmo massacoz cm 2 sakes: .H HH .oz xflawm Hm OH 2 ufimxmm .5 Hm ma 2 mass» .o Hm ca 2 :«w .m nxmcmwucoms Hoe:0m mcfiwcopum Hm ma 2 name .v 650: Eonm xmzm mcaxwoz Hm mm 2 swam» .m wcmswe Hz esmaom as a sauna .N kHAEmm Hmmsw -cou m we woumopm\xfiawn can VHHno me 2 swam .H mxnmEmm xcwq mwzmcflx oumfimcupfim om< xom osmz H .02 xflawm .smH52 Ammcsm mo mxwflfim on» mo mamaou .N oHan -71- HN> OH m Munoz .e Hm» ea 2 same: .m Hm» OH 2 cow< .N mead xmz wofihsme\xfifiwn can H> em>oaop \> xflafln ow poumEmmamEm-HEom -ouco so uma ma m massed .H >H .oz xfifiwm mm s z cased .OH ma OH m wuwz .m mm ea 2 cope: .w mm SH 2 museum .5 axmcmflucomv Hoocum mcfiecouum ma 5H m causes .0 eouaoea Ha smash mm a ae< .m x-Han :=m\memsm: H-H>m\m: mm 2 gems» .s mnma .ponouuo woumsompou:w\wmpumuoy zap mflam mN Macaw cu m an“: .m mamam: m2 mo m :flEmm .N mm on 2 cause .H mxmeom xcwg mfismcfix oumfimsunwm om< xom oewz HHH .oz xwamm .fi.e-u:oo- N magma -72- m-esaom amfimm- HoOEUm mefieempum\empmaoaeou=- mHH>a\Hoeo sesameae SH a bonuses .S eoaapoaaouefi mHH>m\Hmmu sensoeoe ON 2 AHSQEm .m -o emsaom amfiam HN m pana- .e end-n Hana: wage as a-Em -uonEoE eoESmos noumH\eopmo m Hm xmsmom flmHmm mN z :mem .m wemsme Hz scheme sefimm No a wmsz .N MSHSE esm\omm was m- sa-an . was“ emeesow empmfleae emaauma m-H>a xmmmm we 2 madam .H -> .02 xa-Am Hm NH a as- .m wamswc H3 :smmom om m “0559 .N H>H xH-an cam espo\-H->su mm 2 sws< .H mxwmsom Mafia macmcmx oumflmduhfim ow< xom osmz > .02 xfi-Hm -.e-peou- N asses -73- No x m unamq .n mm m z mamas .e Hm ON 2 :mumcz .m Ham-:uomO Hoe-um weHeemaum HO VN a xm-m .e madam: N2 coe< mm m «Seq .m Hm mm 2 :oeHm .N mamH s-ae xHHHp mew CHHH: eoeowpaoaaa\wemsme\xHHaa use HHH> zm--:--N saHsz “Hem- mm a saw .H HHH> .oz xHHHm me O m Hon; .0 mm OH 2 Epsom .m Hm cm 2 msHOSH .e HommHhHmE Ocmv wcmsw: HH>Q\e3 Hmsaom HmHmm ,Om m mxaom .m wcmsm: H2 :mHsz sesxmnm OO m «damn .N xHHHn :mm H>su mo 2 mespeac .H mxmeom xch chmcHx oumHmnuuHm ow< xom osmz HH> .oz MHHHm .-.e.-eou- N m-sma -74- Hm m z museum .5 HO m a Haemem .e Hm - 2 sums» .m Hm NH 2 cause .4 Hm _ 4H 2 msHsO .m empaoem\xHHmm cam. Nmes memHeom N4 2 :mHosz .N am: a H-H>O\Nz me a uHsemz .H x .02 xHHHm Hm e z xaHoO .o Hm o z Hauem .m Hm w z mesm< .s IIIIII. HO a a eaten .m madam: Hz csmmom on m Hcow .N MHHHE and H-HH>m em 2 Hanan .- mxumsom xcHH chmcHx oumHaspuHm om< xom oEmz xH .oz MHHHm .m.w-u:ouv N OHnt -75- meemeeodO Hoo:Um mcchouum mm OH 2 23mm» .m mecmHucomO Hoocum mcHecouum mm mm 2 Han .e xHHHmlmmw N-HHxsu as 2 moaxmm .m mcmsm: m3 mm m nanchoz .N OoumpoahoucH N2 OO m House .H HHx .oz HHHHm HO O m :munm .n -o VH a . eeH2 .0 HO mH m «an: .m mesdom HmHmmO HOOAUm wszqouum HO OH m an: .e Hm SH 2 Hag .m onQOOM\mcmsw: Hz mcmnnom me m Edusq .N Nxmeo eouaoem\2HH-n cam \H-H>xm> ms 2 memnea2 .H mxmeom Hch chmcHx oumeeuhHm om< xom osmz Hx .oz HHHHm H.e-ueouO N mHamH -76- NO e z Hasw .O me O m moH< .O No O O HonO .O mm OH 2 Hmmesw .5 NO OH 2 :oO< .O mesmmm HmHmmO Hoe-um OeHeeoHHa NO ON 2 esp< .m Na ON m HHsm .e eoadoem HO emcee we a Hem: .m HHHHO ::Q\O:OSO: m: csmmom OO 2 Hmzmxz .N HHHszdu Ocm OO 2 HSODM .H >Hx .oz HHHHO HO OH O Hmsqsm .5 Hem-saomv Hooeum meHeeoHHm HO mH a meHz .o HaemHeHmO H02-Um meHeeoHHm Hm HH 2 HHHO .m .IIIII. HO 5H m HHsesm .4 Ocmsmc m3 OcHnEmH :mHmm mm m .ommHom .m Hm em 2 mmemq .N O:O:OG\HHHHO can mHHxs< condom mm m wuuoz .H mHHmEom HcHH mHamcHx mumHmcuhHm oO< xom oEmz HHHx .oz HHHHO .H.e-H:ouO H mHOmH -77- mesmom HmHmmO Hoozum OcHecouum HQ 5H m mwcsm .m Heawaema HoamH HsOO eouaoem NHHH>xm\Hm HaHmOz OH 2 HHeaH .4 HEOHSHomOmEo: Eoum 5m3m OcHxHoz HQ OH O HH5< .m HO OH 2 same: .N 2HHHO and HH>xO> mm 2 24:42 .H HH>x .oz HHHHO HO Shadow ON 2 cme< .N :msz Hmwcsm ow Oo>os amen :Hzmom um HmHHO em>HH\Oemswe\2HHHO 2:2 HHH>xNo mm m a252 .- H>x .oz HHHHO Hm e 5 «H32 .O HO 5 a schHHo2 .m HQ HH m uoEHu .v HO OH O Henna .m HH>xn 5m m HHucz .N mem=w=\HHHHO use N2 Osaaam mm 2 aHHmH .H mmeEom xcHH chmcHx oumHmcuHHm om< xow oEmz >x .oz HHHHm H.e-peouv N oHan -73- Hm H 2 comHmz .O HO 4 a Humane .m Hm HH 2 Hana .4 coHumEmOHwEm 5HOH0QEou ON» HO O memcmh .m 2HHHO emm HHHH>xNH mm a Hos< .N HHHHH: HouchHE OoonmEo:3\w:msw: mm OcmeszO smamn 4m 2 :mOHm .H xHx .oz HHHHm HO O z Hm: .O HO O 2 :mHmm .5 HO OH O Neaza2 .O HHasamm HmHmmO H0026m NeHeeoppm HO OH O He< .m Hamxsuomg 060: anw Haze OcHHHoz HQ HO O «HA .v HEOHDHOOO mac: Eoum 5m3m OcHxHoz Ho NO m mmsm .m Ommmwm. H2 HmHmNz 5H m Heston .N HHHHO and NON xmeo N4 2 Hoeemm .H OHHmEoO xcHH mHsmcHx oumHmnuHHm om< xom oEmz HHH>x .oz MHHHm .H.e-Heou- N «Heme -79- .eoHHHpeoeH mH HHHHO cam 425 5:4 eoHHu 5H2m -HoOEoE HHHHO ou peoEHHDHuoH Ho mOosuoe use :oHumHompoqu Ocm :oHumEmOHmEm .coHumowm .wcmswz .chzou n so ”gnaw u :< mmHucs umoHO u :OHU ”Honuos u z “Monumw u m ”HoumHm-HHmc u Om ”Hocuoamoum u EEO M>H HHHHO mo one Henson cowhom Ho Hopcwsww u H>Hn “HOHHOHO u m ”HoumHm HoOHo u No “HoumHm Homcso5 u N» ”HoumHm u N ”Houamsmd u a ”com u m ”wamnmsc u I momHz u 3 "Oon5mmOm< .omsocwcoH chu :H :oHuHmoa chu :H HHHHO mHnu :H :oHumuoH m-com -Hom chu How mpcsooum Heap HcHH chmcHx o>HmHuoO may mH HnHH QHamcHx one .mucowouopcm muH One :mHsz Hmmcam swap Hocpo 20:3 5Hno OppHumRSNmoomHmcupHm ”on5Q mm m :mHsm .N Osm3O:\HHHHp can N: Manama :mHmm OO 2 :onm .H mHHmEom HcHH chmcHH oumnguHHm wO< xom oEmz xx .02 HHHHm H.e-HeouO N oHONH -80.. Table 3. Composition of Biliks. No. persons in 2'11} 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 No. Biliks 1 l l 2 6 5 2 O 2 private chambers or a satellite bilik may be built on behind the natal bilik position on the longhouse. When a new long- house is built a complete lawang apartment,almost certainly adjoining the natal bilik,willbe built to accomodate the newly founded bilik. In a like manner, further conjugal pairs with their children will partition off from the natal bilik leaving the youngest of the sibling set to rear its family within the bilik thereby taking primary responsbility for the needs of the ageing parents. Thus, the bilik unit can be said to persist through time as a corporate unit. An aside is appropriate here to elaborate on the concept of "corporation," because, as anyone familiar with the litera- ture on the Iban will readily recall, J.D. Freeman made much of this concept in his analysis of the social structure of the Iban of the Baleh River region in Sarawak. The literature on incorporation is extensive and continues to be of significant theoretical concern (Fortes 1969: 276-310; Appell 1976: 6-7, 70-75; Brown 1976). Fortunately for this study, it is not necessary to get involved in the intricacies of the arguments because the bilik family and village corporations of the Mualang fit even the more demanding definitions. They are both social -81- units, clearly defined by rules of membership that confer on their members' rights and duties with respect to property held in aggregate, and that persist through time irrespective of the individual persons constituting that membership. In Mualang society the estate takes the form of accumu- lated durable and heirloom property. Ideally the property division will take place soon after the last child is married 50 that the post-marital residence arrangements of all the children can be known with some certainty. This typically coincides with the senior generation beginning to assume a lesser role in the economic affairs of the bilik, especially in the making of rice fields. The first rule of inheritance among the Mualang is that children inherit from their parents. This rule is somewhat out of harmony with the principle of the bilik family as a corporation because the parents of the bilik may not share exactly the same children. Step-children are in principle entitled to one-half the share of a child in the division of bilik property. Bilik property is property accumulated through the work of the members of the bilik producing and consuming corporately. For discussions of inheritance, bilik property is distinct from inherited property. Inherited property de- volves upon the individual and is inherited in turn by that individual's children. It is not held in common by the members of the corporate bilik. In a like manner, a fine paid to an individual in compensation for a delict against him personally -32- remains his personal property and will be inherited by his children. With respect to bilik property, rights to it can be qualified by the amount of contribution the person made to its accumulation. Thus, a divorce settlement involves the departing spouse taking with him or her the fair contribution to the bilik's property made while a member of that bilik. Further exemplifying this proposition, the child or children who lived the longest in the natal bilik_and made the greatest contribution to the accumulation of its property receive recognition of this fact at the time of property division by being awarded slightly larger shares. In addition to birth and marriage, adoption and incorpora- tion are means of recruitment to the bilik family (cf. Jensen 1974: 34-35). Adoption is the common solution to the problem of maintaining bilik continuity for childless couples. An examination of Table 2 shows that five villagers (I-l, I-2, III-5, X-2 and XIV-3) owe their membership in the bilik to adoption and four others have been adopted at some time (VI-3, XI-l, XI-Z and XVII-4). As among the Iban (Freeman 1970: 20), children of siblings are the preferred adoptees. Should no such child be available, then the child of a first cousin (manal) will be chosen, etc. out over the kinship net. Of the nine cases of adoption, six are adoptions of siblings' child- ren, one is of a grandchild of a first cousin, one of a child of a second cousin, and one involves families beyond the third cousin range. Recently, parents whose children have been AH ii :I -83- educated and work away from the village have responded by adopting children who will stay on in the bilik to look after them in their old age. In the village of Sungai Mulau, both biliks No. I and XVII are avidly searching for adoptees into their biliks because all their able-bodied children have sought education. AdOption confers full rights of inheritance on the ad0pted child and that child may or may not lose rights to inherit from his parents depending upon the particular adoption arrangements. Incorporation applies to the process whereby peOple are admitted into the bilik because they are dependent and in need of bilik affiliation (Jensen 1974: 35). There are five cases of membership by incorporation cited in Table 2. As can be read from this table, all involve quite close kinship ties. Amalgamation (Freeman 1970: 55-59), the process whereby two biliks fuse members and estates to form a single bilik, is a possibility, if somewhat rare in occurrence. The case of amalgamation cited in Table 2 is actually questionable. Bilik_ XIX presently contains an unemployed minister, his wife and children in what is hoped to be only a temporary situation. They have as yet no property in common. This bilik illustrates the point that neolocal residence among those educated and working away from their village does not deprive a couple of pilik_membership. They hold membership in either the husband's or wife's natal bilik so that, if in the future it is necessary to take up life in the village, the exact arrangements are ~84- already specified. All these modes of recruitment have as an important consideration the maintenance of an economically viable, purduring bilik family corporation (cf._ Yanagisako 1979: 167-168). With regard to inheritance of the bilik estate, these forms of recruitment establish parcenary rights, but these rights are qualified by the contribution made to the accumulation of the property. As among the Iban (Freeman 1970: 52), the division of the bilik property takes place informally among family members and only under circumstances of disagree- ment about how the property should be divided would the adat chief and the village elders be involved. Unlike the Iban case, however, the senior generation divides the property among the members of the junior generation with considerable discretion. It is conventional to designate a larger share called the remindu as the parent's share to go to the child staying on in the bilik. The remainder of the property is divided more of less evenly among the other children qualified by the pr0position that the claim to the pilik property is relative to the contribution one has made toward its acquisi- tion. Although in principle siblings are jurally equivalent, the Mualang agree that the youngest child is commonly the favorite of the parents and, especially if this child is a son, this special affection matures into the intergenerational tie that assures the continuity of the bilik family. Parents express a preference for a son over a daughter remaining in the bilik, citing the greater ease in the transition of -85- authority in the bilik as the reason for this. Usually a son is more patient with parents that delay relinquishing the pre- rogatives of authority than a son-in-law. The term "pun bilik" is used for the head of the family, the person in the bilik presumed to have the strongest voice in the decisions of managing the everyday affairs of the bilik. I use the term "presumed" because, in keeping with the general tone of informality of Mualang society, authority is quite informal and diffuse despite the existence of a title for family head. The ppn bilik is also the bilik spokesperson in regard to extra-bilik_considerations; therefore, the bilik is known by his or her name. The person assuming this title is a member of the senior generation making a substantial work contribution to the well-being of the bilik. Although the "informal power of women" (Yanagisako 1979: 190) in Mualang society is signifi- cant, the pun bilik is most likely to be a male if one is avail- able to occupy the position. In the absence of a male, a female will serve as pun bilik, although a male of the younger genera- tion, if sufficiently mature, may function in the SpokeSperson capacity to fill the gap at the public level. Table 2 recorded six female pun biliks, all heading bilik families lacking a male in the authoritative generation. While rights in the bilik estate are a formal, jural matter, authority within the bilik is not fomalized and its transfer to the succeeding generation can be accompanied by some low-level domestic strife as the in-marrying spouse chafes under the ‘ ERROI --_- \NAV I If! ‘N u u .5 hra'n-C ‘— L“ o J ~86- authority of the parents-in-law toward whom respect and defer- ence are apprOpriate. Typically, authority resides with the senior generation so long as it takes a significant part in the making or rice fields. In summary, emphasis must be given for the analysis at hand to the material provisioning character of the bilik family. To keep these matters in perspective, the familial organization of reproduction in this society is put to the task of production. Within the confines of the bilik family, the dependent members of society are provided sustenance. The primary social relations are also established in this domestic entity and, by extension beyond the family, become the source of one's reckoning in social life more widely. Kinship and Marriage The bilik family is founded upon both kinship and marri- age ties. Conjugal, filial, and sibling bonds are the kinship ties upon which all modes of kinship order are organized. The domestic family relations, being at once both the social con- text of material interdependence and the primary social rela- tions upon which that interdependence is justified, become the source of those "irreducible moral relations" associated with kinship Meyer Fortes has termed "amity" (Fortes 1969: 76). "Kinsfolk are expected to be loving, just, and generous to one another and not to demand strictly equivalent terms of one another" (Ibid.: 237). This "ethic of generosity" (Hiatt, -87- cited in Fortes 1969: 110) is prescribed in the "familial domain" of the social order. Put this way, exchange, "the total social fact," (Mauss 1967) resides intrinsically within the kinship bond. Exchange within the family unit is so ob- viously of the "generalized" mode, based on the irrefutable dependency of the young, the aged, and the infirm, that it is seldom remarked upon. But attendent to this natural generalized exchange is the confirmation of the values of social solidarity on which the mutuality of relations is based. Material exchange is put to the work of symbolic discourse. The potential of material exchange for concretizing transactions in the symbolic sphere suits it admirably for extension beyond the familial domain for discourse about social order in the juropolitical domain. Thus, exchange between familial units is a political phenomenon from which a particular system of social order pre- cipitates. By this reasoning social order is the outcome of all the kinds of transactions (material transactions being just one) in that society about valued relations. I belabor this point because the analysis of the "economic" that is to follow often does not make economic sense. Its sense lies largely elsewhere; as Baudrillard has said: "the specificity of the anthropological object is precisely the impossibility of defin- ing the economic and the mode of production as a separated instance. The very least requirement would be to reexamine the whole matter starting from this nonseparation" (1975: 74). The "domestic mode of production" in the work of Marshall -88- Sahlins is precisely the attempt to model those societies in which no special relations of production have "separated" out. Instead, the familial order takes on the material provisioning tasks: Its own inner relations, as between husband and wife, parent and child, are the princi- pal relations of production in society. The built-in etiquette of kinship statues, the dominance and subordination of domestic life, the reciprocity and cooperation, here make the 'economic' a modality of the intimate (Sahlins 1972: 77). Kinship reckoning in Mualang society is cognatic, i.e., kinship ties are traced through both the mother's and the father's kin. Although it is true that cognatic kinship does not generate discrete social groups and in this sense plays a small role in "social structure" (Appell 1976: 3), it is an important aspect of "social organization," constituting the primary souce of relatedness in Mualang society. Close kin ties involve frequent reciprocal visiting and special quali- fications in exchange transactions in addition to the moral responsibility to be of assistance in the time of need. Close kin attempt to live together. An analysis of the kinship rela- tions prevalent in a longhouse community will invariably yield the pattern of close kin building their lawang apartments adja- cent to one another. The plan of residence in a Mualang long- house is a kinship plan. Figure 5 is the master geneology of the longhouse community of Sungai Mulau showing only those kinship ties necessary to relate all the biliks. The numbers refer to the bilik numbers as found in Table 2 and demonstrate -89- HHH> xx HH> HORN .424 fiHsm AWE-ea. Twcom_mgemn Ocsucmu 5%.... .smHsz Hmwcsm mo sonoocou prmmz .m oHDOHm H: 2 >2 HE 28.3 8352 HHS: M xe- HHHB- H5- H3- :N-e- sma- Ho--< Hoe-am 85.2 es.- manucmu Suwfi . SI. . ”Hm-WH- & .R. OcmcsHH _ :HeHa I IJI -90- r ". Hf..ll..o.|rM4! IL HHx OHHHx >Hx moHHom mmcwq Hum: HHHx Has-NEH : OUHoz .IWHHO H88- Oemnzm HOHH 5......4 IN HmzmHoO & HOE-5% a .H.e-HaouO m oHsmHH >H gfiiwm > HHH-H SHOE-m2 HHH :44 414 gm." 1%. 5qu -91- clearly that close kin build their apartments next to each other. Table 4 tabulates the various kinds of kinship links between bilik families and Table 5 expresses the interrelated- ness of the bilik families in a graphic way. The level of Table 4. Kinds of Kinship Links Between Bilik Families. Further Name of fly) Sibling lst Cousin 2nd Cousin Cognatic m Range Range Range Range 1 . Ragu l 3 9 5 2 . Yok 4 9 5 0 3 . Yusak 3 8 2 5 4 . Payung 0 l 1 16 5 . Akim l 2 5 10 6 . Saing l 0 0 0 7 - Gantung 6 2 6 5 8 . Biden 2 3 2 11 9 . Jangi 2 3 2 11 0 . Nyelan 3 3 6 6 1 - Mambang 3 3 4 8 2 . Sekios 1 2 7 8 3 - Norcé l 4 8 5 4 - Nyawar 0 l 12 5 5 . Talip 1 1 0 16 6 . Luya 2 o 3 13 7 - Banan 2 0 3 l3 8 . Sandoi 2 o 3 13 9 - Amoi 2 o 3 13 0 . Haron 2 3 2 11 TOTALS 39 48 83 174 GRAND TOTAL 344 The closest possible kinship tie between the two biliks was C Osen requiring a frequence shift in propositus (i.e., the nu bilik is not necessarily the propositus). \ -92- Table 5. Inter-relatedness of Bilik Families of Sungai Mulau. l 2 x 2 .3 x x 3 ‘4 x x x 4 ‘5 x: x x x 5 (5 6 77 x: x x x x x 7 8 x: x x x x x 8 S) x x x x x x x 9 l() x x x x x x x x 10 151 x x x x x x x x x 11 212 x x x x x x x x x x 12 113 x x x x x x x x x x x 13 314 x x x x x x x x x x x x 14 115 x x x x x x x x x x x x x 15 116 x x x x x x x x x x x x x x 16 157 x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x 17 1£3 x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x 18 15) x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x 19 2() x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x 20 x = kinship tie between biliks. -93- kinship interrelatedness is intense. Of a possible 190 (= zoglg) relationships between the 20 bilik families, the Vinlage has 172 for a quotient of 90.5 percent. It is instruc- tirve to compare this to the village of pioneering Iban des- <:Itibed by Freeman (1970: 97) who have a 61 percent quotient cxf interrelatedness. The Mualang of the Belitang River valley are less "mobile" than the Baleh River Iban in the sense of o1pp>ortunistically moving the residence of the bilik family iEr<3nlone longhouse to another, a process which would thin Ollt: the kinship web. To extend the comparison of this data \Ni.t11 Freeman's data on the Iban, consult Table 6 wherein it 3n and the amity of social relations, the issue of foreign SI;": ‘Ilse incorporation is by contrast a social stress point; the oth er significant social stress point having been cited above as ‘the danger of kinship factionalism threatening the possibil- i 1:), of village consensus. CHAPTER IV PRODUCT I ON ORGANI ZATION Introduction The production organization of this hinterland Mualang community is best characterized by the terms primitive and domestic. It is primitive in the sense of being based on a S imple technology, production by autonomous domestic units for their own use, division of labor based on sex and age, minimal Sp ecialization of production, and access to the means of pro- duction guaranteed by membership in the community. The forest t e rritory of the village constitutes the natural resource en dowment of the slash-and-burn agriculture which dominates the forms of production. The sense of domestic follows from th e condition whereby "domestic groups...are constituted, equip- p e d, and empowered to determine and fashion the societal out- 1311 t" (Sahlins 1968: 75). Foremost in production organization is the production of h i 11 rice with the associated vegetable catch creps. It has 0 ften been said about hinterland Southeast Asian peoples that 1:0 eat is synonymous with eating rice. In the Mualang lang- uage "umpan" translates both as cooked rice and as food more geherally. No amount of any other kind of food can compensate $01‘ the lack of rice at a meal. Beyond the cultivation of -100- -101- rice and swidden catch cr0ps, production takes the forms of cultivating fruit trees, husbanding pigs and chickens, collect- ing vegetables and fruit from the forest, hunting, trapping, fishing, handicraft work, the cultivation of rubber trees and pepper vines, and the sawing of boards. It will be recalled from the previous chapter that the bilik family is the social unit that organizes production and consumption. This chapter will describe the various forms of Production and how the M family organizes them to provi- S ion itself and, less directly, the social order. The Technological and Social Relations of Production The village holds residual rights to the natural resources of its territory. A rough estimate based on elapsed time at an even walking speed, is that the village occupies about 13 Square miles of area. This is quite favorable compared with the 4.70 square miles average for the 100 villages of this Ke Q amatan (Sanggau Dalam Angka 1977). The bilik family, as a melilber of the longhouse community, is entitled to use the land f9 1‘ the growing of hill rice, cultivating rubber trees and 1) erer vines, collecting raw materials for handicraft products, Q9 llecting wild vegetable foods, fishing, and hunting. The 13% lling of large trees in primary forest is very considerable erk, and a man is compensated for such work by having rights ‘ltD cultivate that land for four consecutive times before fe110w longhouse members can use it. Given an average ~102- fallowing period of seven years, this extended tenure would consume, at a minimum, 32 years and, most likely, somewhat longer. These extended use rights are shared by the spouse and children and will pass on to their descendents until con- sumed. No primary forest remains in Sungai Mulau as it is an "old" village for this area. Several families, however, have rights to land they or their fathers felled as primary forest. Planting rubber or pepper on land just used to cultivate rice establishes private ownership to the plot as does hoeing up clay bunds in swampy areas to retain water and extend the area suitable for swamp rice (padi paya). Such land can be S 0 1d or traded to anyone although registry and title are not available and such transactions are rare. Private ownership 13nt‘ovisions for land are quite recent as the widespread plant- ing of rubber did not begin here until after World War II, and the preparation of swamp pail; land is an even more recent s Q onomic development idea of the Indonesian government. In fact, however, private ownership is not inconsistent with Mu alang traditional practices which coincided with the apt Expression of the philosopher John Locke before 1690: "The 1‘ abor that was mine removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my property in them" (cited in Leaf 1979: 26). In the discussion of the forms of production this prin- Qiple will be shown to be widespread in Mualang economic life. From the ownership of trees planted, or found and "cultivated," -103- ‘to the claiming of ironwood or other useful and enduring trees felled in the making of rice fields, private ownership has been traditionally established and such property rights are ijiherited like durable prOperty from parents to children. Usually such rights are shared by all descendents (kunsi) as they are difficult to divide.5 The tools of production are quite simple. Most tools are made by the villager as needed from raw materials readily avail- Baskets, mats, cages, traps, spears, and The bush able in the forest. nets are basic tools of production in this society. kni fe, axe, wood-splitting hatchet, and various small knives S uch as the special weeding knife are made from metal blanks 0b t ained from the trader and can be smithed by almost any man in the village forge. Manufacturing the knife used for tapping the rubber tree requires exceptional skill and so it is pur- Ch ased from one of the few men scattered over the country-side wh Q can make them. Also, only a few men are skilled in making the muzzle-loading rifle from the metal parts purchased on SD Qcial order by the trader travelling to Pontianak. In no Q . . as e, does tool maklng become such a spec1alty as to release a man from the necessity of making rice fields and tapping \TThe "commoditization" of land is likely to become a h W en :1 gnificant problem for the Mualang in the near future. t. 6 more desirable land has been claimed by hoeing up bunds ]? increase swamp padi production and cashcrop gardens of ~ ubber and pepper are planted more extensively, level of mater- la-l well-being will be heritable, fundamentally changing the Q"laracter of Mualang economic life (cf. Whittier, in press). -lO4- rubber like everyone else. The speciality is merely a small source of cash. The rice threshing device (mpangung) and such food-processing tools as rice mortar and pestle, rice husker (l<_i_sa_r), and coconut grater are made by several peOple in the village and traded to those not wishing to make them. The aluminum pans used for coagulating rubber, hammers, saws, and nails are available at the trade store in Balai Sepauk. In the property inventory in the appendix are listed a Wide array of tools which, in fact, are used only outside Ordinary production activities. These tools were obtained "free" from the government as an acceptable way to spend the Vi llage allotment for economic development (uang subsidi) and We re used in such projects as building bridges, erecting a bu ilding to house the Rag-processing machine, and preparing S"\réimp ‘maLdi areas for more intensive Bag cultivation. One rubber mangle for pressing the rubber sheet is village I)~‘t"eperty. Two other rubber mangles in the village are owned pr ivately and can be used for a small fee (which no one will pay). Nearly all tools are privately owned by the independent- 13’:':‘Qducing bilik families. The bilik family, the predominant unit of production, QQInbines its own tools and labor with its share of the commun- i ty's resources in accordance with traditional knowledge and S1(21115 in an effort to materially provision itself. In a technologically simple "domestic mode of production" (Sahlins 1972) such as this, labor is the factor of production by which -105- production units differ most importantly from one another. As the domestic mode of production scheme utilized below specifies, a household production unit is well or poorly constituted to provision itself depending upon the composition of its members in terms of sex and age. This matter will be taken up in detail in Chapter VI so it is necessary only to sketch out the broadest outlines of the labor situation at this point. Of the 1 26 members of the village, 17 are away from the village for reasons of education, training or work and, thus, cannot labor fOr their respective bi_l_i_k families. Further, three adults are di sabled, four are too old to make a significant contribution to the physically demanding forms of work, and 35 children are too young to work, leaving 67 laboring persons. Young girls b e gin to help with the domestic chores of rice processing and caring for younger children at about age 10 while boys do no t, as a rule, begin to make a measurable work contribution L111 til after 15 years except in households where the absence 0 :3 girls results in the boys getting pressed reluctantly into 1 Q Qking after the younger children while the mother works in the rice fields. Slowing up on the farm work contribution is no ticeable for both males and females by about age 60 and typically by age 70 they have ceased active farm work alto- ge=‘ther. It is fair to say that both youth and old age are J‘eisured stages of the life cycle in Mualang society. Young met) before marriage have little responsibility and considerable time to themselves which they use much to their personal -106- advantage. During slack periods in the agricultural cycle, they may travel to Sarawak to trade for Malaysian goods and/or work for a wage in a Chinese-owned rubber or pepper garden. Mualang peOple enjoy a high reputation there for being "good workers." These journeys provide both adventure and a source of money for attractive clothes which are highly valued by young peOple and, of course, they bring home gifts (oléh-oléh) for their bilik families and close kin. Girls, in the years before marriage, do not have this opportunity for travel and SO generally make a greater contribution to the family labor fOIce. Education has been changing this labor contribution pattern as young people are now increasingly attending schools at great distances from the village. Of the 17 children away :81; cm home, ten are females and seven are males. On the basis of a labor unit coefficient of 1.0 being the labor contribution of an adult male between the ages of 2 O and 60 years or an adult female between the ages of 16 and 6 0 years, and the other age and sex categories of labor quali- fi ed as specified in Table 21 in Chapter VI, the _b_i1_ik family 1 abor teams are constituted as displayed in Table 10. It can be seen that 15 bilik families (75%) have three of fewer adult 1 aI—bor units . T able 10. Composition of Bilik Family Labor Teams. \ Range :rk is predominantly out-of—doors. Men butcher animals and (:<:><><>< ><><><>< ><>< ><><>< ><>< Ilégizan kut (carrying in the pa di) X atrufi (storing the padi) X X IliaLIma ubi (planting cassava) X EEngggal teradak (preparing the swamp padi seed bed) § § Ilfatlmak padi (planting swamp padi seedlings) SUBSIDIARY TASKS ASSOCIATED WITH PADI CULTIVATION II. P_§__1Ep_' (blacksmithing) X ul ua'(making bark cloth) X Egayam tungking (weaving padi sowing baskets) X I&ayam takin (weaving small baskets) ngayam lanyit (making adi carrying baskets) ._g;§yam ujut (making large askets for carrying padi on the stalk) 11g ayam tikai (weaving the light tikai mat) Eiggyam bidal (weaving the heavy bidai mat) Trtelas (fashioning and attaching the basket rims) -109- Table 11 (cont'd.). Labor to be Preformed III. nyumai dia'bilik (cooking in the bilik) nyumai diaruma (cooking in the field) mersi bilik (cleaning the bilik) nyumoI4padi'(sunning padi) ngisargpadi (hulling adi) nampifpadi (winnowing a i) nutuk’padi (pounding pad1$ bepampo'(washing clothes) ggiga rempah (food collecting) eburu (hunting) nga111 (fishing with a line) mansa1 (scooping fish in a basket) nnala peti'(making pig traps) nullahfibfibu (making fish traps) nEEiang’karet (cultivating rubber) motong—karet (tapping rubber) namak sang (planting pepper) matik buah sang (picking pepper) nzangkul (hoeing) fllnga jelu (butchering game) m_ul ah rumah(house building) netakfikayu api (chOpping firewood) n ame’leT (gathering ubi for the pigs) n 112111 m1ak (watching the children) £B£L§i§12__EZE (sawing boards) Performed by Males OTHER PRODUCTION ACTIVITIES ><><><><><><><><><><><><>< ><>< Females ><>< ><><><><><><>< X XX ~110- women work with cane and grass materials. A single basket such as the tungking is the cooperative product of cane collect- ed, stripped,zuu1woven by a woman and a wooden rim fashioned and attached with rattan by a man. On balance, it seems to be an equitable division. The Mualang enjoy talking about a neighboring tribe called the Jangkang in which the men hunt and fish and the women do all Their tone is distinctly indignant when they the rest. describe how the Jangkang women have to gather and chop their own firewood and during pregnancy have to lay away a sufficient store of firewood to last them through the months they will be incapacitated by the constant attention required by the Among the Mualang there appears to be little basis infant. i11 ‘the division of labor for the exploitation of one sex to tile: advantage of the other. As a matter of fact, the autonomy of’ t>oth sexes permits domestic units containing only a single adtzlut to flourish within the context of community reciprocity. Th6? \rillage serving as a "labor exchange" makes the antonomy p053 ible. 'The practice of exchange labor (bedurok) serves several 1““)C’IT‘tant functions in this form of production. Members of difisfiitrent households work together in labor teams accomplishing a p213?‘ticular work activity in fewer days than when working in- A day of labor from one household is exchanged dePerldently. £0? :1 day of labor from another household in the manner of Working in labor teams permits sequen- balanced reciprocity. 1131 planting dates for the rice fields of the village; -lll- consequently, different fields reach the various phases of maturation at different times so that peak phases can be attended to in a timely and expeditious way by cooperative labor teams. Sequential planting dates have the further ad- vantage of spreading the risk of losses due to bad weather over the entire village. Furthermore, the Mualang share the widely held notion that to work in a group lightens the work. Breaks for tea in the morning and afternoon and the longer midday meal break that typically accompany laboring in work parties probably shorten the workday a bit as well. For this reason, some prefer to work individually (ngemumu') whenever ,possible. Finally, to expand on the point alluded to above, exx:hanging labor allows households lacking the full compliment of’ sex and age roles characteristic of domestic production to make up for this deficit. It is important to emphasize that the division of labor in .Bitralang society is not strict. Still, there are tasks that the’ <311e sex is considered unable or insufficiently skilled to do- JR woman is considered physically unable to fell trees altk1C>1Jgh, if there is no male in the household she will per- fbrT“ ‘tzhe less arduous male task of slashing the undergrowth. The feelling of trees or other such male work as housebuilding is ‘1C1czomplished for a maleless household by trading labor that is Qiiairacteristically female such as weeding and harvesting. For eDcample, at the end of the 1978 agricultural season, Bu “OTC-é of bilik XIII harvested for several days in the fields -112- of Pak Sekios and Pak Sandoi in order to accumulate a debt in labor exchange to be paid off at the beginning of the next season when she would be in need of male labor to fell trees for her new plots. Generally, a day's labor is interchangeable with another day's labor irrespective of whether it is perform- ed by a male, female, young, or old laborer. If the exchange is intended to involve different tasks entirely, however, it is proper to specify this intention because certain kinds of work are considered relatively harder or more onerous than others. Inter-bilik cooperation to resolve division of labor difficul- ties such as Bu Norcé's are common, and, of course, are most Llikely to involve the closest kin ties. In the past it was Ahlalang custom for each bilik to work, without compensation, one day during the felling and slashing period on the land of each M lacking a male. This custom is thought to have come tc> zan end at about the same time that the Indonesian government salary to the kepala kampung and temunggugg replaced the prac- 'tiCZfi? of the villagers compensating their officers by laboring on_ 1:}1eir rice farms. It was pointed out earlier that youth and old age are leiStared phases of the Mualang life cycle. Still, both the yourIggandthe old are not without their contributions to the Eilfiigks family labor force. Young children around the age of eight are able to begin playing with and looking after the even Youulgfir children of the family. Likewise, the oldest members 0f ‘the family can enjoy the more leisurely pace of bilik life -113- by assuming the care of the young children, thus freeing the mother to participate more actively in the work in the rice fields or the rubber grove. All children learn quite early to wash their own clothes when they bathe and are eager to gather fruit.’ Little girls begin to carry water back from the river when they bathe in the evening and may be given the oc- casional chore of scrubbing the rice pan and wok at the bathing place with sand to remove the weeks of wood-fire-black buildup. By the age of twelve, the children are beginning to tag along with the parents to any work activity that appeals to them. Boys are attracted to fishing, hunting,zuuislashing and burn- :Lng the rice fields,while girls join the field work party at heirvest time in early imitation of the adult division of labor. Bcnys gradually assume the task of collecting and chOpping the fEiIrewood for the bilik and both boys and girls take over the feeding of the chickens and pigs around the longhouse if no eltieerdy'members are available for the task. Children glean 13163 Irice fields after harvest and are permitted to sell the Small amount of rice they get for their own wants. Occasion- a1JL); a fifth or sixth grade boy will make a small dry rice p1c>1; for "school expenses." These plots are invariably low- yielcling due to neglect of weeding. Older people retire gradually from strenuous field work. The ()lder women retire to food-processing, cooking, tending the’ Ipigs and chickens, and the many household chores. Older me“begin choosing among the labors that appeal to them and -114- going to the fields later in the day and coming home earlier. Perhaps the major contribution the aged members of the bilik make, beyond caring for the grandchildren, is their extensive handicraftoutput. A household without retired or retiring elders typically has only the bare minimum of mats, baskets, etc. It should be clear that a three generational stem family provides the personnel for carrying out the work organization specified by the division of labor in Mualang society. Production Activities Through the Agricultural Cycle The organization of production so that it can be carried Otrt by autonomous domestic units is the overriding feature of Iarwoduction in this study. The community-level dimensions of Iarwoduction organization, for the most part, facilitate this nnestic unit organization of production. The bilik family members, working variously as specified by the division of léil>c>r5 carry out the culturally instituted work organization t}1€l1: materially provisions itself and society. Among these Production activities rice cultivation predominates and pro- Vid<3rs the periodicity of the agricultural cycle. Logically t11€>11., the description of production activities begins with riCe cultivation. Figure 6 depicts the defining features of the agricultural It CYClle, ten months of which are devoted to rice production. is liseful to look at the various production activities as they {all into the seasons of the agricultural cycle. ~115- .oauxu ampsuaauwnw< one .o ouswau 4-- - :3..- n e wcagmam NM. w moody Hiram wcapmfipasu mm .m. mummh 3:8: 35.333 :52: Du. any 303 93.338 w mixes u u 1 88 m. .m owcammmu goon—sue ommHOpm 3 s 8 a .5. rm 5 w o unframe- s e M 1 e 1 e t. A m u e o d 8 d B . .m w n. a mew boars: 1 o e M. . m... 0&1 :35?» o m. P fl I. 0 am caused T. o m. cwfizmw wwfifiafim TL zomorest, or as extensive a task as piling up the unburned wood at: various places over the field for reburning when the burn vvaAS a poor one. Needless to say, a poor burn can be a deep Clissappointment for a dry rice cultivator as this reburning process is a most labor-consuming task. Burning is followed shortly by planting (nugal) which is Performed cooperatively by labor parties made up of at least 011$? Inember of each bilik. The expression "party" is used advisely because, this work being on a village-wide scale is cons idered light and the mood is elevated, due to some extent to tifle breaks for sugar-tea and the expectation of something Spec-:‘Lal to eat for the mid-day meal. The person on whose land thSB :rice is being planted will kill a pig and/or chickens to feeK1 the party if he is in a position to do so. A special rule £017 labor reciprocation with a "communal" flavor to it applies t0 this dry field planting phase of the agricultural cycle. -118- A bilik need return no more persondays of labor than it has working members of its labor force. Thus, a bilik sending three laborers to join the work party on the land of a bilik with only two adults in its labor force would only be paid back two persondays of labor on the planting of its dry rice fields. The planting process involves a sexual division of labor. The men form a line of dibblers and are followed by a line of A count of vvomen who drop rice seed into the dibble holes. tlie seeding rate revealed 12 grains per hole average with 11 Iroles per meter square. The dibbling instrument (tugal) con- s:ists of an ironwood point wedged into the tip of a pole :Ezashioned at the particular field site from any available lcight-weight material. The pole is then disposed of at the The two lines of workers proceed around end of the work day. ‘CIIGB field counterclockwise from a central point in the rice fiiteld in a circle of ever increasing circumference. The per- son on the left of the dibbling line, a position referred to 8‘5 "bekau", leads the work party. This central point is a small plot planted at the break (”E (lawn that same morning by the bilik family cultivating the :Lallci. To a post (temungan), in a suitable contralized location, t11e= large baskets of seed are tied, and after a prayer implor- 1118; success with this field in the coming agricultural year, Scnne of the family's favorite' rice (padi pun) is planted, The baskets beginning from the post, in a spiraling fashion. Containing the several varieties of seed, including the seed —119- of the catch crops which are mixed in with the rice seed for randomized sowing, are tied up here as they arrive on the backs of close kin who are next to arrive. During planting, the rice seed is distributed to the sowing party from this central point as the various microniches are encountered and the apprOpriate varieties of seed called for. After the mid-morning tea break, a few of the men retire from the dibbling line to a shaded location at the edge of the rice field to begin preparing the mid-day meal. Should domes- tic pig be on the menu, it will already have been dispatched. Although special meat division rules apply to the killing of animals to feed a work party, giving a more generous share to the host family, the shares are distributed in the conventional way to each bilik after cooking, and whatever is not eaten is carried back to the longhouse to be enjoyed in the bilik by those family members not participating in the work party. Approximately five weeks are consumed in this communal planting of the dry rice fields. As already mentioned several catch crops are planted ran- domly in the dry field. Perhaps exceeding even corn in impor- tance is the cucumber (ketimun). The Mualang are fond of eating the leaf of the cucumber plant and when in season it is the favorite green to be served with rice. Also planted in the ladang are onions (kuggi), long beans (rgtgk), spinach (kangkung), pumpkin (labu), mustard (sawi), gourd (kusut ular), and sweet potato (ubi jalar). -120- The weeding of the ladangs planted earliest begins in September along with the non-communal planting of the swamp rice. The months of October, November, and December are domi- nated by the once-over weeding of the dry fields and perhaps some weeding of the swamp pgdi_fields in areas where the water has not choked out the weeds. Weeding is frequently cited as the "limiting" phase of the dry rice agricultural cycle, and so special attention has been given to the division of labor with respect to weeding. Typi- cally, in hinterland Bornean societies, the task of weeding falls to the adult females, the males regarding it as "unmanly" work (e.g., Freeman 1970: 229-230). As Clark and Haswell have expressed the problem: Lack of adequate female labor in the weeding season limits the amount of food which can be grown...anything which can persuade them that weeding is not necessarily degrading work for a man, and that men should help women at this task, will do much good. (1966: 42). Among the Mualang, men have increasingly over the years come to spend more time helping the women with weeding. They say that because the primary forest is gone and the size of trees felled has diminished, the problem of weeds has increased, and Women alone can no longer be expected to do a sufficient job of weeding. Men, however, have several competing tasks at the time of weeding. They take responsibility for planting cas- Savaznuisugar caneixllast year's upland plots, for fencing of the fields against depredation of wild animals, and for the -121- setting of numerous kinds of ingenious traps for the same pur- pose. This weeding season is also the time in which the rice will run out for a rice-deficit bilik andzimale from the bilik labor force may turn to tapping rubber or sawing boards for cash to buy rice as will be discussed in the following chapter. Table 12 below lists the degree of weeding participation of the able-bodied males in the village work force for the agri- cultural year of 1977-1978 for which there is full data. Many families end weeding by the end of December, but weeding can extend through the second week of January and many families will not complete the weeding of rice fields. For the year under analysis four families actually finished weed— ing; namely biliks V, VII, VIII, and IX. Table 12. Degree of Weeding Participation of Adult Males. Always Frequently Occasionally Rarely Never III4 VI3 XII II 113 V114 VIIIZ XIIIAl XVl V1 XVIZ VIII4 XXl VIS XVIIl IXl XIXZ X2 X113 XIVZ XVIIIl Individuals are identified as specified in Table 2. k -122- In the second week of January, some green rice is harvested for the making of "ppm." The preparation of this desert-like green rice cooked in sugar and shaved coconut and its serving to all the members of the longhouse community in a reciprocal manner as each bilik's fields mature is a minor celebration of the end of the drudgery of the weeding season, also known as the "hunger season" (musim lapar) and the beginning of the high-spirited harvest season. During the month of January, the men turn their attention to the building and repair of the field huts (langkau) to be occupied during the critical phase when the rice is ripening and requires guarding. Unlike the neighboring tribes, the Mualang avoid staying overnight in the field huts whenever possible. Only guarding the padi is considered sufficiently pressing to require someone to spend the night in the field hut. The field hut also serves for the temporary storage of the unthreshed padi. Harvesting begins in the last week of January and is in earnest in February, March,znu1early April. It is accomplished Stalk by stalk with a small blade (kgbat) fashioned from a tin can lid held cupped inside the hand. Even though harvesting is primarily women's work, men will contribute their labor to the harvest as required and labor exchange makes it possible for large work teams to attend to a field at the peak of maturity. Females select the seed to be put aside for the coming year; men disclaim sufficient knowledge of such matters. -123- From late March to mid-April, the rice is carried from the field hut to the longhouse by c00perative male labor parties where, that evening on the longhouse veranda, it is threshed by treading the rice with the bare feet through a bed-like frame of firmly tied rattan strips (mpangung). The rice is winnowed by female winnowing teams amidst much drinking of sugar-tea, and then stored in the household's rice bin (pitak) or rice barn (durung). As the harvest phase winds down, attention begins to shift to tapping rubber and accumulating the necessary commod- ities for the post-harvest celebration (gawai lepas_panen). This gawai season begins in early May and extends through the first half of June. During this approximately six week cele- bration period, the tapping of rubber is the dominant produc- tion activity. Rubber trees are also planted at this time, and rubber gardens may be cleared of undergrowth. Rubber- tapping generally falls to the male; during this period, the females of the bilik work at handicraft manufacture and attend to the condition of the lawang apartment, which may have been somewhat neglected during the very demanding weeding and har- Vest seasons. This is a more leisurely time for preparing the Eilik for the impending gawai and visiting relatives. The ggwai celebration season is lengthy so that each village can reciprocate attendance with all its neighboring villages. The details of the gaw§i_celebrations are discussed in Chapter VII. It should be emphasized that the agricultural cycle is dominated by the growing of dry rice on upland fields; all -124- other production activities accommodate to the periodicity of its requirements. As noted under the discussion of weeding, however, the Sungai Mulau villagers complain of diminishing yields from dry rice as the fallowing period shortens and the area occupied by the "sword grass” (Imperata Spp.) (lalang) expands. They cite seven years as the minimal regeneration time for the better soils in the area to produce an acceptable yield. In compensation, they are increasing their production of swamp rice which provides a higher return per unit of land. Depending upon the specific conditions of individual plots, a swamp padi area will be farmed two or three years in succes- sion and then allowed one to two years of fallow. The favor they continue to show for the cultivation of dry rice hangs on their dependence upon the catch crops that are intercropped in the dry field. Consequently, this blend of dry and swamp rice production is likely to persist in the near future. Spbsidiary Food Production Pigs and chickens are raised on a small scale to provide meat on special occasions and pigs can, more rarely, function as a "bank account" should the need for a large sum of money arise. Pigs are fed the root of cassava (isi: ubi) which is grown in the dry fields. When the pigs are kept around the longhouse, it is thus necessary to carry the cassava root in from the dry field. At the rate of 2 to 3 kilos per day of cassava root for a single adult pig, the burden of carrying food to the pigs can be heavy for a bilik striving to husband -125- a. large herd. For this reason, several families have taken up tlie practice of maintaining a ”substantial" field hut where tlie pigs are kept caged beneath, allowing them to be fed ceassava root from the nearby field. While significantly leassening the burden of carrying the food to the pigs, it dc>es require a daily visit to the field hut, which, in certain peariods of the agricultural cycle is otherwise quite unneces- szrry. The practice of maintaining a substantial field hut for thee husbanding of animals tends, for obvious reasons, to be asssociated with farming plots in adjacent areas for several Yeélrs in succession and so the requirement of flexibility in Selecting land to cultivate is somewhat in contradiction to thtis trend. Another strategy for feeding the pigs is to make a snnall padi field near the village to reduce the carrying 0f the cassava. This small, supplementary field is called an "mlgalai." The chickens are the indigenous fowl common to tropical ‘ASiia, and, like the pigs, are capable of scavenging about tlle longhouse for much of their own food. Under these condi- tions of minimal care adults reach no more than about three ar1d one half pounds live weight and the hens "produce no mOre than about 30 eggs per year" (Masefield 1970: 169). Since so few eggs are produced, most of them are left to form a clutch for setting with the aim of increasing the size of the flock; thus, the Mualang diet contains very few eggs. A small amount of rice is fed to the chickens to lure them into protective cages which are hung under the longhouse for the -126- night. The care of the chickens is a light chore performed by the children or the elderly at dusk when the rice farmers of the family are walking home from the fields, bathing, and preparing the evening meal. The less-demanding pace of the gawai season allows some attention to be given to cultivating fruit trees, pineapples, taro, sago, etc. These foods play a very small role in the economic life of this hinterland village. In fact, the very irregular, incidental, and haphazard attention given to the cultivation of fruit trees was insufficient to be identified in the labor input study conducted. Because in this season there are no vegetables from the field, many of the fruits, such as pineapple and jackfruit are picked in an immature condition and cooked as a green accompaniment to the rice. Also during this offseason, the women turn to the forests and streams for more serious collecting of vegetables such as bamboo shoots (13213), fern fiddle scrolls (Baku), and mush- rooms (kulgt). As the dry season proceeds and the level of the river falls, the fish become trapped in holes and are easily harvested by teams of women using the fish-scooping basket (pemansai). With the post-harvest gawai approaching, the men of the village begin hunting communally one or two days per week to provide extra meat for the celebration as a "work service" activity. All able-bodied men in the village participate, along with the dogs, utilizing the technique of a line of -127- Chasers running the game toward a line of gun-bearers who dis- patch the animals. This is in addition to the casual hunting done by individuals; every male owning a rifle carries it over his shoulder as he travels the jungle paths, accompanied by his hunting dogs, each day to his rice fields. Many a workday in the fieldszhsinterrupted by barking in the distance, giving the signal to the work team to rush into the forest to give chase to the wild animal being pursued by the hunting dogs. Handicraft Manufacture Handicraft manufacture was noted under the discussion of tools. In addition to these tools, the women sew most of the clothing for the family on a hand-turned or treadle sewing machine from cloth obtained from the trader. Additionally, mosquito nets are sewn together from a white synthetic fabric and colorful quilt-like blankets are made by sewing together small remnants of worn out clothes much in the manner of EuropeanznuiAmerican quilts. House, field hut, and rice barn construction is done by men, much of it in cooperative work teams based on reciprocal labor exchange. Rubber-Tapping Rubber is the primary source of cash; it is tapped at any season when the need is pressing. This hinterland area has only the unimproved stock of low productivity rubber obtained before World War II, and the absolute minimum care is provided for the trees. Occasional weeding is done around transplants ~128- to permit the young trees to get out ahead of the regrowth. Merely cutting a path from tree to tree to permit access to the trees when tapping is just about all the cultivation provided, and no fertilizer is applied. It is customary in this area to tap the rubber trees in an approximately six hour outing. Before daylight the tapper will steal away from the longhouse to the rubber grove to begin the work. The tapping Operation, which is done in the v-shape style, consists of making an incision in the bark with a special tapping knife (piggf) and positioning the collecting receptable below the drip spout at the base of the "v". Typically, the drip spout is nothing more than a folded leaf stuck beneath a notch of bark at the bottom of the incision and the recepta- cle is either a halved coconut shell or a node of bamboo. After tapping between 150 and 250 trees, which constitutes the daily task, the tapper then makes the rounds to collect the latex in a bucket. The latex is carried to a site near the rubber mangle where it is mixed in an aluminum pan with acetic acid to coag- ulate before being pressed into a sheet by passing it several times through the mangle. The sheet is then allowed to wash in the river for a day or so before being hung up to dry. In this state it can be carried to the trader. Rubber tapping is considered disagreeable work by the Mualang because of the excessive bending, stooping, and carrying. Complaints about back pain and headaches associated with rubber tapping are common and not infrequently a second member of the bilik family may join in the task to lighten the burden. By midday, the -129- rubber tapping is finished and some other work can be attended to. Pepper Production Pepper cultivation in nearby Sarawak has recently spread into the hinterlands of West Kalimantan. Pepper cultivation is not yet into full swing in the village under study. Thus far, except for one bilik that received its first harvest of pepper during the field study, some biliks have only begun to plant the pepper vine and gather and shape the ironwood posts that will be required to support the plant in its full growth. Consequently, the work organization of pepper production is not yet integrated into the traditional work organization of rice and rubber production as described above. Sawing Boards For those lacking a rubber garden, the source of cash for buying rice during the "hunger season" has been the sawing of boards. In recent years it has become the fashion to replace the floors made traditionally of tied saplings or split bamboo with more substantial sawed boards. Like tapping rubber, sawing boards is work that can be performed by a single male while the spouse attends to the weeding of the rice fields. A suitable tree is felled, trimmed and cut to board length, then hoisted into position and secured to a sawing frame. This, along with the construction of the sawing frame over the log, can consume several days of work. Standing on the sawing frame over the log, the sawer wields a heavy and cumbersome -130- steel saw to produce reasonably uniform boards of a standard size called the "keping." One keping of board is one thumb width thick (mata), one hand-span wide (jengkel) and 1% "depah" long (the dgpgh, a little more than five feet, was defined above in Chapter I). Even more onerous than tapping rubber, this work is performed only by men and only under dire circum- stances. During the time of the field study, the price of rubber was sufficiently high to make rubber tapping on a share- crOpping basis an alternative to this toilsome source of cash. The work organization for the various kinds of production has been delineated for Mualang society. In work organization, we see a compromise between the technological requirements of production and the social relations of material provisioning (cf. Cook 1973: 821). In the division of labor, we see re- flected the mutual dependence of the bilik family members. Sometimes the village community as a unit engages in production as in planting the dry rice fields, hunting, and fish poison- ing. Such work organization, however, is merely c00perative and has no basis in a division of labor nor a specialization of labor. Unmistakably, it is the bilik family that is the predominant unit of production in Mualang economic life. CHAPTER V THE COMMUNITY CONTEXT OF DOMESTIC ECONOMICS This chapter documents the quantitative relations among the economic variables which constitute for this community the context in which domestic units take decisions about materially provisioning themselves. It is important to empha- size that each village has its own economic character and its own context of economic Opportunity, well-known to the vil- lagers themselves. Amoh, for example, has an enviable position on a fine river providing good trade and travel connections but suffers from poor, sandy soil,znuiminimal swamp area giving a low ratio of the more productive padi paya land to the less productive padi bukit (hill rice) land. The village of Belitang Ubah, a pioneer village, has plentiful primary forest but has great difficulties in this ecological context, with diseases of the rubber trees. It is the local perception that the level of living in these communities is somewhat below the level of the community under study, and, though not documented, these differences were apparent to this observer. By contrast, Sebindang, with more fertile soil, frequently provides wage labor to the less fortunate families of Amoh, their daughter village; and Ransa, though having very little wood left and so pitied with respect to the difficulties of providing shelter, has much swampy area for padi paya and -131- ~132~ is reknown for its diligence in rubber-tapping. Every village, however, has the basic characteristic profile of households that achieve considerable success (urang berada), those that produce sufficient for their own needs (urang pas), and those that perennially fail (sakit idup or merinsa'). Kampung Sungai Mulau is reasonably representative of the villages of the Belitang Hulu area in terms of the fertility of the soil, the mixture of padi bukit with padi paya, the availability of wood, the degree of participation in cash crop production, and access to trade goods. Rice Production Chapter IV discussed the organizational dimension of rice production. Attention is given here to the performance dimension. Table 13 presents the data on rice yields, areas under cultivation» andgantangs6 per hectare by household. From this table, it can be seen that the size of household farms ranged from 0.94 hectares (2.32 acres) to 4.89 hectares (12.08 acres) with a mean of 2.36 hectares (5.83 acres). Regretably, it was not possible to differentiate the areas under padi paya from the areas under padi bukit be- cause they were intricately mixed together. Since each 6The gantans is the dry volume measure for rice and salt in the hinterlan . Among the Mualang the antan is a carved wooden bowl containing 3,118 cm3 (=190.27 1n.55. This Mualang gantang contains the volume of ten cans of condensed milk, a dry unit they call a "mung" and a "ling". -133- oumuoo:\mm:mucmm N.mNm mommaaa> pom ommpo>< Ne mo.~mm.mm ~.mmN.H cam: Ne mH.mmN.mmm mmampamm moa.o~ m4x mm.mHm Ne mm.Hmm.N~ mmm.H :mcmm HH>x mm.~mm Ne mo.mfim.mfi mmm «mag H>x mm.Nom Na ma.mmm.- mom.H madam >x mm.mmm Ne mm.omm.a~ omHHH amzmmz >Hx mm.mmq Ne Hm.ooa.mm WWW H wwmwm HHHx mm.m~m Ne mm.amm.m~ mom.a momxmm HHx mm.Nmm Na oo.mmm.H~ omm.m means“: Hx mo.m~¢ Ne mN.mmH.mN mmm.a caammz x mm.mmm Ne ao.~em.mm mmm.a “meme xH NH.mmm Na Hm.mmm.mm mam.fi :oeam HHH> mm.mmm Ne mm.omo.~m mom.H masucmo HH> sm.mqm Ne mm.mmm.a~ Hmm.H maamm H> mN.mom Na mm.mmo.mfi mam aax< > Mm.mmm Ne mm.mmo.mH mom mesmmm >H m~.mmo Na m~.amm.mm mm~.m gums» HHH mm.mmm Ne ma.om~.m~ mmm Mo» HH mm.ooe Ne mm.mma.mm mam.” swam H ohmuooz coaum>auasu mmcmucmo :H .02 xwaflm \mmampemo Home: mmw< mama eHmm» mafia .mm-mmmH Meagan swan: ammcsm cm composeomm mafia .mH magma -134- household's farm contains a different ratio of padi_paya to padi bukit, little importance can be assigned to the gantangs per hectare figures. Consequently, in order to get a sense of the production possibilities in this community, it is necessary to rely upon yield samples. For this purpose, samples of yields were taken based upon harvesting 1/180 acre plots from the range of 2291 and soil types. This data is presented in Table 14. “Pad; bukit, or hill rice, is seen to be the least productive, padi paya, cu swamp rice, the most productive and padi lemaung, or river bank rice, intermediate in productivity. It follows that the gantangs per hectare figures from Sungai Mulau ranging from a low of 338.46 to a high of 813.82 (Table 13) would depend upon the padi paya to padi bukit ratio, the fertility of the soil, the degree of care in cultivation, etc. A final qualification of this data, resulting from the diffi- culties in measuring swidden rice fields, is in order here. The borders of the fields are, in many cases, difficult to determine because the cultivated area shades off into the sur- rounding brush or forest. This is so because the edge of the field was probably determined first, in only a rough sense, because of a gradation into poor soils and, second, by variations of an incomplete burn. This border is further blurred by the cluttering of the edges of the field with a confusion of unburned limbs, haphazard fences, traps, and finally, by weeding such less likely areas last in case weed- ing labor for the year should be insufficient. -135- Table 14. Yield Samples of Rice Varieties. Padi bukit variety Tegelam better-than-average appearance well-cared-for fertile soil Yield: 27.13 bu/acre = 306 gantangs/acre = 67.04 bu/hectare = 756.21 gantangs/ hectare Padi bukit variety Napoh average appearance average care fertile soil Yield: 279 gantangs/acre = 24.73 bu/acre = 61.12 bu/hectare = 689.41 gantangs/ hectare Padi bukit variety Pulau less-than-average appearance well-cared-for infertile soil Yield: 15.16 bu/acre = 171 gantangs/acre = 37.46 bu/hectare = 442.55 gantangs/ hectare Padi lemaung - variety Prajurit better-than-average appearance well-cared-for Yield: 37.1 bu/acre = 418.49 gantang/acre = 91.68 bu/hectare = 1034.1 gantang/ hectare Padi paya - variety Ayop Nyerungkop average-in-appearance well-cared-for first year cycle Yield: 42.29 bu/acre = 477 gantangs/acre = 104.5 bu/hectare = 1178.67 gantang/ hectare -136- To put this production performance data into perspective, it is necessary to compare it with studies of similar techno- economic contexts from this part of the world. Ward and Ward in their report of "An Economic Survey of West Kalimantan," give the average yield of upland padi in 1971 for Kalimantan Barat as 940 kilograms per hectare (568 gantangs per hectare) (1974: 34). This is just a bit above the 527.2 gantangs per hectare average for Sungai Mulau. For a more in-depth comparison, the study of J.D. Freeman undertaken among the Iban of the Baleh region, Third Division, Sarawak from January 1949 to June 1951 and detailed in Iban Agriculture, (1955) is more useful. The community of Rumah Nyala studied by Freeman was a pioneering community and so offers some contrasts with the context of agriculture in Sungai Mulau, a long-established community in the area with essentially no primary forest remaining. Farming dry rice in the primary forest setting requires comparatively more labor for felling trees and less labor for slashing undergrowth. More time is required for the cut and slashed vegetation to dry for burning and a much hotter burn is required to consume the larger wood. All of this contributes to making the timing of the burn with respect to the end of the dry season and the onset of the rainy season most critical for the cultivators of primary forest. By contrast, in Sungai Mulau where secon- dary forest is farmed, these relationships are reversed and so there is somewhat less risk hanging on the timing of the burn although here too there is much apprehension about the -137- crucial phase. On the other hand, the problem of weeding is magnified by the fact that, lacking the intense fire of larger wood, the fire-kill of weed seeds, roots,2nu1rhizomes is less. Given these important differences between pioneering and settled swidden agriculture, let us examine the differences in performance between the two communities as well as other relevant cases from hinterland Southeast Asia. With respect to yield, Freeman found among the Iban of Rumah Nyala yields ranging from 8 to 43 bushels per acre and estimates 15 bushels per acre to be average. The comparable figures for Sungai Mulau are quite similar as can be seen from Table 14 ranging from 15-42. The average for the village is 527.2 gantangs/hectare or 18 bushels per acre. Table 15 provides a comparison of yields for the relevant cases from Southeast Asia. The figures for Sungai Mulau are slightly higher than those for the Iban but very much in the range of the cases presented. Table 16 compares the Iban data on average area under cultivation for the various kinds of workers in the household labor force with the data from Sungai Mulau. It was speci- fied in Chapter III that the village under study is composed of 126 souls. For purposes of domestic economic reckoning, however, only 114 are residents. Of the 114 residents, 56 are able-bodied workers (24 male and 32 female). Of these 56 workers, 42 can be considered "weeders." There is a clear trend for the Mualang to put nearly twice as much -138- Table 15. Comparative Data on Dry-Rice Yields. Yield in bu/acre Reference Region General Range Average Jack Malaya l8 - 43 27.5 Craig Kelantan, Malaya - 43 Leach North Burma 15 ~ 40 deSoyza Ceylon 15 - 50 Izikowitz French Indo-China 24.0 Geddes First Division, Sarawak 7 - 32 Agriculture Third Division, Dept. Sarawak 7 - 31 15.0 Freeman Third Division, Sarawak 8 - 43 15.0 Drake Belitang Hulu, Kal. Bar., Indonesia 15 - 42 18.0 NOTE: This table is after Freeman (1970: 257). acreage under cultivation as do the Iban. figures are on the upper end of the range of hinterland Southeast Asian cases (Ibid.: The Iban acreage 250, Table 45) and yet the peOple of Sungai Mulau exceed these figures by 73 percent. In comparison with other Southeast Asian swidden agricultur- alists, the people of Sungai Mulau are very ambitious, indeed. In order to illustrate the range of labor inputs for padi cultivation, four households were chosen for study on the basis of the regularity of their behavior. This data can -l39- Table 16. Acreage per Worker (after Freeman 1970: 248). Sungai Mulau Iban Area per head of population 1.07 acre* 0.6 acre Area per worker 2.19 acre 1.0 acre Area per male worker 5.1 acre --- Area per female worker 3.82 acre 1.8 acre Area per weeder 2.91 acre 1.5 acre Area per family of five 5.35 acre 3.1 acre *These areas are areas under cultivation, not areas felled. As in the Iban study, the area felledi§;largerlnxtno figures are available for the area felled. be found in Table 17. The range is from 102.47 workdays of labor per hectare (41.5 days per acre) for bilik_XVIlI headed by Pak Sandoi to 134 days per hectare (54.3 days per acre) for bilik XII headed by Pak Sekios. By comparison, Freeman (1970: 245) found the labor input on secondary jungle among the Iban he studied to range from 50 to 60 days per' acre. For an average for estimations of other relationships, he chose the figure of 60 days per acre. One reason for the Mualang figures being on the low end of the Iban range is that the Mualang data does not include time invested in building field huts because this varies drastically from case to case and year to year. For example, during the period of study, Pak Talip of bilik XV spent most of the weeding season building a fine, strong field but capable of -140- Table 17. Labor Input for Rice Cultivation 1978-79. Workdays/ Workdays Bilik Workdays* Hectares Hectare /Acre I Ragu 379 3.315 114.3 46.28 XII Sekios 345 2.5731 134.0 54.26 XV Talip 297.5 2.2438 132.6 53.7 XVIII Sandoi 356 3.4741 102.47 41.47 *These figures do not include workdays invested in building the field hut. lasting several years while at the other extreme, Pak Sekios of bilik XII invested no labor in a field hut. From the data collected on field hut building and maintenance, it seems reasonable to estimate that, over the years, a household will invest, on average, two weeks (10 work days) per year in this kind of work. This brings the Mualang figures closer to the Iban figures. With the labor input data, we can calculate the returns to labor in these four cases. The results are tabulated in Table 18 below, showing a range of from Rp 525 per workday for bilik I to Rp 626 per workday for bilik XVIII (from $0.85/ workday to $1.01 per workday in U.S. currency).7 7It is of interest that Durrenberger's report on the economy of the Lisu of Northern Thailand found that: ”a day's work in producing rice would be valued at 19.67 baht" which is U.S. $0.98 (1976a: 635). -141- Table 18. Returns to Labor for Rice Cultivation. Bilik IIEId Workdays S%%%%%%§ %%¥%%%; 1 Ragu 1,347 379 3.55 Rp 525* XII Sekios 1,360 345 3.94 Rp 582 XV Talip 1,263 297.5 4.24 Rp 626 SVIII Sandoi 1,510 356 4.24 Rp 626 *The money value is based on an average value of one antan of adi over the season equal to Rp 147.75. The Indone51an ru iafi at the time of fieldwork was exchanged at the rate of U.S. $1 = Rp 620. The data collected is incapable of providing even a sketchy production function for rice cultivation, but it is clear that weeding is the critical phase of the cycle in the sense that it makes the greatest demands on the family labor force (cf. Clark and Haswell 1966: 42). Consequently, by estimating weeding labor availability, the correct amount of land to be put under cultivation is determined. This matter is somewhat more complicated in practice, however. Most households are capable of clearing and planting much larger rice fields than they can weed effectively. For example, when one of Pak Haron's (bilik XX) rice fields was being measured, he explained apologetically that it was so small because he would not be able to assist his wife with the weeding. He had failed to get enough rice the previous year and would have to saw boards at that time in order to buy rice. On the other -142- hand, extensive observation of cultivation practices gives ample evidence that the Mualang Operate near the peak of marginal returns to labor for weeding by clearing and planting some- what more land then they can weed thoroughly. Thorough weed- ing may produce higher yields than incomplete weeding, but it is clear that judicious incomplete weeding provides the high- est marginal returns tO labor and is the approach most widely practiced. Cash Crop Production Rubber-Tapping Each household possesses a rubber grove or rights to use a rubber grove held in severalty. The organization of rubber production was discussed in the previous chapter; the perfor- mance dimension will be detailed here. Table 29 lists the rubber trees cultivated by each household; there is a direct relationship, which will be discussed later, between level of well-being and the possession of many productive rubber trees. Yields obtained for even a single household vary over time depending upon several variables: which grove is being tapped; how hard the tapper is willing to work at that particular time; who is available to pitch in with the work; and, even the amount of recent "tapping pressure" on the trees. In order to get a picture of rubber production for the community, it is therefore necessary to refer to a particular interval of time. During May 1979, a peak time for rubber-tapping, the daily yields in kilos for each household, as shown in Table 19, -143- Table 19. Rubber-Tapping Yields During May, 1979. Bilik Daily yield in kilos I Ragu 3.5 (4.5) II Yok 3.5 and 5.5 111 Yusak 3 (5) IV Payung 3.5 V Akim -- VI Saing 2.5 VII Gantung (5) VIII Biden 1.75 and 4 1X Jangi 1.5 X Nyelan 3.25 XI Mambang 2.25 and 4 XII Sekios 3.0 XIII Norcé 2.5 XIIIB Lanas 2.5 XIV Nyawai 1.5 (2.75) XV Talip 3.5 and 2.5 XVI Luya 2.5 and 1.25 XVII Banan 4.0 (7.5) XVIII Sandoi 3.5 and 3.0 XIX Amoi 1.25 and 2.0 XX Haron 2.0 MEAN 3.16 (+0.6 kilos tatal) NOTE: The number in parentheses is a higher yield obtained by two or more tappers sharing the work. When two figures outside parentheses are given for a household either two differ- ent gardens are involved or two different tappers working separately. -144- were ascertained by interview. This data gives a mean yield for the village Of 3.16 kilos of rubber sheet plus 0.6 kilos of t§£31_per outing. Iatal is the coagulated rubber from the previous tapping Operation that lies in the bark groove and must be removed before cutting the new groove. This 53331 is wadded into a ball and sold unprocessed for approxi- mately one third the price Of processed sheets. Table 20 shows that May's mean yield brought Rp 1,093 when traded at Sungai Mulau and Rp 1,344 when carried to Pakit Mulau Hulu. The trip to Pakit Mulau Hulu is one and one-half hours one way. Compared with the monetary value of Rp 525 to Rp 626 of padi output for a workday, rubber produc- tion enjoys roughlyzatwofold advantage. This relationship depends, of course, on the prices of rubber and padi. For contrast, consider the conditions of the previous October when rubber was being traded for Rp 150 per kilo at Sungai Mulau. At that time the return of Rp 504 for an average rub- ber-tapping outing was unfavorable compared with the returns on padi production. The price of rubber Obviously varies suffic- iently to make rubber-tapping economically feasible only at certain times. During 1977 the price of rubber had been as low as Rp 80-90 per kilo. There was general agreement among both traders and villagers that, as prices rise, the production Of rubber increases in the Belitang Hulu area. Nonetheless, variation in the intensity of rubber produc- tion in the Sungai Mulau area is more complicated than the -145- relationship between price and output. It must be understood in its relationship to rice production within the domestic mode of production. Rubber production is subsidiary to rice produc- tion--one Of the production alternatives competing for the villager's time when rice production lulls permit. Every house- hold has some need for trade goods such as sugar, tea, kerosene, etc. for the minimal expressions of civility on occasion. Be- cause exchanging rice for trade goods is rarely advantageous, there will be some tapping of rubber for trade goods even when the price cannot justify it in the "economic" sense. Although rubber is the predominant source Of cash and/or trade goods, it is never considered an alternative to rice production. Rubber production is subsidiary to rice production in a second sense. A family that fails to achieve sufficiency in rice will tap rubber to trade for rice. Typically, the rice runs out during the weeding season, also called the "famine season", of October through January. It is considered the height of prudent household management in this predicament for one of the men of the bilik to withdraw from field work during the mornings to tap rubber for Obtaining the daily rice provision and then join the women and any other co-workers in weeding in the afternoon. Only in this way can a family hope to break the cycle of deficient harvests caused by the with- drawal of weeding labor to tap rubber to trade for rice. Again, strict economic calculations of returns to labor are irrelevant because some rubber tapped is some rice Obtained, and, by -146- stretching whatever rice you have by cooking it with cassava root, the dispirited season Of deficiency will ultimately give way to the harvest season and its abundance. Table 29 demonstrates clearly that some households are more favorably situated than others with respect to rubber production. A conventional share-cropping arrangement miti- gates this situation somewhat. A person tapping another house- hold's trees divides the rubber product equally with that household except that the tapper is permitted to keep all the fatal for himself; the owner of the trees supplies the acetic acid to harden the rubber into sheets. For the tapper, the return on an outing yielding 3 kilos of getah and 0.6 kilos of 33331, at the price of Rp 325 for rubber sheet and Rp 110 for tatal, would be Rp 553.5. This, as we shall see shortly, is roughly the same as the typical money wage. Pepper Production As was explained in Chapter IV, pepper cultivation in Sungai Mulau is very recent. Thus far only one household has achieved a harvest; therefore, the results of this one case will be com- bined with the "expectations" of those going into pepper pro- duction to provide a sense of the production possibilities. The Mualang talk about pepper in terms of the batang (individual pepper post) unit. One batang of pepper requires 1.2 gantangs of fertilizer per year (Rp 420) and 1/100 gallon of herbicide (Rp 40) for a total outlay of Rp 460. Estimated yields of mature plants are from 2 to 3 kilos per batang. Given the estimated 3 ~147- kilo per batang per year yield and the market price Of Rp 1,000 per kilo, the income from one batang is Rp 2,540. In fact Pak Akim, 911;§_v, in the first year of harvest received an average of 1.875 kilos blackpepperfiper batang and sold it at Rp 700 per kilo in November 1978, when the price was depressed. This yield compares favorably with what the pepper agronomist P.W.F. deWaardzrtKuching says can be expected of a "well-maintained, well-fertilized, healthy garden" (1964: 29) in Sarawak. Under these ideal conditions, the first yield (third year) will vary from 1.68 kilos per vine to 1.92 kilos per vine of black pepper, rising to a peak of 2.88 kilos to 3.84 kilos black pepper bet- ween the sixth and tenth years and decline gradually to the fifteenth year at which time they must be replaced by new plant- ings. Pepper cultivation has an important economic consideration not involved in the other forms of production, namely, high capital and labor investment at the outset. Heavy labor in hoeing the pepper mounds, perhaps as many as three times to get rid of the lalang grass roots (Imperata cylindrica), invest- ment in ironwood posts at least twelve feet tall at Rp 150 each, and the expense Of herbicide and fertilizer are all consider- able obstacles to getting into pepper production. Furthermore, a first harvest is not received until the third year. Because of this, Mualang cultivators begin pepper cultivation on a small scale. In the case of Pak Akim, 80 batang were planted the first year, 100 the second, 50 the third, and50 the fourth ~148- year. This 280 batang total occupies 0.41 acre or 0.165 hectare. From Table 29 it can be seen that the other house- holds that have begun cultivating pepper have, for the most part, done so on an even smaller scale. Several households complained that the capital investment required put pepper cultivation beyond them, at least in the short run. Terms Of Laboring Labor (kgria) is a very interesting category in Mualang economic life because the terms of labor transactions run the gamut of reciprocities from balanced to generalized. The various forms Of labor will be taken up in the order of from most balanced to most generalized before considering the quan- titative aspects of wage labor.8 The most rigorously balanced forms Of labor are wage labor of two types: bekuli and ngangsang. "Ngangsang" means to work for a wage. Bekuli can have the same meaning but it usually is used more specifically to mean carrying goods from one village to another, most commonly for traders. The bekuli rates are conventional and generally familiar to all. For example, goods can be carried from Sungai Mulau to Pakit for Rp 15 per 8The term "wage labor" is used advisedly here. Although the Mualang term translates as wage labor, it is qualitatively different from wage labor in capitalist economies as understood by Formal Economic Theory. People laboring for the benefit of others for monetary compensation appears superficially as wage labor but labor is not a commodity here. There is no labor market; hence, labor is not commoditized. As Durrenberger has put it, "unless the labor is sold as a commodity it is not wage labor" (1980: 136). -149- kilo; to Sepauh for Rp 5 per kilo; to Dandi for Rp 30 per kilo, and to Balai Sepuak for Rp 60 per kilo. For shorttnfirussuch as these, women carry about 40 kilos and men 50 kilos or more. It is considered hard work deserving of a high wage. Ngangsang, or working for a wage, commonly takes one of three forms: the first of these, ngangsang uang, means to work for a money wage negotiated on the basis of a common knowledge of what other peOple have been paying and how strenuous the work is. Working the rice field is considered strenuous during the slashing and felling phase but ea§y_during the weeding sea- son. Supply and demand also expresses itself with wages rising during the harvest season when everyone is busy with the harvest. Ngangsang babi is to work a day's labor forzipile of pork. It is a common means of attracting people to assist in a task that is especially onerous; for example, to assemble a work party for felling large trees. The owner of the pig and the appointed assistants slaughter the pig, butcher the meat into the conventional cuts, cube these cuts, mix all the meat cubes for a random distribution and then, after withdrawing a small portion of meat as payment for the persons preparing the meat, place the meat in equal size piles. Each pile is the wage for the day of labor, the number of piles being determined by meas- urement of the girth of the live pig just behind the front limbs. 150- Ten piles of meat are appropriate for each "renti" of girth.9 "Nggggggng babi" is a very attractive wage with the pile of pig meat amounting to about 1.4 kilos and the price of pork at Rp 500 per kilo during the fieldwork period. The high wage is necessary to attract peOple who are, at that particular time, busy with the same work on their own fields but will not be able to resist the chance to provide their families with a meal of pork. Ngangsangfpadi means to be paid for a day's labor in padi. The traditional rate of 5 gantangs (= 1 taken) prevails to this day, although this attractive wage is reserved for kin only and available only during the weeding season which coincides with the season when there is a deficit in rice. For non-kin, four or even three gantangs padi per day can be negotiated as the wage for a day of weeding labor. Beduruk means to exchange labor and is typical of the many labor exchange arrangements described for Southeast Asian hinterland peoples (Izikowitz 1951; Geddes 1954; Freeman 1955; Provinse 1937). Such exchanges of labor among households allow work to be done in groups with all the attendant "lightening Of the burden" and "inefficiency of labor" so cavalierly condemned 9A note on the measuring of pigs is surely in order here. A rattan strip of exactly the girth of the pig's body measured directly behind the front legs is marked off. From this strip is subtracted the circumference of the owner of the pig's head and the portion of the strip remaining is then measured into lengths, called renti; a renti being the distance between the tip Of the thumb sticking out laterally from an otherwise clinched fist and the heal of the fist. For a finer measure, a renti is equal to 10 jari; i.e., ten fingers. -151- by economic analysts not faced with the necessity of toiling 10% hours a day six days per week in a rice field beneath the hot equatorial sun. It is uncommon for a person to work alone (ngemumufi)for several days in a row. Simple beduruk in which the kinds of labor exchanged are more or less the same is the most common form of labor exchange, but there are several forms of beduruk. Beduruk beruyong is to exchange labor between households for the purpose of getting paid back with a kind of labor that a particular household lacks. A common example is the need of households lacking able-bodied men to fell trees or build a field hut to obtain such labor through the exchange of weeding or harvest labor. Beduruk gotong-royongis the Special form Of exchange labor that is in force only during the planting phase (nugal) of the ladang cycle. In this form of exchange, a household has to pay back to each household Only as many days labor as it has workers in its labor force. Nug§1_is the one phase of the ladang cycle that is executed communally; every household sends off its labor force to work in a single party in the rice field to be planted on that day. An example will illustrate the prin- ciple of exchange involved here. Bilik_111, Pak Yusak, has four able-bodied workers available but on the day the field of bilik IV, Bu Payung, was planted, he sent only two of those workers. Bu Payung, because she has only one able-bodied worker in her household, is required to reciprocate only a single -152- worker to fulfill the exchange obligation on the day in which the field of Pak Yusak is planted. It should be noted that the nugal phase is characterized by a high level of participation of the community labor force because it is almost a certainty that meat will be available for the midday meal. This and very generous servings of sugar-tea and sugar-coffee at the mid- morning and mid-afternoon rest breaks all contribute to a high- spirited work party attractive to everyone. As a testament to how their level of well-being has improved in recent years, the Mualang say that in the old days only the very well-to-do provided chickens and pigs at the mid-day meal for nuggl. Today about one quarter of the families in any particular year kill a pig and the remainder kill au:least a chicken or two. Binyau is to attract a large party of laborers to your task by killing a pig. A large pig is required. By this method of distribution of the meat the owner receives a share of one selangka (one buttock) and the remainder goes to the laborers. Typically about 2/3's of this meat is cooked in the field and divided to provide the mid—day meal and one-third remains uncooked, to be distributed for carrying home to the family. The advantage here lies with the owner of the pig as the meat received would come to less than the prevailing wage. Those attracted by the opportunity to put pork in the family's diet take the view that they are "helping out". This form of labor is common at harvest time when a household's labor is suddenly insufficient to get the mature rice harvested. A -153- binyau work party is also resorted to in cases of a poor burn requiring that the partially burned wood be piled up and burned again. Beduruk idup is another form of labor characterized as helping other people out. In the occasional event of a house- hold recently widowed or orphaned, a communal labor party can be organized to provide assistance with the rice fields by the benefiting household making the minimal jesture of killing a couple of chickens or small pig to provide an attractive mid- day meal. As in the case of binyau, the recipient of the labor power has no obligation to return the labor. Kerja genda,cnrkerja sukarela, is the final and most generalized form of labor transaction in which a person works for another household to help out because the need is apparent. Such labor is contributed voluntarily with no expectation of return of any kind; however, because it is nearly impossible to give someone something in this society without being given something in return, there will undoubtedly be considerations of this generosity in the future. Some examples will illus- trate the range of applicability of this kind of work. Bu Dumoi, §;;;§_v, travelled to the nearby village of Sepauh to labor several days at the harvesting of the rice fields of her aged mother's bilik. Pak Lanas, bilik_XIIIB, travelled to Kampung Balau Lambing to assist his recently acquired wife's parents nebas-nebangin their ladangs after his own and his mother's ladangs had been prepared. After five days of work he came home carrying a chicken as a token of his in-laws' -154- appreciation. Pak Saing of bilik VI, Pak Nyelan of bilik X, and Pak Mambang of bilik XI all joined in for one day to help Pak Ragu of bilik I nebas his ladang. They explained that he was the last to finish with the task and needed help as it would soon be time to burn the ladangs. No reciprocation was discovered in this case, but it should be pointed out that Pak Ragu maintains a very successful bilik_family with a re- putation for generosity in which he takes pride. Finally, it should be noted that nearly all these forms of labor involving a direct return take place in groups. It is almost unheard of to hire a person to work alone. This is related to the fact that it is cutomary when working for some- one else to receive mid-morning and mid-afternoon sugar—tea breaks no matter how favorable the wage and a good garnish for the rice of the mid-day meal. When a chicken or pig is not available, a two ounce can of sardines fried into a couple of packages of Chinese noodles is quite adequate. The point is that all these forms of labor are, at the same time, social transactions substantiated by the observance of the social conventions of sugar-tea breaks and extraordinary garnish, the minimal expressions of sociality. These pleasantries are not common when work is performed privately on one's own tasks. Let us look now more closely at the quantitative aspects of wage labor. Table 20 lists the typical money wage paid for each month for which there were wage transactions during the fieldwork period. The money wage ranges from Rp 350 per day for light work in September 1978, the planting season, to Rp -155- 600 in March 1979, the harvest season and the busiest season of the year. These money wages fall a bit below the returns per workday figures in padi, ranging from 3.55 to 4.24 gantangs with money values of Rp 525 to Rp 626 (see Tableliiabove). When the requisite serving of sugar-tea at work breaks and the extraordinary garnish for the mid-day meal are included, how- ever, these wages certainly fall within the range of the mone- tary returns to labor for rice production in this community. The system appears poorly organized to support entrepreneurs on the "surplus labor" of their fellows. It will be recalled that the return for ngangsanggpadi, the weeding of the ricefield of another household in return for padi, varies from the 5 gantangs (valued at Rp 738.75) paid to close kin to 3 or 4 gantangs (valued at Rp 443.25 to Rp 591) paid to non-kin. It should be Obvious why such a generous wage is reserved for kin and is available only during the rice-deficit season. The final relationship to be noted is that between wage labor and the returns to rubber-tapping. When the price of rubber had increased to Rp 280 in December 1978, a person tap- ping 3 kilos of rubber per outing would receive approximately Rp 900 for the work. This would cover the wage of two persons laboring in the rice field; this advantageous relationships was not lost on the villagers. One household, Pak Banan of bilik XVIII, actually took advantage of this relationship by tapping rubber in the mornings, catching a brief nap after the mid-day -156- meal, and then going to his ladang to weed in the afternoon. The success of this approach cannot be denied as his high yield indicates (see Table 24). The Mualang explanation of why this "opportunity" is not exploited more often is that one can only come out ahead in rice production employing wage labor when the harvest is average or better, a somewhat risky proposition in this community. It may be, however, that the real limiting factor in such a strategy is simply that there is no ready pool of labor from which one can take advantage. Wage labor is en- gaged in for a particular, limited, temporary need; it is never a strategy for making a living. Pak Banan rationalized his extraordinary effort by citing an intended trip to the Baptist hospital on the coast at Serukam for an eye operation. It is clear that the villagers are keenly aware of the quanti- tative relationships among labor of various kinds and the expect- able returns. When pressed about their conceptions of wage labor, they generally take the view that it is a positive Opportunity for someone in need which is generously made avail- able by someone possessing the wherewithal to do so. In jest, the writer coined the term "ngangsang baju" which means ”to work for a shirt" for a phenomenal distinction they do not recognize, perhaps because it is implicit in all wage labor transactions; that is, the likelihood is that a person will work for attractive material goods such as a shirt when the money wage isn't persuasive. Nearly every village has one or two households that put aside trade goods such as plastic buckets -157- and sarongs to Offer when they are in need of labor power. Sawing boards (ngisit kayu) is a source of income some- what akin to wage labor. There is almost always the need in the community for sawed boards, and few men are willing to engage in this very hard work except in hard times. It is not uncommon for downriver Malays to reside in Dayak villages for short periods for the purpose of sawing boards. Commonly,they combine the sawing of boards in the afternoon with the tapping of rubber on a share-cropping basis in the morning. In Sungai Mulau, Pak Haron of bilik XX, frequently saws boards during the weeding season when his family is out of rice, as it invariably is, because the family fails every year to obtain sufficiency. Furthermore, Pak Haron has very little rubber. Through his wife's inheritance they share rights with biliks VIII and IX to a mere 130 trees yielding 1k kilos of rubber sheet per outing on average. The one case of ngisit kayu for which I have complete data involved Pak Haron sawing 26 boards for Pak Majau of Kampung Sepauh for Rp 200 per board. The labor required six workdays so his return was Rp 866.6 per day. This certainly compares favorably with the going wage in field work at that time, but it is a bit less than the share-cropping arrangement for rubber tapping. A second case involved Pak Jangi sawing 23 boards for 20 gantangs padi from Pak Banan near the end of December 1978. In Sungai Mulau the conventional price for boards at that time was Rp 150. Con- sidering that the price of padi is at its peak at this time of -158- year, it was an attractive Opportunity for Pak Jangi. It should be pointed out that the returns to labor for sawing boards can vary somewhat depending on the time consumed in felling the required tree or trees, trimming and getting the trunk into position on the sawing frame, building a sawing frame, etc. Since payment is by the board, all the prepara- tory labor is done at the risk of the one who saws. In addi- tion to Pak Haron and Pak Jangi, Pak Neylan has resorted to sawing boards when his household was hard put. Of course, sawing boards is economically more attractive when rubber prices are low. For example, in 1977 when rubber prices had fallen to Rp 80-90 per kilo all three of these men sawed boards to Obtain rice. Finally, in a small way padi processing can be said to have a wage component. Under certain conditions, such as a bilik_being without an able-bodied female, there can be the need for hiring someone to process the padi, i.e., to remove the hull of the rice grain as well as the bran layer, thus converting it from padi to "beras" which is the form ready for cooking. This involves, first, spreading the padi on a mat and putting it in the sun to dry. The pad} must be tended to fend Off the plucky chickens who brave the challenge of being clobbered by a bamboo pole. After drying, the pad; has the hulls removed by a clever device (kisar) fashioned from two pieces of tree trunk set one on top of the other so that the upper one can be turned back-and-forth by handles in -159- agrinding fashion; the padi falling in grooves between these grinding surfaces. Depending on the condition of the grooves of the particular kigar, the hulling process is repeated bet- ween two and five times; wear lessens the device's efficiency. The husked rice is winnowed and pounded in a mortar and pestle device (lesung aba' alu) to remove the bran coating of the kernal and then winnowed again. To cite an example of how time-consuming pgdi processing is, bilik XVII headed by Bu Luya, consisting of two adults, processes its padi once per week as follows: five hours sun- ning the pad}, two hours husking the padi, two hours pounding the padi, and fifteen minutes winnowing the pad; for a total of nine hours and fifteen minutes, a full day of work. Their rule Of thumb is that one woman working continuously all day can produce 20 gantangsof beras; this excludes sunning time. The going rate for padi processing at Sungai Mulau has been Rp 10 per gantang padi. This is the wage Pak Akim pays to have his store beras processed, although typically his wife and daughter process the store padi. Because one gantang_padi be- comes four mung beras by this processing technique this means that fifty gantangs are processed to get a yield of 20 gantangs of berg; and so this rule-Of-thumb processor would receive a wage of Rp 500 for the day's efforts. During the study, some of the villages near Sungai Mulau purchased community rice-hulling machines with their government development funds (gang subsidi). Sungai Mulau itself had -160- planS‘UDdO so and was, as a public work service (kerja bakti) project, building a shed to house it. The rice-hulling machine involved, the Engleberg Huller, is the least efficient one available with a recovery yield of milled rice of 63.4 per cent by weight (Esmay et a1. 1979: 109). The recovery rate for traditional hand-processing among the Mualang of four mung beras from ten mung padi is forty per cent by volume. By weight, one gantang padi becomes one kilogram beras which is a 60.4 per cent recovery rate. This figure is just a bit below the figure of 62.5 per cent used by Timmer in his study of the economic aspects of rice milling in Java (1972). Thus, when the machine is working at pgak efficiency it enjoys a three per cent advantage in recovery rate over hand-processing. To examine the economics of the machine processing of padi, consider the case of Sungai Antu Rangah, the sister village of Sungai Mulau. Two village men learned to operate the machine and processed everyone's rice for them on two specified days per week. For this work they received a fair wage. To the villager the cost of processing was as follows: from each ten gantangs of padi brought to the shed to be pro- cessed one was extracted in payment for the processing (costs of fuel, oil, spare parts, wage of operator, etc.) and nine were processed for the household. The traditional wage for hand-pounding this nine gantangs of padi is Rp 90. Given the price of a gantang of padi of Rp 150 the machine has "eaten up," as the villagers put it, the value of Rp 60 in ”saving" them about one hour and twenty minutes of processing work. -161- The machine processing of 20 gantaggs Of beras, a day's work, would cost 5.5 gangtangsgpadi at a value of Rp 825. Conse- quently, families that fail to obtain sufficiency of rice commonly switch from machine to hand-processing as the "defi- cit season" approaches to avoid further "feeding the machine." Not only is this Rp 825 well above the conventional daily wage, but also, we saw in Table 18 that this day spent in the rice field would produce only about four gantangs of padi. Perhaps this is a case of inappropriate technOIOgy. Another issue involved concerns the diminished level of protein, fats,znuivitamins in the machine-milled rice: As the layers (of rice) are successively removed, the proportions of protein, fats and vitamins intflm:remaining kernal de- crease while the proportion of carbohy- drate increases (Esmay, et a1. 1979: 9). The Opinion has been widespread that hand-processed rice is more nutritious than machine-processed rice, especially with regard to infant nutrition. There is, however, some confusion in the discussion because of the failure to distinguish between "polished" and "milled" rice. Polished rice has the polish and all the bran removed from the grain while milled rice has only most of the bran layer removed. The Mualang have traditionally processed their rice to remove the bran layer but hand-proces- sing achieves this only partially, depending upon the worker's willingness to persevere. The machine they are beginning to use likewise removes most of the bran, though perhaps more completely and more consistently. Without further data on this ~162- matter it can only be pointed out that this change in processing technique could possibly contribute to a protein and vitamin deficiency. Such a diminuition of these nutrients could be serious because of the minimal level of proteinimlthe tradi- tional diet. Non-Monetized Forms of Production Several production activities and products are unmonetized10 or only partially monetized but are nonetheless important to the economic well-being of the community. Effort will be made here to illustrate how they relate to the monetized aspects of economic organization. Foremost among these are the "catch crops" (Freeman 1970: 191) planted among the hill rice as described in the previous chapter. The catch crOps, such as cucumber, maize, pumpkin, gourds, sweet potato, etc., are grown mixed throughout the swidden field in a diffuse way and are extremely important to the nu- tritional well-being of the household. They have no monetary value because they are never sold or traded. Surpluses are, 10The distinction monetized/nonmonetized is problematic here. As with the term wage labor discussed earlier, one should not be overly complacent about the use of these conven- tional concepts. While some products have monetary value and others do not, and the distinction is important to the analyst attempting to understand the quantitative relationships among the values of labor, products, and trade goods, it is not significant to the Mualang. Money, rather than being the universal value-solvent in this society, is in some respects like another good with special uses. Furthermore, this case provides numerous examples of how the monetary value attr1but- able to a product is only a minor consideration in the terms of a transaction. -163- however, given to relatives and neighbors in the manner Of generalized reciprocity appropriate for fruits, vegetables, and small game. Cassava has a somewhat different status because of its special role as a "famine food" and as animal feed. Although its value is not monetized, it can be traded and borrowed. Should for some reason a family run short of cassava, they can borrow from another household's cassava patch after asking permission. This can be repeated two or three times if circumstances warrant, from each of several household's to tide the borrowers over into the next season. Should a house- hold be in need, however, simply because they did not bother to grow enough cassava, they would certainly be discouraged in a polite way from excessive borrowing. Trading an abundance of cassava is exemplified by the case of Pak Nyelan of bilik X. His cassava patch for the year was located on the border of Sungai Mulau and Sebindang. A man in Sebindang who had a substantial field hut nearby in his swidden field where he kept his pigs and chickens, traded two small pigs to Pak Nyelan for the use of the cassava patch, an arrangement agreeable to both parties. Animal husbandry is also an important contribution to the community's nutritional and economic well-being. Raising chickens and pigs has been the traditional complement to hill riCe cultiva- tion throughout Southeast Asia. Chickens provide meat for that special meal for a special guest or when a special work party is organized for the ladang. Pigs are slaughtered to feed the planting party at nugal season or for Christmas holiday visits --164— from children and relatives working away from home. Pig meat is, of course, almost mandatory for gawai celebrations when a large number of people are to be hosted. The pigs serve another important economic function. They are a "bank account," a store of value readily convertible into money. A pig can be traded for padi in the event of a padi deficiency or used for a major purchase such as a pile of hardwood shingles or a sewing machine. A pig can be sold to finance a child's trip home from the city to visit the parents during the holidays, to finance the child's trip to school in a river town or coastal city, or, especially, to pay the child's school tuition. The price of pork in the village varied during the research period from Rp 300 per kilo on the hoof in September 1978 to Rp 400 per kilo a year later. Dressed pork (cubed and mixed) sold at from Rp 450 to Rp 600 per kilo during the same period. Of course, the price is negotiated so these are only guide prices since the actual price is negotiated at each transaction. During seasons of lesser demand, a household faced with an emergency requiring cash slaughters a pig and sells the fresh meat in nearby villages sometimes carrying it as far as Balai Sepuak where it is sure to sell out. The extent of pig husbanding is depicted by bilik, in Table 29 in Chapter VI. The average bilik owns 2.5 pigs of head-size or larger, 1.47 of thigh size or larger, 0.86 pigs of calf-size or 1arger,zuu12.4 of ankle size or larger. The adult pig is fed about 2 kilos of cassava root per day, al- though 3 kilos is thought to be ideal, and must forage through -165- the scraps below the kitchen, the pgdi-processing debris, and the forest near the longhouse to supplement the meager ration. The average bilik owns 8 hens, 3 of which are laying, 2 roost- ers, and 4.5 "countable” chicks. A flock this size is fed an average of 3.4 mung padi per day. Because of the depredation of wild animals about the longhouse, the Mualang do not count young chicks. Taking the old adage "don't count your chickens before they're hatched" one step further, they do not even count them after they are hatched. The egg production figures available at this time are aberrant because nearly every household is trying to encourage the hens to sit on their eggs to increase the size of the flock. A chicken disease swept the Belitang Hulu area in late 1976. The Sungai Mulau people took their chickens to the field huts for protection but to no avail. The entire flock was wiped out. They say that in normal times a successful household feeds up to fifty chickens. Selling chickens is not common, every household typically consuming what it husbands. On occasion a chicken is sold; the value of a chicken was Rp 350 to Rp 400 per kilo live- weight. Chickens are of the right value to make a considerate gift. Commonly a person travelling to a distant village to visit kin or to participate in an Egg; ceremony will tuck a chicken under his arm as a gift to the host, helping to defray the costs of hospitality. Fruit is cultivated by households for their own use. It is never bought and sold and so has no monetary value. Table -166- 29 lists the various trees cultivated by each household. The range is from 43 trees and 50 plants of taro for the most indus- trious fruit-cultivating household of bilik 1, Pak Ragu, to 4 trees and no taro plants for bilik_lv, the semi-dependent bilik_of children headed by Bu Payung. Products collected from the forest, although an important contribution to the diet and well-being of the community, are not prOperly integrated into this economic study because they are never bought and sold. Immature fern fronds, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, senggang cane shoots, and the tender leaves of the young rubber plant are perhaps the commonest edible produce of the forest. They are an ingredient in the meals of nearly every family everyday except when the ladang catch crops are in season (October through January). Hunting, fishing, and trapping can be either an individual or a group pursuit. When it is done in a group, the very specific rules for dividing the proceeds among the participants are a matter of customary law. Before a major gawai, the men of the village hunt as a village unit in order to provide meat that will be smoked and, thus, preserved for serving to the ggwai guests. Nearly every evening finds several children and older, less active members of the community fishing with hook and line at the bathing place to provide fish for the evening meal. Although such fish are typically small, they are easy to catch and it takes just a few to provide a tasty garnish for the invariable dish of rice and greens. During the peak of the -167- dry season, expeditions are organized to go to Amoh on the Belitang River to poison fish. Sungai Mulau, Sebetung, and Sungai Antu Rangah are typically invited to participate because the close kin connections between the people of these villages lead them to assume that they have probably all inherited rights to take fish from these fishing holes. (The actual genealogical connections with the original "owners" of the fishing holes having, for the most part, been forgotten.) Each village fishes as a group, sharing the take among its members in accordance with its local adat rules (adat kecil). The outing documented for the 1979 dry season yielded each of the 23 participants from Sungai Mulau only 0.7 kilo of fish, a most disappointing return for a very long day of work. The consensus is that the river is over-fished. An important point to make about trapping game is that it is not merely motivated by a quest for meat, but rather is carried out to protect the crOps. Squirrel and monkey traps are most effective in protecting the corn during the corn season,znuithe pig trap is especially important in protecting the cassava from wild pigs. Until the cassava is taller than the deer, the cassava crop can be severely damaged by foraging deer. Under these conditions, to fail to trap is to feed many wild animals, a prospect most households make at least some effort to minimize. A household without able-bodied males to make the many kinds of ingenious traps for protecting the crOps is at a serious disadvantage in this respect. -168- Because handicraft production is carried out by each house- hold for its own needs, it too largely evades quantification. The few examples of handicraft transactions available demon- strate that there is no sense of a fixed monetary value. For example, a thigh-sized pig was exchanged for a new bidai mat that required dozens of hours to manufacture. The bidai mat is the source of pride of Mualang material culture. Made of pounded bark strips woven between the rattan strips, it is a handsome and durable mat lasting twenty years or more. In another transaction a three-Egggi pig was traded for 900 iron- wood shingles that will last a lifetime. It is suggestive that all of those transactions were between kin whereby strik- ing an economic balance for the moment is not required. The Character of Trade Trade in the Belitang Hulu consists mainly of the barter- ing of rubber for the trade goods carried up the Kapuas River from Pontianak into the Belitang and its tributaries by a chain of traders. There are no markets for local produce, nor produce from anywhere else for that matter. All trade goods are non-perishable. Further, there is no haggling over the terms of trade such as characterizes so colorfully the trade that takes place in the river towns and the port city. Prices are determined by the trader and are spread by word-Of- mouth so that a man about to dispose of his rubber has a sense of what the going rates of exchange are among the various -169- traders. Before getting into the intracacies Of this trade, it would be useful to review briefly the history of trade in this area because several of the arguments in the final chapter hinge upon an interpretation of this history. The hinterland swidden agriculturalists in Borneo have probably always been articulated to some extent with external trade although this is difficult to document. Traditionally this trade has been in the hands of the ethnic Malays and the Chinese. The Malays have, since beyond recorded history, lived in small villages along the Kapuas River and the lower portions of its tributaries, politically organized into the various, small-scale sultanates. These Malay sultanates, by virtue of their control of the main rivers, controlled the trade with the interior people. The actual conduct of trade was shared with Chinese traders who not only traveled into the hinterlands but also commonly lived in hinterland Dayak vil- lages taking Dayak wives. Here they were in an ideal position to trade for the forest products gathered by the Dayaks: gutta percha (Palaquium spp.); rattan; damar resin; beeswax; etc., for salt; cloth; metal; brassware; Chinese vases, etc. The Chinese attained their preeminance in trade under the protec- tion of the Dutch colonial government beginning in the early part of the nineteenth century. The shift in emphasis from exchanging jungle produce for trade goods to exchanging cash crOps for trade goods began with the first planting of rubber in the area in the early -170- 19305. When the Japanese took the island of Borneo in 1942, access to traditional trade goods was severely disrupted and the hinterland peoples were forced into an unaccustomed "pure subsistence" economy. When the Japanese occupation ended, the Dutch attempted to return conditions to the pre-war state while, at the same time, fighting anti-colonial rebellion that was breaking out, especially on Java and Sumatra. Because trade was very slow to return to Indonesian Borneo, the hin- terland peoples began to turn their trading attention to Sarawak. That rubber which had not been cut down before and during the Japanese occupation was now in peak production. The availability of trade goods in Sarawak led to the hinterland tribes carrying their rubber and forest products over the Klingkang Mountains into Sarawak, an orientation that remains to some extent to this day. After the success of the Indonesian revolution in 1950, the new government of Indonesia began to organize the Dutch colonial possessions into a sovereign state with the attendant communications and trade links. Slowly the Kapuas River source of trade, again in the hands of Malay and Chinese traders, came once more to dominate the hinterland trade except forthose areas lying near the border with Sarawak. The newly formed govern- ment of the Federation of Malaysia, however, began to put pressure on the hinterland Communist insurgents, and they sought sanctuary in Indonesia Kalimantan. The Indonesian government, fearing that the interior Chinese traders might be caught in -171- the awkward position of being threatened to shelter these largely ethnic Chinese communist rebels, required that all Chinese, except those married to Dayaks, move to the Kapuas River. This forced movement of nearly all the Chinese traders from all the northern tributaries of the Kapuas River in 1970 left a considerable vacuum in the trade in this area. The government hoped that this vacuum would be filled by the Dayaks themselves. A flurry of small-scale trading activity by entre- preneurial Dayaks followed but, by the time of this research, only a few of the many who had tried trading had survived. Nonetheless, those who fail are continually being replaced by others willing to try their hand and the trading situation remains in considerable flux. There are three types of traders: the tgké; the paraih; and the belukar. The 32kg is a large-scale trader that Operates from a store (59kg) with his own capital (mgdal) and extends credit both to those he barters with and to smaller-scale traders he supplies with goods. He may or may not own a sufficiently large boat to travel all the way to Pontianak to deal directly with the big Chinese EEKEE in the port city. The paraih is a smaller scale trader who lackszastore although he may have in his bilik a semi-organized display of trade goods. He too has some capital of his own invested in the trade goods and extends credit to his customers. He must own a small, motorized boat capable of navigating the headwaters of the smaller rivers to carry the rubber he takes in trade down to the tuké where he will exchange it for store goods. Some of -172- these goods he may receive on consignment from the 32kg, The belukar is the smallest scale trader of them all. He has no store, no capital of his own invested beyond his boat, motor, and scales, and for the most part extends no credit. He does business by travelling to where the water gives out by boat and then taking up temporary residence in the community until the rains make travel downstream possible or until he is out of trade goods, in which case he may walk home and pay to have the rubber carried (bekuli) to the nearest point where he can trade it with the tgké. From the village of temporary resi- dence, he may carry a back-basket of goods to more remote villages, trading the goods for rice. The belukar, for obvious reasons, tends to be a young, single man. He is extended the hospitality due a guest by the community in which he tempor— arily resides. If he has no relatives in the community, the village chief is duty-bound to provide hospitality. In the old days, the villagers sent a basket from bilik_to bilik into which was placed each family's contribution of rice or an egg to provision the belukar during his much appreciated visit to the village. In reciprocation, the belukar provided tobacco to all the men who gathered around him to talk through the night of news he brought from other parts. Today he provides his own rice and the hospitality he receives in the chief's bilik is tainted by a tax assessed on belukars and split bet- ween the chief and the 93335 at Balai Sepuak. Much of the context of doing business in the old days lingers on, however. -173- Every visit to a 33kg or paraih entitles the customer to several glasses of sugar-tea and tobacco and, if it is meal- time, to rice and whatever relish is available. If dark is approaching, a place to sleep is provided. The "soft-sell" is clearly the rule in the Belitang Hulu. The context of trade for the villagers of Sungai Mulau includes all three types of traders. Each type will be dis- cussed briefly in order to convey a sense of the kinds of trade goods available and, thus, the trading options confront- ing the people of Sungai Mulau. Pak Ahli is a young Malay man from a Malay village down river, Kampung Basung. He trades as a belukar, taking trade goods on consignment from a Chinese trader in the Kapuas River town of Nanga Sepauk and trading them for rubber and rice in the headwaters of the Mulau River and its branches. Typically, he brings his goods into the longhouse and resides there in the bilik of Pak Ragu, to which he claims a kinship tie, until the goods are exhausted. The stay lasts between two and three weeks during which he walks to villages further upstream that have no resident trader. He trades sugar, tea, coffee, kerosene, monosodium glutamate, soap, matches, tobacco,znu1rubber sandals. His connection with the Malay community, some of whom fish on the lower Belitang and Kapuas Rivers to supplement their in- comes, frequently permits him to carry in a large jar of pickled fish or a bag of salted fish; these are much appreciated by the people of the headwaters of these small rivers where fishing is -174- less productive. Business is brisk when the belukar arrives but, as the array of goods he can offer shrinks, his volume dwindles and he keeps an anxious eye on the weather, hoping for a substantial rain that will allow him to get his boat out with the rubber and rice received in trade. There is a variation of the belukar that is more itinerant in character. A man with no capital takes on consignment a larger volume of one particular kind of goods such as cloth- ing or household goods (plastic buckets, pots and pans, tea glasses, etc.) and hires one or two men to carry the goods with him from village to village, spendingcnfljra day in each village. The goods offered by the itinerant belukar are typically not "carried" by other belukars and paraih and so their efforts are complementary. Visits to these hinterland villages by such itinerant belukars vary from occasional to rare. Sungai Mulau has a paraih among its villagers in the person of the village chief, Pak Akim, who is a good example of this kind of trader. He trades a somewhat wider selection of goods than the belukar and receives rice and rubber in ex- change. In recent months he has begun to accept pepper in trade as well. In addition to the goods mentioned above for the belukar, the paraih typically offers cloth, thread, towels, inexpensive sarongs, plastic ware, kitchen utensils, condensed milk, coconut oil, shrimp paste, flashlights and batteries, toothpaste,zuu1acetic acid (22kg) for rubber coagulation as long as the stock holds. Like the belukar Pak Akim's trade is ~175- brisk when he first returns from Balai Sepauk where he trades with the large-scale 33kg, Pak Benni, but trade falls off as the stock gets low, forcing him to weigh the decision of the timing of another trip. Also like the belukar, he is forced to wait for high water, but, because of his larger stock of trade goods he does not make the trip downriver nearly so often. The trade opportunities for Pak Akim are especially good because of his location in the last village on the river reachable by motor boat, at least some days of the year. If the villagers of Sungai Mulau are willing to walk the one and one-half hour trip to Pakit Mulau Hulu, they can do business with the Egké Pak Akar, a man of Chinese descent who was not required to immigrate to the Kapuas because he is married to a Dayak wife of this village. Pak Akar maintains a full-scale store. In contrast to a paraih who interrupts his work (even in the rice field) to return to the bilik_to attend to the customer who has walked in from a nearby village, Pak Akar is nearly always present, sitting cross-legged on a mat serving tea among his trade goods. The Egkg enjoys a higher volume of trade than the other forms Of traders for two reasons. First, the river is larger permitting more frequent contact with the outside and, second, because of greater capitalizatiOn, the tgké can carry a larger and more varied stock. Combs, toothbrushes, hairoil, a few medicines, belts, ready-made clothing, metal blanks for tools, nails, pressure lamps, lamp globes, aluminum pots and kettles, packaged -176- cookies and noodles, pickled fish,znu1bottled ar§k_(a rice brandy) are goods that typically get no farther up the river than this, except by special order. Table 20 lists the price of hulled rice (bgras), rubber, and sugar during the fieldwork period as well as the wage for a day of labor in the village of Sungai Mulau. These are the three most important goods traded in terms of volume and con- stitute a sort of index of trade conditions for the community. Pakit Mulau Hulu prices are included to show the basic differ- ences in prices between these two locations where the villagers do nearly all of their trading. The price of rice and wages both fluctuate with the phases of the agricultural cycle but also show an overall upward trend. Sugar appears to move up and down without any apparent trend. For rubber, however, there is a dramatic increase in price overall, with signifi— cant jumps occurring in December 1978 and May 1979. It is reasonable to believe the increase in rubber prices was due to a surprise 50 per cent devaluation of the Indonesian currency on November 15,1978 (the Indonesian rupiah valued at Rp 415 = U.S. $1 was changed to Rp 625 = U.S. $1). The government accom- panied the devaluation with several monetary measures that were meant to prevent domestic inflation, including restriction of the money supply and price controls (Dick 1979: 1). One of the intentions was precisely to increase the attractiveness of cash crop production of the smallholder, which, in the case of rubber had been stagnant for sometime. -177- mom umxmm mom-mme mmm mmm mmm seas: mamasm mumsunom oaxmm moo mmm mmm mmm seas: memesm mama awesome mmm oaxmm mow mom mmN-omH mom-ooe seas: mamasm HODEOOOQ omxmm mom mom mmH moa-mmm seas: mamasm ponEo>oz oaxmm mom mma mmm seas: Hmmasm Honouoo mom mam “exam mom mmH mom seas: memesm ponEoumom umxmm moe mom mmH mom swan: mmmcsm umowo< “exam omm mom sums: mamasm mmmH maze xeo: x>mog xuoz ucwaa ammom menace WMHMQ own: Aaflwo .mcmmmsm a“ memo; mocoz one muooooam xox mo mooaum .om magma -178- omxmm swan: «mmcsm honouuo mmm mmm mmxmm mmm mmm mom-mmm mmo seas: mmmoom honEOpoom mNm-mmm mmm-omo “exam mom moo mom moo mmo ammo: mmmoom umzmo< mom moo-mmo mmxmm omm mme mmm-mom ome-mmm omo seas: ammosm .zaom omo-m~o pmxmm mNm moo moo ammo: mmmosm ooze moo omxmm mmm mmm mmm ammo: momeom mm: mom umxmm mmm mNm-omN omm ammo: mommsm Hmpo< umxom moo mmm mmm mmm some: mmmesm none: #903 >>mon Moos uzmwa emmsm Menane wmwwm owes Aaamo o.o.p:06o om oases -179- .Ome non ooauo Hookup one we Queen Hmwom one Oman: .OHmM pom mwooom oomeu umcmmmmo oowum one we momma gonna» one .wcmucmm woo ooapo Houpmn one we ooflnm wagon one ”MHOZ fl.o_oeouo mm «Home -180- Terms of Trade To an outsider, the terms of trade appear quite complex because of the complications resulting from the partially-mone- tized economy. Several considerations involved in determining the terms of trade will be discussed point by point to demon- strate the "rationality" behind each of them. Prices understandably vary as one travels along the river. Since most trade goods originate, for purposes of our reasoning, in Pontianak, they increase gradually in price as they are trans- ported up the Kapuas River and into its tributaries. In the subtributaries, where water transportation is not dependable because Of fluctuations in water level, under pressing need, such as a forthcoming gawai season, trade goods can be carried in at even higher prices. Generally, the price of sugar in Sungai Mulau is Rp 25 per kilo higher than at Pakit Mulau Hulu, one and one-half hours walk away and Rp 50 higher than at Balai Sepuak, a six hour walk. The price of rubber in Sungai Mulau is typically Rp 25 per kilo lower than at Pakit Mulau Hulu although one never knows the price for certain until the rubber has been carried into the trader's bilik and the price negotiated. By contrast, hill rice is cheaper in the hinter- land, rising in price gradually as one goes downriver. The superior flavor of hill rice is everywhere acknowledged. Pre- dictably, imported rice is the reverse, increasing in price as one proceeds upriver. All of this is explained by the costs of transporting the goods. -l8l- To illustrate what such price differentials can mean to a household in Sungai Mulau, consider a very common transaction taking place in the rubber-tapping season of 1979. For those who carry their own rubber to Pakit Mulau Hulu to trade for more favorable prices, about 40 kilos of sheet rubber are typical for the trip. With the gawai celebration coming up sugar is the trade good in most demand so the household will buy at least 20 kilos of sugar. Using the common price differ- ential quoted above, the three hour round trip involved will give a Rp 1,500 advantage to the villager for less than one- half day's work. This is a most favorable advantage when com- pared with the daily wage. The differential is Often more pro- nounced than this, thus, making the trip even more attractive economically. A second consideration in the terms of trade is the supply and demand context. Hill rice fluctuates in price through the agricultural season due to supply and demand as do wages. This is not the case for trade goods brought into the area. The prices of trade goods do not rise and fall with local avail- ability. How can this be accounted for and how can we account for the fact that the trader fixes the terms of trade; there being no haggling involved in the transaction? First of all, a man who has carried his 40 kilos of rubber over a hilly and swampy jungle path is not likely to carry the rubber back home if he does not like the trader's prices on that day. Nor can he walk a few steps to a nearby competitor -182- to try to negotiate a more favorable deal for himself. He is "heavily" committed to "carrying" through the transaction. Se- cond, the transaction is at the same time a personal relation- ship. The trader, except for the belukar, is a member of the community and likely always will be. He has a reputation for fairness to uphold in order to preserve each trading relation- ship. To haggle over prices, to give different people differ- ent prices, to appear to be taking advantage Of someone on the basis of some temporary economic leverage would all threaten these personal relationships upon which successful trade is built. In contrast to impersonal, single-dimensional trade in the cities, not only are these traders, except belukars, permanent fixtures in the community and so a reputation of being a "just" person is essential, but also all transactions are public knowledge and the terms of trade are widely shared to provide fellow villagers with the latest information (cf. Humphries 1969: 188). One's transactions are commonly con- ducted sitting cross-legged on a mat surrounded by several others sipping sugar-tea. In addition to a wholesale differential in transactions between levels of traders, there is also a capital to credit ratio that helps determine the volume of goods a particular trader handles. The belukar, with little or no capital, is extended minimal credit by the tgkg, and so necessarily trades on a much smaller scale than the paraih who, having more capital invested, enjoys a higher limit Of credit. -183- The wholesale differential for trade generally runs between 14 and 29 per cent. The trader absorbs the costs of transport- ation which in this hinterland context are considerable. For example, an item selling for Rp 350 at the store at Balai Sepuak would be conveyed to another trader for Rp 325. That item would sell for Rp 400 at Sungai Mulau, which is an 18.75 percent.markupin "money price." But this is money price and the matter is somewhat more complex than that. As has already been made plain, most transactions are barter transactions; rubber or rice is exchanged for trade goods. Ward and Ward's survey found that eighty percent of the hinterland trade was barter (1974: 38). Still, the villagers have need of some cash. All transactions with the government and other institutions originating outside their area, such as schools and medical facilities, require cash. Consequently, there is a three price systemixleffect. The trade goods in a store have simultaneously three prices: a money price; a rubber price; and a rice price. The availability of money varies inversely with the distance the goods travel. In Balai Sepuak the 33kg can almost always buy rubber or rice with cash. The IBKE at Pakit, however, often runs short of cash and, when he does so, he generally will accept the commodity with the promise of paying the cash at a later date when he can get it. At the bilik of the paraih, however, cash may be available or it may not. The paraih and belukar may refuse to trade on a cash basis. trade milk" money Akim). money trade cash, -184- Figure 7 diagrams the relationships between the values of goods (a can of sweetened, condensed milk known as "Indo- is chosen for illustrative purposes), rice, rubber, and from the perspective of the trader (for example, Pak When Pak Akim can buy local rice (bgrgs) for Rp 350 per gantang he will exchange it for Rp 400 value in goods. He will most likely refuse to sell the rice for preferring to have rice on hand to trade for rubber, which is the usual means of acquiring rice for the household in deficit. The trade goods can be sold for cash and traded for rice and rubber. If rubber is accepted in exchange for trade goods, it is accorded a higher value than if exchanged for cash. If rubber is being bought for Rp 350 per kilo, a kilo of rubber will be received against trade goods valued at Rp 400. This is explained by the fact that the trade goods contain a mark-up for the trader. Collier and Werdaja, in their study of the marketing of rubber (1972: 44; Table 4), show that middlemen in isolated areas make less profit (7.0 - 4.0%) than those in non- isolated area (11.3 - 8.0%) and argue that this is explained by the fact that the middlemen in isolated areas make a profit from trade goods that helps finance their trading Operations. The use offiuooomeom m.eoomhh .5 oeowflm Hannah onx H woe» wampcmw H nonnou Oflwx H "mHHom mecca oov om mooow . momma moo am .mHHmm >o¢oE omm om ”mzom moan mfimufimw mfio mooow mommy ooe om mocoe omm om Hannah oawx ”mxom Ono -186- by virtue of its special characteristics of universality and portability, is accorded special status in its exchange against the cash crOps and trade goods. Credit is a final consideration of the conditions of trade in the Belitang Hulu. The trader extends credit to the vill- agers in the sense of deferred payment for goods taken. There is no "interest" on this credit. On the other hand, it is com- mon for the villager to extend credit to the trader when he leaves his rubber or rice in exchange for trade goods or money the trader presently lacks to complete the transaction. Under such generous credit conditions, it is obvious that credit must be limited. For a paraih on the scale of Pak Akim, credit of up to Rp 4,000 to a household is common. Such a household, wishing to get further extended, can seek credit with other traders until it is hopelessly insolvent. It was the consensus of my informants that the failure to manipulate credit trans- actions to their own advantage is the most important reason that so many Mualang villagers who have tried to engage in trading have failed. There is a final form of trade that, although not well articulated to the system of trade just discussed, nonetheless sheds some light on the economic context of the Belitang Hulu area and thus is deserving of consideration here. This is the trade expedition to Sarawak. It has been noted above that in the years immediately after World War II the Mualang began to trade in Sarawak because of a lack of availability of trade -187- goods. The exact precipitation of this trade was actually in the reverse direction. The Japanese control of the island brought the end to rice imports and so the island was forced into self-sufficiency. The Mualang of the Belitang Hulu had come to enjoy a reputation as always obtaining a surplus of rice and so the Iban of Sarawak began to travel here to work 11 These connections for wages (pgdi) and to trade for rice. between the Iban and the Mualang began to result in marriages and, after World War II, in travel to Sarawak to trade rubber for trade goods. Such trade was prohibited by the Indonesian government as it had been by the Dutch but the mountain range border with Sarawak was poorly patrolled and so little risk was involved in the trade they called "semukil." a corruption of the Dutch word smokkelen, meaning to smuggle. Today, the villager is required to obtain identification papers from the ggmag at Balai Sepuak in order to cross the border into Sarawak. Since Balai Sepuak is a two day round trip from Sungai Mulau, however, the villagers are, understand- ably, unlikely to truck with such formalities. The character of the trade has changed considerably over time with the change in availability of goods in Indonesia. Many goods available in Sarawak are highly valued and some goods from Sarawak are considered superior to similar goods available in Indonesia. For example, the fertilizer for pepper from Sarawak is thought 11The Mualang attribute these "good times" to their conver- sion to Christianity. -188- by the villagers to be superior to the fertilizer available in Indonesia. Rubber shoes from Sarawak are different and con- sidered better than rubber shoes available in Indonesia. People no longer carry rubber to Sarawak because it is so easy to dispose of locally. They carry instead high-value goods such as pepper, pigs, anteater scales (sisik tenggiling), the bezore stones (monkey gallstones, geliga) much in demand in the Chinese apothecary shop, and fighting cocks much in demand by the Iban. Such exotic items have little demand in Indone- sia. Such a trading expedition to Sarawak can be quite lucra- tive. Pak Pating of bilik II bought up 50 kilos of anteater scales in the Sungai Mulau area at Rp 300 per kilo for a Rp 15,000 investment. He then payed a wage for a man to accompany him (bekuli) on the 7 day trip to and from Sarawak. The wage ofbw 42.50, the boat trip on the Ketungau River leg of the trip both ways for Rp 2,500, and feeding the kgli at a high level for Rp 2,100, which includes meat in the meals, consti- tutestflmeexpenses for the journey totally Rp 15,225.12 In Sarawak the anteater scales were sold for M$ 3 per kgti for a total of M$ 249.00. With this money he bought a radio for M$ 85.00, 11 pairs of rubber shoes for M$ 33.80, a can of herbicide for M$ 8.00, 5 cans of Milo chocolate powder for M$ 10.00, a batik sarong for M$ 8.00, another batik sarong for 12At this time, M$ 1.00 was valued at Rp 250. ~189- M$ 4.00, a half blik of cookies for M$ 6.00,:nu13 cassette tapes for M$ 6.00. These items were carried back home, some to be sold, others to be given as gifts. From the radio, which he sold to a Chinese trader at Nanga Belitang for Rp 40,000, he made a profit of Rp 18,750. From the sale of the 11 pairs of rubber shoes to his fellow villagers for Rp 1,500 per pair, he made a profit of Rp 8,050. From the sale of the herbicide, he made a profit of Rp 2,000. The M$ 34.00 in gifts (valued at Rp 8,500) is in addition to the Rp 20,625 that is the cash profit from the trip for a total of Rp 29,125 profit. For the seven days, that figures out to Rp 4,161 per day, a handsome return in this economy. This kind of trading between the Indonesian and Malaysian economies is frequently combined with working for one to three months in Sarawak tapping rubber, hoeing pepper or whatever is available. The wage labor, which is more highly remunerated in Sarawak than in the Belitang Hulu, provides the capital for more high-value trade goods to be carried back home for a pro- fit. Nearer the Klingkang Mountains, most villages have one, two, or even several families that live, for the most part, on this Sarawak trade. In the Sungai Mulau area this trade is typically carried out by adventurous young men not yet partici- pating to any great extent in farming. This trade traffic is e5pecially heavy during the weeding season when these young men seize the Opportunity to travel from the longhouse while rations are short, thus escaping the weeding burden. -190- National Government Emanations It has already been pointed out how the national government, by manipulating the value of the currency, has changed the economic context for the community. This makes the point emphat- ically that through trade and the use of money, village economic life is articulated with the economy of the Indonesian nation. More indirectly,tjuagovernment's provision of schools and medi- cal clinics has had a profound effect on the context of oppor- tunities that the people of this area have been quick to realize. In addition, the nation state intrudes into the economic char- acter of the hinterland village by means of certain "economic development” policies. It is difficult to know to what extent working together for the common good ("gotong-royongV is notzaMualang word) has been traditional for the Mualang. Traditional Mualang society was very likely organized to require little of this kind of thing although the principle is not inconsistent with Mualang culture. The coming of the missionaries with the attendant need for churches, schools, homes for ministers and students and, more recently, community development projects have produced the need for public work to be institutionalized. Today, the government requires each household to contribute one able-bodied male to work one day per week in a community work party assigned a task benefitting the common good. This public work service (kerja bakti) maintains village paths by cutting weeds and lining logs end-to-end through swampy areas, builds and repairs public buildings such as the church, -191- ministers' and teachers' houses, student dormitories,znuiother- wise contributes the labor to accomplish the village's develop- ment projects. The village development projects are based upon yearly grants (uangsubsidi) from the government to the village to be used on projects selected by the village from a list of projects acceptable to the government. Sungai Mulau received Rp 350,000 in 1978-79 to buy a pgdi-processing machine. For their work service, the villagers built a shed to house the machine. In 1977-78 they received Rp 350,000 to buy tools to tear down their longhouse and build individual houses for each household. The tools were distributed equally among the households, but the longhouse still has a lot of life in it and, barring unfore- seen pressure from the ggmag, will stand for several more years.13 In 1976-77 the village was granted Rp 300,000 with which it built two bridges between the longhouse and the school- church community at Immanuel. In 1975-76, with a grant of Rp 100,000, they built a bridge across the river at the bathing place. Other development projects undertaken in neighboring villages are the building of a "wet-p_di" field, the making of a community rice field, the building of rice storage sheds, ’13It has been government policy for some time to prohibit the building of longhouses (Far Eastern Economic Review Vol 100, No. 26: 22-27). Consequently, except for a few isolated Kecamatans where the camat has not been aggressive in imple- menting this policy, the longhouse has just about disappeared from the scene in Indonesian Kalimantan. -192- buying motor and boat so the villagers can trade further down- river to get better prices, and building community houses (balai desa) for entertaining guests when no longhouse ruai exists. Finally, the villagers incur certain taxes (pgjak). In the days of Dutch indirect rule through the Malay Sultanates, the Mualang paid what they considered an extremely odious tax of ten gantangs beras per household. They boast that actually they were almost always able to avoid the tax. Today they pay a fee of Rp 250 to register each firearm, a tax of Rp 600 per year for a radio,znu1Rp 1,000 per year for a radio-cassette tape combination. During the field study, a Rp 250 tax on each bilik was announced as a "development tax" (pajak bangunan) causing immediate suspicion of corruption since most years this area avoids paying the "land tax" on the basis of poor harvests and, hence, insufficiency. Clearly, the development of the area is not supported by the tax burden on the villagers (Lerche 1980: 40-44; Ward and Ward 1974: 47-50). CHAPTER VI PRODUCTION PERFORMANCE OF THE DOMESTIC UNITS In his recent work, Sahlins (1971, 1972) has proposed that, in primitive economies, certain production organiza- tion and performance tendencies follow naturally from the condition of households producing for their own use. These natural tendencies, termed the "domestic mode of production," underlie production performance in all primitive societies where domestic unit production relations are found. Because social, political, and ideological relations in primitive communities are, at the same time, the economic relations among households, much can be learned about these relations, Sahlins suggests, by studying how the households' production performances deviate in practice from these natural tenden- cies. From Chapters III and IV, it should be clear that the production relations of Sungai Mulau accord nicely with the domestic mode of production (DMP) model. The data on house- hold economic performance is, therefore, organized to permit this DMP scheme to be tested. This chapter describes the domestic units of the village of Sungai Mulau in details relative to economic performance and then presents the com- parative data on domestic unit performance. From these comparisons questions can be generated about domestic unit -193- ‘194' material provisioning strategies and the relations between these domestic units which constitute the sociopolitical context of mutual dependence. These mutual dependence rela- tions are at issue in the question of the fit of the conven- tional models of primitive and peasant economic order to the hinterland Southeast Asian cases. The description of the domestic units follows from the census of biliks (Table 2). The considerations at hand require the deletion of certain official members of the community because, for purposes of household economy, they are independent. As we shall see in Chapter VII, children working away from the village typically do not send money back to the family, and children attending school far from home are required to make their own way and so have a very small influence on the household's economic conduct. Table 21, therefore, revises the village census to facilitate an inquiry into household production performance. Table 21 shows the composition of the bilik families during the agricultural season to which the economic perform- ance data pertains, namely, June 1978 to June 1979. A slight complication in the display of data is introduced by the fact that bilik XIII partitioned during this agricultural season and so in tables referring to economic data, subsequent to this founding of the new household, bilik XIII becomes biliks XIII and XIIIB headed by Bu Norcé and Pak Lanas re- spectively. “195' Table 21. Domestic Unit Consumer - Worker Ratios. Worker Consumer Name Sex Age Coef. Coef. Remarks Bilik No. I c/w ratio = 1.95 1. Ragu M 49 1.0 1.0 2. Ludam F 47 1.0 0.8 3. Sin M 16 0.2 1.0 4. Yunus M 13 0.0 0.8 5. Bakair M 10 0.0 0.7 2.2 4.3 Bilik No. II c/w ratio = 1.48 1. Munyau M 80 0.0 0.8 Blind brother of 2 2. Yok F 69 0.5 0.6 3. Pating M 35 1.0 1.0 4. Ensung F 35 1.0 0.8 5. Mari F 3 0.0 0.3 6. Ilon F k 0.0 0.2 2.5 3.7 Bilik No. 111 c/w ratio = 1.85 1. Cuguh M 70 0.0 0.8 2. Samin F 69 0.5 0.6 3. Mina F 46 1.0 0.8 Incorporated into this bilik 10/78 4. Yusak M 38 1.0 1.0 5. Ani F 38 1.0 0.8 6. Radung M 16 0.2 1.0 7. Haron M 14 0.0 1.0 8. Miré F 10 0.2 0.7 9. Jamin M 7 0.0 0.5 3.9 7.2 Bilik No. IV c/w ratio = 2.5 1. Payung F 18 1.0 0.8 2. Aden M 16 0.2 1.0 3. Ungam M 14 0.0 1.0 4. Menai F 10 0.2 0.7 H .h (N 01 -196- Table 21 (cont'd.) Worker Consumer Name Sex Age Coef. Coef. Remarks Bilik No. V c/w ratio = 1.18 l. Akim M 55 1.0 1.0 2. Dumoi F 50 1.0 0.8 3. Imi F 12 0.2 0.8 2.2 2.6 Bilik No. VI c/w ratio = 1.43 1. Saing M 63 0.0 0.8 Disabled with tuberculosis 2. Nyai F 62 0.5 0.8 3. Simau M 29 1.0 1.0 4. Lihut F 21 1.0 0.8 5. Empili M 20 1.0 1.0 6. Yokebet F 16 0.0 0.8 Attends school SMP B3131 Sepuak 3.5 5 0 Bilik No. VII c/w ratio = 1.5 1. Gantung M 65 0.5 0.8 2. Jampa F 60 0.5 0.6 3. Repka F 39 1.0 0.8 4. Tudius M 36 1.0 1.0 5. Kerem M 10 0.0 0.7 6. Luci F 9 0.0 0.6 3.0 4.5 Bilik No. VIII c/w ratio = 1.03 l. Gum F 55 1.0 0.8 2. Biden M 38 1.0 1.0 3. Lama F 25 1.0 0.8 4. Unatan M 20 1.0 1.0 5. Lipan M 3 0.0 0.3 6. Lawat F 8_ 0.0 0.2 A O .b H Table 21 (cont'd.). -197- Worker Consumer Name Sex Age Coef. Coef. Remarks Bilik No. IX c/w ratio = 1.95 l. Jangi M 34 1.0 1.0 2. Jeni F 30 1.0 0.8 3. Derah F 9 0.0 0.6 4. Agung M 8 0.0 0.6 5. Encil M 6 0.0 0.5 6. Delak M 4 0.0 0.4 2.0 3.9 Bilik No. X c/w ratio = 2.4 1. Nanyit F 43 1.0 0.8 2. Nyelan M 42 1.0 1.0 3. Dulus M 14 0.0 1.0 4. Jutan M 12 0.0 0.8 5. Yusak M 7 0.0 0.5 6. Ensawi F S 0.0 0.4 7. Radung M 3 0.0 0.3 2.0 4.8 Bilik No. XI c/w ratio = 2.23 1. Mambang M 45 1.0 1.0 2. Lutum F 45 1.0 0.8 3. Kai M 19 0.2 1.0 4. Una F 16 0.0 0.8 Attends school (SMP) Balai Sepuak 5. Hawa F 15 0.2 0.8 6 Mina F 14 0.2 0.8 7. Burah F 8 0.0 0.6 2.6 5.8 Bilik No. XII c/w ratio = 1.2 1. Turet F 80 0.0 0.6 2. Merinjan F 55 1.0 0.8 3. Sekios M 46 1.0 1.0 N O N O .5 -l98- Table 21 (cont'd.). Worker Consumer Name Sex Age Coef. Coef. Remarks Bilik No. XIII c/w ratio = 1.05 1. Norcé F 55 1.0 0.8 2. Kunyit F 19 1.0 0.8 3. Sunyai F 10 0.2 0.7 2.2 2.3 Bilik No. XIIIB c/w ratio = 0.9 l. Lanas M 24 1.0 1.0 2. Selapo' F 23 1.0 0.8 2.0 1.8 Bilik No. XIV c/w ratio = 2.03 1. Kudul M 80 0.0 0.8 2. Nyawai M 48 1.0 1.0 3. Mari F 44 1.0 0.8 4. Suli F 25 1.0 0.8 5. Aden M 18 0.2 1.0 6. Yumasi M 15 0.2 1.0 7. Salak F 9 0.0 0.6 8. Alos F 6 0.0 0.5 9. Juni M 4 0.0 0.4 3.4 6.9 Bilik No. XV c/w ratio = 1.91 1. Talip M 39 1.0 1.0 2. Untik F 37 1.0 0.8 3. Rabai F 15 0.0 0.8 Crippled by polio 4. Gimot F 11 0.2 0.7 5. Merinjan F 7 0.0 0.5 6. Mura F 4 0.0 0.4 2.2 4.2 Bilik NO. XVI c/w ratio = 0.9 1. Luya F 58 1.0 0.8 2. Aman M 28 l 0 -199- Table 21 (cont'd.). Worker Consumer Name Sex Age Coef. Coef. Remarks Bilik No. XVII c/w ratio = 1.73 1. Banan M 52 1.0 1.0 Disabled with tuberculosis 2. Ungam M 26 0.0 1.0 Adoption attempt/ returned to parents 3. Kadir M 18 0.2 1 0 Hiatus from school (SMP)'Ba1ai Sepuak 4. Bunga F 17 l 0 0.8 2 2 ‘378’ Bilik No. XVIII c/w ratio = 1.47 1. Sandoi M 48 1.0 1.0 2. Peruah F 37 1.0 0.8 3. Ani F 18 0.0 0.8 Attends school (SMP) Balai Sepuak 4. Mawang F 16 1.0 0.8 5. Salau M 8 0.0 0.6 6. Wak M 5 0.0 0.4 3.0 4.4 Bilik No. XIX c/w ratio = 1.3 l. Amoi F 35 1.0 0.8 2. Sigan M 34 1.0 1.0 3. Tangkai F 31 1.0 0.8 4. Daut M 11 0.0 0.7 5. Kumpai F 4 0.0 0.4 6. Melson M 1 0.0 0.2 3.0 3.9 Bilik No. XX c/w ratio = 2.29 1. Haron M 40 1.0 1.0 2. Sulah F 39 1.0 0.8 3. Menasé M 16 0.0 1.0 Attends school (SMP) Balai Sepuak 4. Tia F 14 0.2 0.8 5. Mawang F 11 0.2 0 7 6. Anah F 7 0.0 0.5 7. Angit F 5 0.0 0.4 8. Ngawan F 2 0.0 0.3 N O k U" U1 -200- The "worker coefficient," an index of the capability of labor power of a person based on that of a full-time, adult worker, was determined by inspection to conform to the laboring customs of the community under study and is speci- fied in Table 22. Table 22. Worker Coefficients. Male Female Age 70+ 0.0 70+ 0.0 60 - 69 0.5 60 - 69 0.5 20 - 59 1.0 16 - 59 1.0 15 - 19 0.2 10 - 15 0.2 0 - 14 0.0 0 - 9 0.0 The "consumption coefficient," an index of food consump- tion of a person based on the consumption of an adult male, is a slight modification of the "K scale" of the Mixed Com- mittee of the League of Nations Final Report on the Relations of Nutrition to Health,Agricu1ture and Economic Poligy (1937: 243) and is specified in Table 23. I have altered the "K scale" to the extent of reducing the coefficient of consump- tion for females over 60 years of age from 0.8 to 0.6 on the basis of measures of processed rice washed in preparation for cooking the household meal. (Actual measurements of consump- tion by individuals was not made.) Students attending the middle-school (SMP) at Balai Sepuak are included in the table as consumers but not as -201- Table 23. Consumption Coefficients. Age Male Female 60+ 0.8 0.6 14-59 1.0 0.8 12-13 0.8 0.8 10-11 0.7 0.7 8- 9 0.6 0.6 6- 7 0.5 0.5 4- 5 0.4 0.4 2- 3 0.3 0.3 - 1 0.2 0.2 workers because, although they are supported by their bilik families, they make almost no labor contribution. Their rice is supplied from the family's production and they may tap their bilik's rubber trees for the cash to supply other needs. Children at school in the more distant river towns or on the coast supply their own needs except for an occasional gift of rice from the parents; thus, they are not included in calcu- lations of either workers or consumers. Students attending elementary school (S.D.) at the nearby Kalveri school-church complex are accorded their apprOpriate consumer and worker values. Rice production figures used in Chapter V are reproduced here in Table 24. This table lists the rice production for each bilik in the agricultural year Of 1978-1979 and shows the extent to which production was sufficient provisioning based on the bilik's usual consumption Of rice, including use as food for domestic animals. This figure does not include -202- Table 24. Domestic Unit Rice Production Performance. 1979 1979 % 1978 % Bilik Rice Yield* Sufficiency Sufficiency I. Ragu 1347 77% 100+% 11. Yok 889 85 100+ III. Yusak 3203 128 81 IV. Payung 567 47 67 V. Akim 779 70 100+ VI. Saing 1331 79 94 VII. Gantung 1903 102 100+ VIII. Gum 1716 106 100 IX. Jangi 1097 76 67 X. Nyelan 1033 62 63 XI. Mambang 1026 62 54 XII. Sekios 1360 118 100+ XIII. Norce/Lanas 642/1027 89/121 100 XIV. Nyawai 1156 57 46 XV. Talip 1263 103 88 XVI. Luya 837 121 100+ XVII. Banan 1797 156 100+ XVIII. Sandoi 1510 119 100 XIX. Amoi 494 47 -- XX. Haron 1128 64 63 *In gantangs of padi. the conventional contribution of rice to the church (this averages 1.3%) and also allows no diminution from post harvest losses. Also provided is an estimate of 1978 sufficiency based on recording the date at which the bilik exhausted the rice from the previous harvest. It was agreed by the villagers that overall the 1979 harvest was slightly poorer than 1978 and the 1978 harvest was about average for this community. With regard to rice sufficiency, the village can be conceived of as composed of three classes of biliks: those that nearly always produce a surplus (I, II, V, XVI, XVII); those that -203- typically produce about the amount required for their families needs (111, VI, VII, VIII, XII, XIII, XV, XVIII); and those that perennially fall short (IV, IX, X, XI, XIV, XIX, XX). Table 25 presents the rubber-tapping data for each bilik, by week for 52 weeks, reconstructed from the weekly labor input surveys. Viewed in the context of the phases of the agricultural cycle, it illustrates clearly how the tapping of rubber is integrated into the subsistence system dominated by rice production. Rubber-tapping activity is low during the planting and harvest periods, moderate during the weeding season (households suffering a deficit tap rubber to buy rice), and high during the post-weeding, post-harvest and gawai celebration phases of the agricultural cycle. An elaboration of the explanation of Table 25 is required. It is common, when labor availability permits, to share the rubber-tapping chore. The term "chore" conveys the Mualang attitude that this work is most disagreeable. The carrying of heavy buckets and the constant stooping involved are com- monly cited as causes of the widely shared complaint of backache--a few people even suffer from morning rubber tap- ping headaches. The point to be made here is that sometimes a second or even a third member of the bilik will help with the work. In such cases the intention may be to increase the yield, but more commonly it is merely to lesson the burden. This distinction cannot be read from Table 25 but, of course, was essential for the calculations displayed in Table 27. 85. xx H N H H N H. N o o m N o N N N N 8.2 H: No o H. N o m H. H N o H. N o H. N H. N H853 2:: mo mN mo oN R o N H. o N HHo N o... oHN oHN oHN mo mHN oHN oHN NH. SN 533 :i H N N N o o N N N N N N o N £3 E H N N N N N N N o N N N N N 33. NoH H mN oHN oHN No o N N H. N No So so HHm NHo mN NH. N oHN mHN NHo mo N H. mN o H962 2x No 8:3 H5: mo oHN mHN mN 882 HH: H o N N H N N H. o N 858 :x . mo oHN oHN ow NHo NHo H H N 3 o NH. No NN mm NN NN NN oN NN mo NN H. N N N N595: Hx M N N N No mN N N N v 5:32 x 7.. oN mo N o N NHo mo oN mN H. N H. HNSH. o: o N o N N N No Home NoHNNoHNm mHN ad :5 NH. oo oN H.N H. oHN NHo oHN mo oHN mHN 935m :> HVN oN oN mN N o H. N N N o N o N N58 5 5.2 > N NV NH. No o o H N N oHo N mo mHN oHN H1N mo mass. 2 mo NHo o N o HHo SN 5 oHN Han; .HHH oN H N o mo N o N oN H o N N N N N N No» .HH N mo oN NN mHo mHN N N No NHN N N N N N o N H. o N 35. .H Er N. .32 HN- mm“. NN- .Eo N. 8o HN- .82 NN- sum mN-NN HHH; 22 22 . . .>p«>fluo< mnemomb-ponnom mo HMOHOCOHnu .mm magma -205- .Noow mqu mauooHocH Hogan: uHuHo Ozu < .xoo: ozu :H mcooumw dengue acouowuHe ozu sou Has oHO;ONooz ozu mo muonsos 03H :OHNmqu :o .N:Ompoo OHOE HO oco .AD UOHmwmmfi m6} RQQn—QH OCH OUQUM—JCM MHQMHUWLDW OSP .X003 LOGO bow WMCMHSO MO H0855: 05H 0%“ MOHQMMM 05h. “ZOHPHx NH N.N NH NN mHN mHN 35.. NHHHH NH NH H mHN mHN mN NHo mHN H HHo NHo HN NH NH NHo HN NHo 832 EN H N H H H N N oN H H 838 HHH N H w. NH m H N N N oNN NHo NHo NHN N HN N HHH. «4H Nfiofiz HHH NH mHN mHN NH mHN HN H NH HN H :2on x N HN NH HN NHo NH H N mHN oN NN HN NH NH HNSHH. HHH N NN NH. N». H So .HHH> N NH H o H NH NN N 28:8 :> NN HN r. oN NH HN N oNoN NHoH NHo mN oHo N53 S 52 > N mo mHN NH NN N N H No N HN mo N NN HN NN H.N N N Ea >H NN oN HN NH NN No No oH NHH NHo NHo mHN HN NN NH NH Home» E N N N N o N N N o N NH NH Ho» HH N N N H H NH mm o HN NH NH NH N o N NN as. H .Hoo 8. .38 N. NE NN- boo NN- 2% 8. a: N -Ez oN HHHHN . AoLHHouo mm mans. ‘206' Table 26 lists the typical outing yield of rubber tapped by each bilik to demonstrate the differences with respect to the potential product of various rubber gardens and the con- ascer- sequent outing yields obtained. These yields were tained by interview rather than by direct weighing; however, Table 26. Estimated Rubber-Tapping Yields. Bilik Typical Single-Outing Potential Yield for Yield Rubber Garden I. Ragu 3.5 (4.5)* kilo 5 kilo II. Yok 3.5 (5.5) 8 III. Yusak 3.0 (5.0) 8 IV. Payung 3.5 6 V. Akim 3.5 6 VI. Saing 2.5 3 VII. Gantung 3.0 (5.5) 6 VIII. Gum 1.75 2 IX. Jangi 1.5 2 X. Nyelan 3.25 8 X1. Mambang 2.25 2.5 XII. Sekios 3.0 3.5 XIII. Norcé 2.5 4 XIIIB. Lanas 2.5 4 XIV. Nyawai 1.5 (2.75) 3 XV. Talip 2.5 3 XVI. Luya 2.5 3 XVII. Banan 4.0 (7.5) 8 XVIII. Sandoi 3.5 6 XIX. Amoi 1.5 3 XX. Haron 2.0 2 *Yield in parenthesis is the typical yield when the tapper is accompanied by a helper. there is justification for confidence in these yield figures for two reasons. First, a person tapping rubber has a keen sense of the quantity of the product because the latex is -207- congealed in a special rectangular aluminum pan in which the depth of the liquid rubber is readily converted into an assessment of output. Second, this assessment is verified or revised when the rubber sheets are weighed by the trader. Table 27 specifies the rubber product for each bilik for the year, October 1978 to October 1979. The money value was determined by multiplying the yields by the average price over the month in which the rubber was tapped. The figures include the income earned by tapping the rubber gar- dens of other households on a sharecropping basis as described in Chapter V. There is one purchased input in rubber produc- tion, namely the ascetic acid used to harden the latex. A rule of thumb for this expense is that one bottle, costing Rp 500, is sufficient for 100 kilograms of rubber sheet. This minor expense has not been subtracted from these income figures. Table 28 lists the monetary value of the 1978-79 rice yield for each bilik in rupiahs and dollars for comparison with the income from rubber tapping. The monetary value for rice was figured by multiplying the yield by the average monthly value of pgdi over the year, Rp 147.75 per gantang calculated from the average value of bgrgs available at the local store. Together the yields from rice and rubber con- stitute the quantifiable sources of income for the bilik family with the minor exceptions of wage labor, sawing boards, and the sale of domestic animals. -208- HN.NNH mHN.mN mNm.NN mHN.mN zoom: .HH om.Nm NNN.oo NNN.oo Hoe< .HHH NN.oHN oNN.NNH NNN.NN HNH.mNH Hoooom .HHH>x mN.HHN mNN.HHN NHN.NN HNH.NNH ooooo .HH>x NN.NN NNm.NN NNm.NN omoH .H>H HH.mNH HNH.HN NNN.NN NHN.NH NHHNH .>x No.NHN NNH.oNH NNH.mNH Hozomz .>Hx NN.oH mNH.NN mNH.NN NoooH .NHHHH mN.HHH HNN.NN HNN.NN ooooz .HHHx No.Hm HNN.NN HNN.NN NoHNoN .HHH om.moN NNN.NoH NNo.No HoN.mmH Nooosoz .Hx Nm.NHN NmN.NNH HNo.oN HNH.NN ooHomz .x Nm.HN omH.oH NNH.HN NoN.NH Hmmom .xH NH.Nm NHN.oo NNo.mN NoN.mN eso .HHH> NH.HNH HNH.HHH NNN.NH omN.HoH Nasooom .HH> mN.NNH NNm.NN Nom.NH NHo.NN NoHoN .H> Hm.NN HNH.HN HNH.HN eHH< .> HN.HHN NNN.mHH NNN.mHH Noomoo .>H mN.mHN NoH.HHN NNH.NN NNo.NNH Home» .HHH NN.mNN mNN.NNH NmN.mH NNN.HNH Ho» .HH HN.NNNN NHN.NNN mm HoN.NN mm oHN.NNH mm :NNN .H osHm> HmHHoo oon> cmHmom moumcm woonm o>OHo Hoonom :30 HNHHm .oEoocH mcfloowe-eonnom Moo; Ozu-xumHm .NN oHan -209- Table 28. Value of Rice Yield. Bilik Rp Value Dollar Value I. Ragu Rp 199,019.25 $321.00 11. Yok 131,349.75 211.85 111. Yusak 473,243.25 763.30 1V. Payung 84,069.75 135.60 V. Akim 115,097.25 185.64 VI. Saing 196,655.25 317.19 VII. Gantung 281,168.25 453.50 VIII. Gum 253,539.00 408.93 IX. Jangi 162,081.75 261.42 X. Nyelan 152,625.75 246.17 XI. Mambang 151,159.50 244.50 XII. Sekios 200,940.00 324.10 XIII. Norcé 94,855.50 152.99 XIIIB. Lanas 151,739.25 244.74 XIV. Nyawai 170,799.00 275.48 XV. Talip 186,608.25 300.98 XVI. Luya 123,666.75 199.46 XVII. Banan 265,506.75 428.24 XVIII. Sandoi 223,102.50 359.84 XIX. Amoi 72,988.50 117.72 XX. Haron 166,662.00 268.81 The economic performance of households is also expressed in the cultivating of fruit trees and the husbanding of domestic animals which are not commoditized. Table 29 lists the amount of each of the kinds of trees and animals husbanded by each bilik in September 1979. An average bilik in this village husbanded 2.5 pigs of larger than head size, 4.76 smaller pigs, 8 hens, 2 roosters, 4.5 chicks, 1.3 dogs, and 0.29 cats. The severe cat deficit is well-appreciated by the villagers. The data provided above, when combined with the data on other sources of income, permits the computation of gross .NouauaEEH mochomH> oooHqu mocha HHauo Ho» NousaHH use ~210- .aHzmooczo HcHOH .NH Hazy “Hmcox u H .u:=1:HHom Ha ucH>HH HOHHOHE a HHH: vecmcm van :anz soaxucH Ha 10:10 NOON» oozHocH H.:Nooo onzHH NHHHN H H N H H HoHHH H H N H H H H H H JHHEH. H H H H H H N H N H H H H H :HENH oN mN oN mH NH oN oH oH mN mH oH oH Hoooom HooHoH N Gnu—.65.”:— H H H m NH N eH N n Humon H :NHNH H H H H m H oH N m N H :uHHJo o H N N mH N H N N N N N H N N N HoooNEoo o N H N H N H N NoooHoo NHNNNN N H N cH m m H H N v m m H v H N H oH cmoznsmH :H H N H o m N N n m m N N N oH mmcmcmn N N oN N N N oH N H N N H o NoHHHNooHH N H Noxmmmd m m m H m N m Hm HonH H H H N N N N N H H H NooHu HocOOOO H H m H muoo N N H H H H N H N N H H H N N NNoo NH n NucHHHozo H NonHo N H H NHosv m o m 0H HH 3H m N N v H H N n N m H N NHOHHHO m N N H N H N n N N m H H N H H v N m N NHOHNOOH o N N H N N H N N H H H N N N H H N N NoHHooN ooo.N=HHHH moo; N HH o H mN N N HN NH N H H N N N H NH oH H N N HHHHoHH Ncom o N m :H N m N v m onca mm oMHnH ma muHm H H N H N N H H N NHoo NH oNHNH NH NNHH m H H N N N N N N H H NNHHH No mNHNH No NNHH o H H H H H o N H N N N H N N H N N H oooo No oNoNH No NNHH :cH HEN NH ovucmHmlmucaHm.ooHHOu om .McHusoOHm macmHm Hommmm oNN o... 3 3 SH oo mo 8 3::on N233 Hammad mi 32 mi ooH ooN mi 3 mmN oN ooN mmN ooN oNH mmN ooN ooN NNHHHHHHENN do: .82.; .52 .ooNN ooN moN ooN oNH ooN 382 .82 95. mNH mmN 2: 82 mNH HooN HooN 25 SH SH 382 «52:53 N3: Home: Cb Ob .K We ab m 1 w H M '8 S M D. nu .m n m. k m w .m. .m m m m. 1... m n m m N L. m, m m .m m m m m m M o... m m N... w m a m u. m u .w u m... m m . . L . L m . . L m . . L n L ..L n n L ..L n n u H” L w n w u L I. I I I V. V V V I. X X x x X X X x X VA X X .HHOu:o>:H quomOHm o>HuoooOHm .mN oHHmH -211- and net monetizable income for the year for each domestic unit. Table 30 illustrates the comparison of the net income for each domestic unit. The place of rice production in domestic econ- omics ranges from a low of 34.8;mn‘cent of net income for the 14 to a high of 84.5 percent in dependent bilik of Payung IV, the newly formed bilik of Pak Lanas XIIIB. It should be noted that, because of the rapid and abnormal rise in the price of rubber during the fieldwork period, the data on rubber act- ually reflects a "windfall" condition and so disturbs in undetermined ways the ratio of rice production to other sources of livelihood. From comparison of the economic performances of house- holds as described in Table 31 certain generalizations about the way domestic units provision themselves can be made. The "domestic mode of production" model that was instrumental in the design of this study presumes a particular strategy of domestic unit production, namely, that a household will endeavor to produce for itself the socially-shared level of well-being. This presumption will be tested in what follows. 14This net income figure for bilik IV appears higher than one would expect because Bu Payung was married to Pak Langing in May 1979 and he, thereafter, was contributing to the bilik product. Pak Langing was diligent in tapping rubber to pay off debts incurred for personal expenses in- volved in the wedding awai (like Bu Payung, Pak Langing was orphaned and living wit a brother). Bu Payung was likewise intensifying rubber prodUction in anticipation of cash needs before the awai. For calculations involving the c/w ratio for this bili the less favorable one is used because Pak Langing j01ned the bilik after the rice harvest for this accounting period. ~212- .X~x 6:6 > mmuHOH—Omaog moan—Huxm \ .> Noummnu :H vonHuumon ovauu Hazauamc NHNH.NoH.N HH H.NN NNN.NHH NNN.oH coo.NH NNN.HHN NcN.NoN cacam .HH>x N.HN HNN.NHH NNN.cN NNN.NN NNN.NNH mst .H>x N.NN NHN.NNN cco.N ooN.NN oNN.N HNH.HN Noo.oNH HHHNN .>x N.oN HNN.NNN coo.N NNN.oH NNH.cNH NNN.NNH Huxuxz .>Hx o.HN NHH.NNH ONN.N oNH.NN NNN.HNH NacaH .NHHHN H.HN NNH.HNH NNN.H HNN.NN NNN.HN wuuoz .HHHN H.NN HNN.NNN coo.N HNN.NN NHN.ocN NoHHoN .HHN o.HH NNN.NHN oom.HN NNN.NNH NNH.HNH NemHeHz .Hx o.oN NNo.N=N coN.H ocN.NH NON NaN.NNH NNN.NNH =«Hon .x N.cN NNN.NNN coo.NH coo.N NON.N ONH.NH NNo.NoH Hanan .xH o.NN HNc.HNN ocN.N NHN.co NNN.NNN sac .HHH> H.oo NNH.NNH NNN.N OOH.NN ooN HHH.HHH NNH.HNN «caucmo .HH> N.No NNN.NNN occ.NH ooN.N NNN.NN NNN.NNH NcHHN .H> ---- NHN.HoH NNH.HH ooo.o NON HNH.HN NNo.NHH eHH< .> N.HN NNN.HHN NNo.N NNN.NHH ch.HN unexma .>H H.No ccH.NoN com.o oNN.oN ooN.H NcH.HHN NHN.NNH Hams» .HHH N.HH NNH.HHN ooo.cN .NNH.NN am NNN QNN.NNH oNN.HNH Ho> .HH H.oN oNN.HNN am ocN.NN am NON.H am NHN.NNN NHN.NNH amam .H osoocH no: mo osoucH uoz nHuQ mHmcha uHu Nvuaon vo>HouoH vHoH» Hommzu vHon ouHh mo H mm ouHa New“: -Noeov mo onm mcHzmm mowmz mo 03Hm> :mH :m o=Ha> :mH am .mHHHHm mo oEoocH uoz stcc< .ON oHHmN -Zl3- .cocHnEou mHHHx was HHHx mvHonomzo; How mohstmu .ucmuuonm who: NosoocH HHogu omamuon NcoHumHsuHmo :Hmupou scum vowsHoxo ohm xHx wcm > mvHozomso: NNN.NN NHN.¢NH NNN.o NN.oNH NNH.H NNN.H NN.N H.N N.N :oHaz .xx --- --- HHN.o NN.HNH HNH HHN.o oN.H N.N N.N Hos< .xHx HNN.NN NHN.ONH NH.H NN.NON oHN.H HHH.N NH.H N.N H.H HoHcam .HHH>x NNH.NHH NNo.HoN oo.H NN.oHN NNN.H NON.N NN.H N.N N.N enema .HH>x NHN.HN NNH.NN NN.o NN.NHH aNN NHN.H NN.o N.N N.H «N:H .H>x NNo.NN HNN.NNH No.H oo.HNN NNN.H HHN.N HN.H N.N N.H HHHHN .>x NNN.NH NNN.NN No.o NN.oHN NNH.H HNH.N No.N H.N N.N Hazaxz .>Hx HNN.NN NNN.NN om.o N.N N.N chmH .NHHHH HNN. H HN.HH HHH.HH NNH.ON HHN.NN NN.o NN.NNN NNN.H NHN.N No.H N.N N.N wUHoz .HHHx NNN.NOH NNH.HNH NN.H NN.omo NON.H NNN.N NN.H N.N H.N NoHHoN .HHx NNH.NN NNN.NNH HN.Q NN.HNN NNo.H NNH.N NN.N N.N N.N Nausea: .Hx NNN.NN HHN.NNH HN.H NN.oHN NNo.H NHH.N NH.N N.N N.H cmHaHz .x NHN.NN NNN.HHH NN.H ON.NHN NNO.H HHN.N NN.H N.N N.N chmw .xH NHN.NN HNN.oN NN.o oo.NNH NHN.H NaN.N No.H o.H H.H ago .HHH> NHo.HN Noo.HHH No.H NN.HNN NON.H HON.N NN.H =.N N.H Ncapeao .HH> NNN.NN HNo.NN HN.o NN.ONN HNN.H NNH.N NH.H N.N o.N NchN .H> --- --- NN.o oo.HNN NNN HNN.H NH.H N.N N.N st< .> NHo.No NNN.NNH NN.o NH.NoH NON ooo.H NN.N H.H N.N Ncszma .>H NNN.NN NoH.cNH NN.H NN.HNN NoN.N NNN.H NN.H N.N N.N Hams» .HHH NNN.HN NNN.NNH No.H oo.NNN NNN NNN.N NH.H N.N N.N Ho» .HH NNN.HNHN NNN.NNHHH HN.H NN.NHN NHN.H NHN.N NN.H N.N N.H swam .H Hoezmcou Hoxuoz Hoxuoz Hoxuoz cHoH> :oHun>HuH:u oHunm xovcH xovcH HHHHm you won Ho; Ho: oqu Ho Hops: z\u Hoxpoz HoE:m:ou osoucH ~02 oEoucH «oz moumuoo: mwcmucmu mwcaucmu Nounuoo: .mcomHummEou oocmENowNom :oHuostHm HHHHm .Hm oHan -214- This, however, is the strategy for overall production. It is also possible to inquire into how the various forms of produc- tion are combined into a material provisioning strategy. To avoid confusion about the relation between micro- and macro- perspectives it should be noted that in this material provisioning definition of economic behavior it is societies, not economic units, that are being provisioned. Economic entities do the provisioning but the strategies they employ do not add up to the economic system, nor are they the eco- nomic system written from another perspective. Adaptive strategies, decision models--all variations of the micro- economic perspective--necessari1y use the actor's understand- ing of the system in place. And, as Godelier has said: They have pragmtic utility, being of ser- vice in management and the taking of deci- sions, but they possess no scientific value, for they do not reflect the true, underlying logic of the system (1972: xxv). This study eschews the rigorous decision model which is the fashion these days (Bartlett 1980) in favor of understanding behavior as instituted process (Dalton 1971: 25). The pre- sumption is that in these comparisons of economic performances of households will be revealed the relationships that consti- tute the material provisioning strategy in so far as it is "instituted process." Having established rice-production as dominating eco- nomic behavior in this society, specifying how far this is so and how it relates to the other forms of production is -215- now the primary task. Figure 8 plots thegmn‘cent of suffi- ciency of rice product for the year against the domestic unit consumer/worker ratios. Note that the seven most disadvantag- eously constituted biliks failed to attain sufficiency. Figure 9 depicts the relationship between a domestic unit's consumer/ worker ratio and the percentage of the net income accounted for by the rice product, showing that disadvantageous consumer/ worker ratios are correlated with rice constituting less of the household's net income. The correlation coefficient, r = 0.69, is significant at the lynnrcent level. Figure 10, hectares per worker graphed over the range of consumer/worker ratios, and Figure 11, gantangs per worker graphed over the range of bilik consumer/worker ratios reveal that all the families with consumer/worker ratios greater than 2 not only fail but also appear to make no attempt to self-exploit with respect to rice production. In this regard, it seems that only in the middle range of consumer/worker ratios is there some evidence of self-exploitation. On the other hand, Figure 12, net income per worker graphed against the bilik consumer/ worker ratios, shows a general tendency throughout the com- munity to self-exploit in some respect as the consumer/ worker ratio becomes increasingly disadvantageous. The conclusion drawn from this is that there are two different material provisioning strategies, one undertaken by biliks with consumer/worker ratios less than 2 and another undertaken by biliks with consumer/worker ratios greater than -216- o.N 11 .HHHHm comm you oon mo HocoHonwsm ucou you .w oustm oHumm 3\U m.N H.N m.N N.N H.N o.N m.H w.H N..H o.H th H.H m.H N.N H.H o.H m6 w.o 5o £ H H H A H H H H H n H H q H H H H H H om OH om 00 on om CD Cl C) \O H O H H O N H CMH OHH omH 60H Jgng nuao 19d Aouetot -217- N.N n N O .HHHHm comm you oEoucH «oz mo ucou Nod mm oon 35H 28 N N.N H.N N.N N.N N.N N.N N.N NH 2 NH N.H H.H N.N N.N H.H 9H N.N N.N N.N .O opsmHm H H H d H H JH 4 1 H H d H H fi L OH ON om OH Om O0 ON ON OO OOH -218- .HHHHm :omm you uoxuoz pom Oopm>HpHau mohmuuoz .OH ohstm oHNmH ZNU m.N N.N N.N O.N m.N H.N N.NN.N H.N O.N O.H N.H N.H O.H m.H H.H m.H N.H H.H O.H 0.0 m.O N.O. H H H H H H H H H H a, N H H w} H H H H H N H H N O J_H.o a.N.o n,o.o |_N.o ._N.o . ..N.o . i.e.H . J.H.H ._N.H . ..N.H IHH.H ~219- O.N ON N.N O.N m.N 4 H H .HHHHm :umm pom NoHNoz pom OHoH> wwcmucwo oHHmm 2ND .HH oHsmHH H.N m.N N.N H.N O.N O.H N.N HHH O.H m.H HHH m4 N.H HA O.H 0.0 w.O N..O H fl H H q H H H fl H H H oom 1H OOH oom OOO OOB OOO 1 OOO lSXlOM/SBUElUBQ .HHHHm :umm Now Noxpoa Hod oEoocH uoz .NH opsmHm oHumm uoHuo3\uoE:m:ou N.N o.~ m.~ H.N m.N N.N H.N O.N OH O.H N..H c.H th H.H m.H N.H H.H O.H m.O 0.0 N..O -220- H q .H H H q H H H |H H H H H lH H H H H H -oN loo ..oN .loN .loN I OOH 1 I o o N H H H I o m H NON.NN a H I O V H JaxJOM/amoaul 19M 1 O O NO U) H H P: A . n OOH I OOH 1 OON J OHN oquoNNam -221- 2. This can be accounted for by the fact that the production function for dry rice offers very little opportunity for self- exploitation. As established in the previous chapter, weeding is the limiting phase of rice production in terms of labor in- put. The returns to weeding fall off after once over the plot. Intensified weeding cannot be justified. It will be recalled that the point was made that "judicious neglect" is probably the strategy offering the highest returns to labor. Some rice in fertile riverbank and swamp locations will yield a product with no weeding whatsoever! That is why most households clear more forest than they plant, plant more than they weed and harvest more than they weed; something akin to the "constant readjustment" of production strategy as described by Sutti Ortiz (1967: 219) for the Paez Indians of Columbia. Since intensifying weeding cannot be justified there is no opportun- ity for self-exploitation beyond putting into cultivation all the rice area a household's labor force can weed one time over. Consequently, the attention for self-exploitation opportuni- ties turns elsewhere. Weeding the minimal amount to get a rice product is combined with wage labor and rubber-tapping in this phase of the agricultural cycle to self-exploit with the end of attaining the minimal level of well-being for that . . . 15 community in the face of a burdensome consumer/worker ratio. 15This self-exploitation strategy appears to be the height of economic rationality. This understanding of the matter, how- ever, followed from the analysis of the quantitative data. Whether or not the Mualang would explain it this way is not known. The analyst did not understand these relationships well- enough in the field to ask penetrating questions about them. -222— It is the relationship between the domestic units' con- sumer/worker ratio and the net income per worker, depicted in Figure 12, that is at stake in testing the applicability of the domestic mode of production (DMP) scheme proposed by Marshall.Sahlinsin.his Stone Age Economics (1972). This theoretical scheme was inspired by the work of the Russian agricultural economist Chayanov who studied peasant house- hold economic behavior in pre-revolutionary Russia. Chayanov documented the direct relationship between consumer/worker ratio and a household's production intensity resulting from the tendency for disadvantageously constituted households to labor beyond the customary norms of work to achieve the socially-shared level of well-being (Sahlins 1971: 32-34) for that community. Sahlins posited this set of relationships to underly production, at least structurally, in all societies in which production is organized by domestic groups that produce for their own use. These conditions appear to be met in the study at hand, and, although I will delay taking up the issues of the fit of this model until the last chapter, this is the place to test this relationship statistically. Returning to Figure 12 we find the scatter of points plotting the net income per worker against the consumer/ worker ratio for each household along with the "Chayanov line" of production intensity, C = K(%) drawn in where K = Rp 57,500. The value of K, the index value of consumption for the community, was determined independently from surveys -223- of consumption and expenditure. It is comprised of the per annum rice requirement of Rp 39,000, various trade goods at Rp 12,000, gawai expenses of Rp 5,000 and church contribution of Rp 1,500. This figure was then found to be supported nicely by the results depicted in Figure 14 of Chapter VII below. Figure 13 depicts the scatter of points resolved into a regression line by the method of least squares. The Chayanov line is drawn in alongside the empirical line. The intersection of the two lines at some point beyond x = 2.5, the highest c/w ratio in the community means that the commu- nity, as a whole, produces a surplus above the "social con- ception of domestic welfare" (Sahlins 1971: 33). As already noted, because of the rapid and abnormal rise in the price of rubber during the fieldwork period, the data actually represents a "windfall" condition. In previous years when the price of rubber ranged from Rp 150-190 per kilo, much less rubber-tapping occurred, according to the testimony of both the villagers and trader. Consequently, thepmu‘cent of income earned from rubber-tapping would have been far less for nearly every bilik. Only those deficit in rice would have bothered to tap rubber during the weeding season in the self-exploitational strategy discussed above. The average 3 kilo product for a tapping outing at Rp 150 per kilo would provide a return of Rp 450 which is roughly the going daily wage in this area. At these prices, however, the share- crOpping arrangement is quite unattractive. -224- .OonQEOO ocHH >ocm>mzu Ocm ocHH HmoHHHQEm .mH oasmHm oHuwm Hoxuoz\uo53m:ou N.N o.~ m.~ H.N N.N N.N H.N O.N OWH O.HH NH.H O.H m.H H.H th N.H N.N O.H OWO 0.0 N. O H H H H H H H fl H Hlle H1 H H H H ..ON ..OO ..ON ..OO .lOO 1OOH OHH JONH JONH lOHH JaxioM/amooul zaN IOmH 1OOH JOBH LONH OOO.HN u H JOOH IOON IOHN NH OOO ONNOH -225- A test of the possibility of correlation between the net income/worker and the consumer-worker ratio for each household as suggested by Wanda Minge-Kalman (1977) using the Spearman rank correlation coefficient yields the follow- ing result: N = _ 2 = _ 6 L471) = rS l 6 1:1 d i 1 6859 _ 19 0.59 N3-N The correlation coefficient of 0.59 is significant at the 0.01 level of probability indicating that the two variables have a strong positive correlation and this relationship has been demonstrated to be in accordance with the Chayanov hypothesis. This is identical with r = 0.59 as derived by the product moment method of least squares. Further statistical analyses have been suggested by Evans (1974, and cf. Durrenberger 1976b) which test the pro- position that the empirical line (regression line) is a variation of the Chayanov line based on chance due to sampl- ing. The first of these is the "slope test." The "t ratio": b - K S K, the slope of the Chayanov line is 57,500, and s, the where b, the slope of the empirical line is 43,765, standard error of b is 14,445 yields the result: b - K _ 43,765 - 57 500 = _ s ’ 14,445’ 0'95 From O'Toole (1964: 218, Table 7.3) we find that the value of t is not significant at the 5 percent level and so we ~226- accept the null hypothesis that the slope is not different from the Chayanov slope. A second test is the "test of the deflection of the intersection point," that is, "the statistical point from a position above the household composition mean on the hori- zontal axis" (Evans 1974: 275). The standard error of esti- mation for x is calculated by the formula: 5' = sy,'¢1.- r2 = 37,675 .65 = 30,374 y.x (O'Toole 1964: 290). Now to determine the confidence limits for the individual value of y at x = 1.68, (the mean house- hold composition), the formula: A 1 (x-mx)2 ' M'y.x 1 t8 y-x \/;+ n + 2 nsx (O'Toole 1964: 293) can be used. Because x-mX = 0 since we chose x to be i = MX = the mean of x values, the equation reduces to H .0. tilt—I ! 'Xoy H: t S Y'X 'V1.05 = 127,912 1 65,391 and the Chayanov value for y at this x is clearly within the M = 127,912 : 2.101 (30,374) 951mnrcent confidence limits of this empirical value of y at x = 1.68. Sahlins' theory would lead to the interpretation of this community production profile in terms of economic rela- tions expressing the sociopolitical forces that might give shape to the DMP tendencies that underlie all societies in -227- which the domestic unit is both the predominant unit of pro- duction and consumption. In this scheme peasant society represents the extreme case of domestic unit economic auto- nomy and the disposition of surplus production in linkages external to the community. This correlates with the atomi- zation of the households on the social and political levels of analysis as well. DeSpite the fact that the results of the analysis of economic performance data for Sungai Mulau is a peasant-like production profile, the social and politi- cal dimension of the village, discussed in previous chapters, do not support its characterization as a peasant community. The peasant-like shape of the community production profile reflects the disposition of surplus production outside the community in exchange for material goods to the benefit of individual biliks economically autonomized by balanced reciprocity. The matter of whether or not the economy of hinterland Kalimantan Barat in which Sungai Mulau is situ- ated constitutes the peasant-style economic context will be deferred to the final chapter. At this point we should suspend further interpretation of this profile until we have all the economic data before us. The following chapters present the remaining economic data and then take up the topic of the interpretation of the community production profile. CHAPTER VII THE MATERIAL PROVISIONING OF SOCIETY: CONSUMPTION, EXCHANGE,1Ufl3DISTRIBUTION Chapter IV described the organization of the forms of production in the community under study. This chapter describes the organization of the remaining categories of economic order: consumption; exchange; and distribution. The Organization of Consumption Consumption as an abstract analytical category involves both "consumption of the factors of production," which is at the same time an aspect of production, and "personal con- sumption in its individual and social forms" (Godelier 1972: 277). Scott Cook, in his 1973 review of the field of economic anthropology, employs the term "utilization" to include both kinds of consumption, reserving the term "con- sumption" for personal consumption "employing resources for the direct satisfaction of current wants" (1973: 838), a terminological advance that has much to recommend it. It was not possible to identify the portion of consump- ‘tion recycled through the production process; therefore, ea few qualifications must be made concerning the data on (:onsumption presented here. The factors of production are -228- -229- a few gantangs of seed (40 to 90 is the range), the bush- knife with a life of about 2 years, an axe blade suffic- iently durable to constitute heirloom property, a few bas- .kets and mats handmade from materials collected from the iiorest, land available to everyone on their own initiative, aer labor. With such modest production inputs, labor con- st:itutes the factor of production of most interest to this aiialysis. In such a low technology economy as this in wliich labor is the predominant input, the matter of con- Stunption in production boils down to food calories consumed iIl laboring versus food calories consumed in non-productive a£:tivities which is superfluous to the issues of concern ir1 this study. Consumption, therefore, is treated here as 13ersona1 consumption organized, for the most part, by domestic units . A further qualification is that only certain aspects (bf even personal consumption are amenable to quantification. Efllelter, handicrafts, and hunting-and-gathering activities Vxery rarely involve economic transactions. Consequently, tIley are not reducible to a common standard of value for Crimparing with the quantifiable elements of the economy. (3rl average, a family invests about 12 workdays per year 111 its dwelling, including maintenance. The typical d-Welling lasts approximately 20 years so that two or three turmes in his life, a man takes part in building his family's lilwang. About two years are involved in the sporadic -230- gathering and preparing of materials from the forest. With communal labor for the erection of the main members, the construction is accomplished in a few days. Since boards and posts made of the very hard woods can be taken from the abandoned house, they are important property and their division is given careful consideration in inheritance proceedings. The average time expended on fieldhut con- struction and maintenance is about 10 workdays per year. With the summary statement that much production and consump- tion of food, shelter, tools, handicrafts, etc. occur out- Side the monetized scope and that such items are generally produced by the domestic units for their own use and in more or less sufficient supply depending upon personal inclination, we turn now to the more easily quantifiable e 1 ements of consumption. Pers onal Consumption This being a "subsistence" economy, food dominates the Process of material provisioning and consumption. Of the Rp 57,500 estimated as the minimal subsistence level for the index consumer in the community, Rp 47,000 or 82 per Cent is food. Clearly rice predominates considerations of COnsumption in this society where eating is synonymous with eating rice. At the time of the rice consumption study, the village of Sungai Mulau contained 82.7 consumer units (110 people) who consumed a total of 21.8 gantangs of -231- beras lama.15 This amounts to 7,957 gantangs beras lama or 19,892.5 gantangs padi per year, giving the figure of 180.8 gantangs padi per capita. To compare this with .Freeman's figure for the Iban, Mualang gantangs must be ccnrverted to Iban gantangs. One Mualang gantang is equal tc> 0.686 gantangs Iban, putting the Mualang consumption figure at 124 gantang Iban per capita per year. Given Frweeman's figure of 88.5 gantangs per capita per year for tlre Iban, it is clear that the Mualang enjoy slightly more tlian 40 percent more rice than the Iban. To put this high rate of rice consumption into per- spuective, it can be compared with several other studies. 111656 180.8 gantangs Mualang yield 180.8 kilograms beras. Tkible 32 below, listing rice consumption in several coun- trfiies, illustrates that the consumption of rice by the bhialang is, by comparison, quite high. Of course, it must b6! kept in mind that these are averages for entire countries Enid so, by definition, there are areas of higher rice con- SLunption within those countries: "...e.g., in India from 2550 Kg in the rice-eating eastern areas to a negligible ~T~T_—T5—_' . . . Beras lama from adi of at least 6 months drying 1:line is diStinguished by t e villagers from beras baru or Ilqu rice because the new rice fluffs up less in coéking SC) they consume 1.2 times as much, by volume, of the new EFEEEE to obtain the same satisfaction. Only beras lama will e: used for calculations involving comparisons with other SFJadies but calculations of rice consumption within this 'VJLllage will assume six months of consuming beras baru 331d six months of consuming beras lama. -232- Table 32. Per Capita Annual Rice Consumption (1974), Country Kilograms Rice Bangladesh 151 Brunei 102 Burma 173 Indonesia 121 Laos 170 Malaysia, Peninsular 124 Malaysia, Sabah 133 Malaysia, Sarawak 155 Philippines 86 Sri Langka 87 Thailand 171 Viet Nam 156 Compiled from data in FAQ, 1977. Provisional Food Balance Sheets 1972-74 Average. Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. quantity in the wheat-eating northwestern areas" (Pekkarinen 1973: 18). During the period of this study the 1978 rice consumption rate for Indonesia as a whole was 127 kilos per capita (Warr 1980: 11). At this point it is expeditious to inquire into the czaloric adequacy of this diet. The index consumption unit ()f 0.263 gantang per day of beras lama is 0.658 kilogram '233- beras lama. Given that one kilogram husked (but not milled) rice yields 3,600 calories (Adair 1972: 10), then the index consumption unit contains 2,369 calories. From Clark and Turner (1973) we learn that this index consumer in South- east Asia working an eight hour day would require 3,795 calories. This means something on the order of 1,426 calories must be added to the rice from other sources such as fruits, catch crop vegetables,anuihunting-and-gathering from the forest. It is of interest to note that it is the "padi baru" period of relatively higher calories from rice that the pressure for complementary foods turns to gather- ing in the forest, and in the padi lama period in which fewer calories from rice are consumed the villagers are enjoying the catch crops from the new ladang. It is easy to understand why there are no fat Mualang! Provisioning the Social Order To examine how far the yield of 26,107 gantangs padi for the year of 1979 is sufficient for the needs of the village, it is necessary to analyze the consumption of padi in further detail. At the present level of consumption of 264 gantangs padi per year for an index consumer (based on the consumption of beras lama for 6 months and beras baru for 6 months), 22,809.6 gantangs padi are required for personal consumption for the 86.4 consumer units listed in Table 21 of Chapter VI. This leaves 3,297.4 gantangs padi -234- for animal feed, seed, gawai expenses, church donation, and post-harvest losses, especially in storage. Below, in Table 33, are the estimates of the requirements for these categories based on the data in Tables 34, 35, and 36 as well as consumption data and the study of post-harvest grain losses by FAO, 1977. Table 33. Subsidiary Rice Consumption. Requirements Total for Community Animal feed (dogs, chickens) 3,102.5 gantangs Seed 1,237.0 Gawai expenses (2 gawais were held) 344-48 Church contribution 535.5 Storage losses 1,566.4 GRAND TOTAL 6,785.9 gantangs The twenty-eight dogs in the village received an average of one half mungberas per day each, thus consuming 511 gantangs_padi over the span of a year. For feeding chickens 71 mung per day were consumed requiring, at this rate, 2,591.5 mung per year. Consequently, the total for animal feed is 3,120.5 gantangs padi per year. The seed listed 11ere is that planted in September 1980, but there is every treason to believe it would approximate the planting rate (of September 1979. The average church contribution was -235- Table 34. Seed Planted (September 1979). Bilik Gantangs I. Ragu 78 II. Yok 56 III. Yusak 86 IV. Payung 41 V. Akim 70 VI. Saing 78 VII. Gantung 83 VIII. Gum 70 IX. Jangi 50 X. Nyelan 45 XI. Mambang 65 XII. Sekios 58 XIII. Norce 45 XIIIB. Lanas 62 XIV. Nyawai 67 XV. Talip 47 XVI. Luya 46 XVII. Banan 40 XVIII. Sandoi 68 XIX. Amoi 29 XX. Haron 53 '236' Table 35. Church Contributions (1979 season). Bilik Gantangs I. Ragu 41 II. Yok III. Yusak 60 IV. Payung 16 V. Akim VI. Saing 50 VII. Gantung 40 VIII. Gum 15 IX. Jangi 20 X. Nyelan XI. Mambang 30 XII. Sekios 3S XIII. Norce 5 XIIIB. Lanas 21 XIV. Nyawai 7 XV. Talip 15 XVI. Luya XVII. Banan 15 XVIII. Sandoi 30 XIX. Amoi 8 XX. Haron TOTAL 408 MEAN 25.5 NOTE: Blanks mean that at the time of the survey, the household had not yet made its contribution. This is somewhat less than the total contribution of the villagers to the support of the church. It is common for the woman of the bilik to take a couple of mun of beras to church as an offering. Since atten ance 15 irregular for most families, it was not possible to measure or even estimate the annual magnitude of this offering. Also it is customary to give one chicken to the preacher over the course of the year to assist him or her in providing the extraordinary amount of hospitality that falls to a person of this responsibility. “237- Table 36. Gawai Expenses: Harvest Gawai, 9 May, 1979. Bilik Rice in Gantangs Total Expenses I. Ragu 23.9 Rp 39,840 II. Yok 10.8 24,315 III. Yusak 17.5 35,145 IV. Payung 14.0 16,980 V. Akim 13.5 37,155 VI. Saing 8.5 18,500 VII. Gantung 19.5* 25,125 VIII. Biden 6.0 22,075 IX. Jangi 7.0 25,600 X. Nyelan 8.0 18,320 XI. Mambang 8.0 19,850 XII. Sekios 9.5 14,085 XIII. Norce 6.6 12,090 XIIIB. Lanas 4.9 9,820 XIV. Nyawai 13.0 17,340 XV. Talip 9.0 16,890 XVI. Luya 5.5 13,275 XVII. Banan 8.5 18,315 XVIII. Sandoi 10.0 18,295 XIX. Amoi 5.6 14,715 XX. Haron 7.0 17,255 TOTALS 215.3 gantangs Rp 434,985 Bilik Average 10.25 gantangs Rp 20,714 *Includes ten ggitangs beras given to helpers. -238- 25.5 gantangs per bilik for a village total of 535.5 gantangs. Lastly, the losses in storage are judged by the writer's experience to be at the upper limit of the 2-6% loss range cited by the I.R.R.I. report for the Philippines in Sanders and Betschart (1979: Table XVI) and adopted by the FAO 1977 study of post-harvest losses. Thus, 1,566 gantangs are lost in storage. These figures, as tabulated in Table 33, bring the total subsidiary rice consumption for the village to 6,786 gantangs. When these are added to the personal rice consumption figure of 22,810 gantangs, the total rice requirement is 29,596 gantangs, which is 3,488 more than achieved, giving 88.2 percxnn:sufficiency for the community for the year. It was the general opinion of the villagers that this had been a less than average rice harvest. The extent to which each household met its rice require- ments was discussed in Chapter VI. P321 is stored in the family rice barn (durung) from year to year, and seven households had some padi left over from the previous year. Three households, Akim (bilik V), Luya (bilik XVI), and Banan (bilik XVII) had quite large stocks of rice. This was well-known throughout the area leading to many requests to borrow and to provide wage labor opportunities. Some rice may be traded when neither cash nor rubber are avail- able; this is almost always on a small scale. The common- est occurrence is the unexpected visit to the village of -239- an itinerant trader with attractive goods carried in from Sarawak, such as 9635 (medicine), migin (monosodium gluti- mate which they like to add to the many kinds of wild greens they prepare to accompany the rice),znuiflilg_(chocolate powder). The biliks of Talip (bilik_XV), Luya (bilik XVI), Sandoi (bilik XVIII) and Amoi (bilik_XIX) were observed to trade rice from time to time. Generally, however, exchang- ing rice for trade goods when your household is rice defi- cient is recognized to be unthrifty household economics. The Belitang Hulu area as a whole is regarded as a rice deficient area, drawing on imported rice during years of poor harvest. It is in the partially-monetized sector of economic life that noticeable differences among households express themselves in different levels of consumption. Beyond the minimum subsistence standard, income is consumed as more tea, sugar, cooking oil, kerosene, cloth, thread, clothes, pots and pans -- more of the same. But one should not get the erroneous impression from this list of material goods that the Sungai Mulau villagers live at a high level. Sugar- tea is served in the rice field to an exchange labor work party, if possible, but only rarely can it be afforded for meals at home. Cooking oil and kerosene for pressure lamps are reserved for gawais and other special social occasions. Only in the event of a "windfall" would it be possible to purchase a wall clock, a wrist-watch, a -240- transistor radio or a sewing machine. People do not commonly save toward purchases of this magnitude. The level of well-being in the village extends over a fairly wide range but there is no qualitative difference apparent to the casual observer. Even the most advantaged households light the bilik with a kerosene lamp made of a swatch of twisted cloth stuck into the top of a sardine can, eat the monotonous customary diet of rice and greens, and wear clothing nearly beyond identification as apparel. The differences between the better-off and less-well-off households are largely quantitative and so are revealed only by systematic surveying. Table A1, Durable Property Inventory, in the appendix shows that the better-off households have more, but not different, material possessions. The same table lists the apartment areas of the biliks which likewise show a corre- lation with well-being. The Mualang are quite aware of this correlation. To have a spacious bilik is an expression of well-being and a source of pride and admiration. The analysis of menus collected from selected households over extended periods revealed that better-off households con- sumed sugar-tea, Chinese noodles, sardines, condensed milk, etc. more frequently than less-well-off households, but, even here, none of these items were common fare. They serve only to provide a slight respite from the repetitious rice and greens diet, with boiled cassava root used to '241' stretch the rice supply. Table 29, Productive Property Inventory, in the previous chapter shows no great disparity among households except perhaps a weak correlation between the number of productive rubber trees and level of well- being as would be expected. With respect to quantifiable income, Figure 14 is an interesting way to present the data. It shows the quanti- fiable income achieved for the index consumer for each household; a measure of material well-being. Taking leave of statistics at this point in favor of intuition, there appear to be two levels of well-being in the community. The first level is slightly above the Rp 57,500 line, the index value of consumption, which supports that figure determined previously by other means. The Rp 90,000 line also has basis in the social conception of material well- being. This is the salary of the ministers in well-sup- ported churches as well as of the area church superinten- dent and, thus, represents a local conception of the "good life." Teachers' salaries in government schools range up to and beyond this figure as well. The year under study being a "windfall" year in terms of rubber prices, several advantageously structured households were able to achieve the good life. The concept ofz1"socially-defined of well- being" is important to the argument in the final chapter concerning the character of primitive economic life. A certain amount of uneasiness is apprOpriate to assessing '242- o.m m.N 4.N m;~ N.N H.N. o.N m4 wé 5H .VHZMMIH comm pow Hoezmcoo you 2:85 uoz caumm hoxhoz\hoE:mcou , cé m4 v4 m4 NA .7an o4 m6 m6 .4H onsta 5o H H H H H H H H H A H H 4| ooo.oa ooo.om ooo.oo :. ooo.oa ooo.ow ooo.om coo.OOH coo.OHH I. oco.oNH am 19mnsuog/amoou1 19M -243- this figure because in Sahlins' scheme it is a "cultural fact" institutedin.the sociOpolitical order, and "pricing cultural facts" (1962: 1069) is anathema to the general thrust of a substantivist economic anthropology. Nonethe- less, the case at hand is strategic in this regard because of the presence in the community of pe0ple who are salaried at the "local conception of livelihood." A fairly wide range of well-being in a community has probably long been characteristic of traditional Mualang society, as it has of most hinterland Southeast Asian swid- den agriculturalists. Although much of the material abundance of households is expended in personal consump- tion of more of the standard array of trade goods, wealth also takes the form of durable goods. Heirloom property, such as Chinese jars, brass gongs, brass trays, silver jewelry, etc., was the form wealth took before the present array of consumable trade goods was available, and is still in the possession of nearly every household. Such property is dwindling fast, however, as it is commonly sold to pro- vide a ride in the missionary airplane for medical care at the hospital on the coast or for other such emergencies. There are no particular material goods that signify a high level of well-being or command prestige. There are no "spheres of exchange" (Bohannan and Dalton 1962) and no sociopolitically instituted control over women as a repro- ductive resource through mechanisms of wealth. Certain -244- goods of high value such as sewing machines, wall clocks, transistor radios,anu1wrist watches are not so much pres- tige goods as ”windfall" goods although such goods would not seriously be considered by a household that perennially fails to obtain sufficient rice for its needs. Households with more than average material wealth are referred to as "urang berada" ("people who have it"). Wealth is not "dis- played" nor ”conspicuously consumed” in such an intimate community in which there are no differential social stat- uses to validate. On the other hand, there is no secrecy attached to wealth since the wealth-leveling mechanisms have been as weak as the wealth-preserving mechanisms in these highly egalitarian societies. There is, of course, an important distinction between inherently egalitarian societies and those that tend toward an egalitarian outcome through the agency of leveling mechanisms, with respect to the potential for political autonomy and dependency. Wealth is not cumulative in Mualang society. It will be seen below that surpluses are not put back into eco- nomic activity for an even greater product, except by traders, and the distributive system provides no opportun- ities to economically exploit one's fellows. Further, in recent years it has become common in inheritance to divide a bilik's property more or less equally among all the children which mitigates wealth accumulation. It is anticipating later material slightly to make the Iaoint that wealth is most importantly the outcome of hard -245- work in Mualang society. In this context, those who are economically successful are widely admired although wealth is not a source of political power. The prevailing egali- tarian tone of community life makes obligating people economically for political ends unacceptable. However, that is not to say there is no relationship between wealth and one's standing in the community. Economic success is one test of a person's fitness for assuming responsibility in the village's public life. In this primus inter pares - style polity,1eadership falls to one by acclaim rather than striving to assume it.16 Because the direct relationship between work and wealth is known to all (that is, work is a necessary but not sufficient condition), in a society such as this where politeness and the formal consideration of other's feelings are cultural hallmarks, cultural rationalizations about economic success and failure facilitate agreeable treat- ments of these matters in polite conversation. The term betuah means to always have good fortune. It is clear 16David Price in his study of Nambiquara leadership trieS'UJanswer the question: why do men take leadership positions in societies in which there are no compensations? Commonly it is "the leader who gives things up to the community" (1981: 701). He decides: "I suspect that the .answer lies somewhere between a sense of reSponsibility ‘to his kinsmen and a desire to avoid being led by someone lless competent" (Ibid. 697). -246- that there are some people who put in about the same effort as everyone else but invariably obtain better than average results. There are certain people, referred to as urang_ 1221» who continually get more game when hunting and more fish when fishing so that "they always have good 'sayur'." People who perennially fail are said to have no tuah in their bodies. In specific glaring cases such as Pak Nyawai of bilik_number XIV, it is widely held that his unlucky fate is the consequence of his unacceptable relationship with his father-in-law Pak Kudul. These two men have not spoken to each other for several years, the conflict seem- ing to have centered around Pak Nyawai's spotty church attendance and his refusal to quit smoking. In consequence, Pak Kudul takes his evening meal and sleeps on the long- house veranda to avoid unpleasant interaction with Pak Nyawai. He enters the undersized bilik of this most unfor- tunate of all families during the day while Pak Nyawai is off working. To not give due respect to the father-in-law is a most serious violation of Mualang social norms so the lack of economic success, in this case, is thoroughly understandable. Domestic disharmony of different kinds also afflicted biliks II and XI which likewise failed to achieve economic success during this period. The point was made earlier that dry rice cultivation in hinterland Borneo is a somewhat risky form of production. When this fact is combined with the fluctuations of prices ”247' on the world rubber market, it is understandable that most households have experienced some economic failure from time- to-time so several "safety-net" strategies for failure are available. Failing to achieve enough rice, the household taps rubber to trade for rice, stretches the rice they have by cooking it with cassava root, eats more meals of cassava root than they would like, borrows rice from kinfolk or other urang berada, and works in someone else's fields for a wage of padi. Doing without is an adaptation all families in this hinterland isolation handle deftly. Not only are they resourceful in the extreme, but they also have forest resources and cassava to provide a cushion for failure. It is clear that "failure" is a relative term denoting lack of success in providing sufficient rice for the household's requirements. In this sense several households fail pre- dictably year after year, a condition referred to as "sakit idup," "to live a painful life." In an intimate community such as this in which everyone possesses numerous kin ties carrying the moral obligation to provide aid, how- ever, it would be impossible to suffer noticeably. Should a destitute family complain of long not having eaten rice, rice would be made available on a cooked-plate basis. The rice, having been cooked, moves from the category of a commodity for which balanced reciprocity is appropriate to the category of food for which generosity is required. This discussion of economic failure in Mualang society ~248- should be concluded with the point that in a truly egali- tarian polity such as this failure must be a legitimate option. The Organization of Exchange Transactions Chapter II presented the position that exchange is one of the three economic event sectors that require anal- ysis for the purpose of discovering the logic of the eco- nomic order residing in "distribution." In this analysis exchange is characterized as "all those acts...that shift control over or rights in an economic good from one indi- vidual to another -- giving, borrowing, lending, selling, buying, bartering" (Cook 1973: 812). In Chapter V the various forms of "wage labor" and trade were discussed in so far as some quantification could be attached to them; they provided a sort of quantitative economic context of the community within which material provisioning decisions were taken by domestic units. We also saw that the cul- turally instituted forms of exchange fall along the recip- rocity continuum from balanced to generalized. In fact, this segmentary scheme of reciprocities, from generalized through balanced to negative as drawn up by Sahlins (1965), fits well the community Sungai Mulau. Special considera- tions in exchange with close kin can be seen as a weak generalized reciprocity. Balanced reciprocity applies to more distant relatives and neighbors and negative ’249- reciprocity is acceptable for distant people toward whom one feels no responsibility. We have seen that the wage for work in the rice field is qualified to give close kin special consideration. During and shortly after the Second World War when the Belitang Hulu area had a reputation as a rice surplus area and families of other tribes (including the Iban) traveled here to labor for rice, the conventional rate of one taken (= 5 gantangs) per day held only for fellow villagers and kin. The wage to outsiders was nego- tiated to as low as 2 gantangs for a day's labor. Perhaps the negative pole of reciprocity is most dramatically demonstrated by the legitimately feared threat of receiving a cup of poisoned tea from the hosts of a distant village where one has gone to make claim on the harvest of a fruit tree to which one has inherited rights. A person with an obvious excess of some non-economic good can be asked to share it (633;) with the implied understanding that, though no exact compensation is specified, such generalized ex- changes usually balance out in the end. One must be care- ful, however, not to overdo this and attain the reputation of an "urang minta-minta," i.e., someone who is always asking for something. For the most part, balanced reciprocity is the pre- vailing mode of reciprocity in Mualang society. To put it more strongly, the societal norm is that one does not take advantage of one's kin and fellow villagers. One may be a -250- bit secretive about the terms of inter-kin transactions but, in fact, all economic transactions are subject to public disclosure. Although a wage rate, loan rate, or price might be qualified slightly by considerations of kin ties, these are just subtle variations of the powerful general rule of balanced reciprocity among households in regard to decisive economic goods. It must be kept in mind that even favorable rates among kin are reciprocated in a more or less balanced manner. Kin are found living together in kin clusters for, among other reasons, the advantages of kin-qualified eco- nomic relations, but it would be unacceptable to exploit this privileged context in any long-run redistributive way. For example, the heads of bilik XI and bilik XVIII are brothers but every year Pak Sandoi's bilik receives a sur- plus and the bilik of Pak Mambang fails to get enough rice for its needs. It follows from such pronounced and pro- longed imbalance that their relationship is pretty much empty of economic content. Instead, the household of Pak Mambang lives in the kin cluster of the bilik of Pak Nyelan. Pak Nyelan and Bu Lutum, wife of Pak Mambang, are siblings and, since both households fail to achieve sufficient rice harvest every year, the reciprocity between them is easier to keep balanced. Enculturation seems clearly aimed at creating attitudes favoring balanced reciprocity. Children eating a snack on the veranda, for example, are not re- HOHOO . OH 66HH56O om dogma .xx ON OH Hoe< .xHx . Hoeeam .HHHOx fifimHHOx 23H? OHHOO .Ox ON OH OH Hazasz .>Hx OOOOH .OHHHx 66662 .HHHx monom .HHx OH ON weanemzfl .Hx Om OOHosz .x OO HOOOO .xH OOOHO .HHHO OOOOOOO .HH> OH OOHam .H> EHH< »> OH OOOHOO .>H O4 Hams» .HHH Ho» .HH swam .H % ponesz . . .L rat HES . . I . I . . I T. . e11 m.hozouhom . T. . o . .1 I . . 71 .1 V . Tl Ti 71 "A X firn Lnnwvwwwu nnnmwmwmnxov .memPCmD CH mGOMHUMWfiMHH GNOA .mmumnm .nm mmomh -254- with rice, but such respite is most welcome to those house- holds that are monotonously tapping rubber during the weed- ing season to buy the rice they failed to grow the previous year. When asked why they did not borrow enough rice to free them from rubber-tapping in order that they could devote more attention to the present crop and improve the chances for success, they all stated that that would be the height of folly because you could fail again and then you would never catch up. Mualang customary law (adat) requires that all game, except birds and other small animals, taken from the forest, whether obtained by an individual, a small hunting party, or a village hunting party (which is common), must be dis- tributed among all the households of the village in equal shares. The actual details of the division of the meat vary from one kind of animal to another, but there is a generalized pattern. The animal is carried to the long- house by a party of men, the labor of whom is compensated by a small special share (geni) of the meat. The animal is placed on mats on the longhouse veranda for butchering. Those engaged in butchering likewise receive a ggni of meat for their work. As specified by adat, a generous share of various parts of the animal is set aside as belonging to the hunter or the person firing the first shot to hit the mark. The rest of the meat is divided into about five qualitative piles and then chopped into small cubes by a -255- large party of men squatting in a circle around the butcher- ing process. Each person assisting is compensated by a ggni of meat. The cubed meat of the five different kinds is then mixed uniformly before the ggni are removed to pay those who carried, butchered, chopped,znuieven divided the meat. In the case of a communal hunt, a ggni is assigned to each person contributing a gun or a dog. Finally, the meat is placed in piles, one for each bilik in the longhouse. These piles are of two sizes with the larger piles going to those biliks with six or more members. An extra pile is designated to each pregnant woman in the village, and one extra pile is formed to be given to a guest, should one appear while the meat distribution process is going on. If no guest appears, this pile becomes the property of the hunter. The hunter's family, having received its pile of meat in addition to the generous share for the hunter, is in the predicament of a serious meat surfeit. This condition is remedied by a further distribution of the hunter's por- tion among his kin including those in villages within walking distance. This distribution of game illustrates several important principles of sociocultural organization and economic life among the Mualang: the egalitarianism of dividing the meat fairly among fellow villagers, all of whom have a claim; the commensurate rewards assigned to contributions of labor and "capital;" the special sharing among kin; and even '256- thoughtful hospitality. All of this contrasts sharply with pig distribution among the socially hierarchical Samoans, for example, where "a pig is divided into ten portions, each of which has its name, and is appropriate to people of cer- tain rank or status" (Firth 1958: 74). The necessity of distributing meat among one's kin attaches to all meat, no matter how obtained. If a house- hold kills a chicken to provide a special meal for a guest, some small portion of that chicken finds its way into every relative's pot in the longhouse community. Likewise, a small animal exempt from communal distribution, a basket of small fish scooped from the stream, or even a kilo of salted fish purchased from a belukar is distributed among one's kin. On a larger scale, when the village is holding a gawai, it is customary for every bilik that can afford it to kill a pig to provide a delicious sayur accompaniment to the rice for its guests. But even the guests of those that do not kill a pig will not go without good gayur be- cause the biliks killing pigs give portions of their pigs to all those not killing pigs. The rules for the distribution of the catch from a communal fish-poisoning outing are egalitarian. Frequently such outings involve several villages, but each village is a unit for purposes of the division of fish. The local custom (adat kecil) in Sungai Mulau requires that all the fish be mixed up and then divided into equal piles, with -257- special shares going to those who provided the poison (my. Sago tree or fruit tree harvests provide other examples of a temporary food surfeit that is dealt with by general- ized distribution. The villagers are informed of the har- vest by the owner of the tree and each bilik_sends a person with a large basket to go along with the group into the forest to retrieve a share of sago or fruit. It is forbid- den to take fruit from another person's tree without per- mission, but, if the owner is not present, one may take just enough to eat on the spot provided he leaves a sign of crossed sticks over the peels of the fruit consumed beneath the tree to tell the owner that he was passing by the tree when hunger struck and so respectfully went ahead and as- suaged his hunger. As Marshall Sahlins has put it: ”it is precisely through scrutiny of departures from balanced exchange that one glimpses the interplay between reciprocity, social relations and material circumstances" (1972: 190). Some time during the interval between harvest and the beginning of the new agricultural cycle, each village hosts a post-harvest celebration. Such celebrations (gawai) are a central feature of Mualang sociocultural life and their analysis reveals the structural principles of social order. Furthermore, no custom better illustrates "the material provisioning of society." Theoretically, a gawai could be given to celebrate or proclaim any public purpose such as -258- founding a new village or moving the location of a village to a different spot on the river, but the major gawais are the marriage gawai and the post-harvest gawai. Only the latter will be considered for illustrative purposes. As harvest activity dwindles in early May, the house- hold's attention shifts to acquiring the provisions for hosting a very large-scale celebration. The time released from argicultural work can now be applied to tapping rubber to trade for the kerosene, sugar, tea, coconut oil, Chinese noodles, condensed milk,znulcondiments for the good sgyur that will be required to give a respectable account- ing of the family during these communal festivities. In the last couple of weeks before the appointed gawai date, the men of the village hunt communally 2 or 3 times a week to provide additional meat. This is preserved by smoking and at the gawai is served in individual bowls to each guest present for whatever ceremonies are to occur (marriage, adoption, property division, etc.) at the gawai. 0n the day before the guests arrive, the women spend the entire day preparing rice, especially the sweets made of glutinous rice that are served with the sugar-tea. Just before night- fall, the men slaughter the pigs and, after a late and leisurely meal of pork, the men gather on the veranda of the longhouse to finalize plans for the big celebration that will begin the following day. Drinking sugar-tea and eating fresh sweets in an atmosphere highly charged with “I ”259‘ expectation, the men decide which villages are to receive invitations and young men are dispatched to deliver the invitations. Everyone is welcome without an invitation but it is a courtesy to notify the nearby villages that the party is being given. The women continue making sweets until quite late, frequently with the assistance of kin from nearby villages. The appointed morning finds the women making the last of the sweets. The men ready the kerosene pressure lamps and mend the ladders into the long- house and any weak floor boards on the veranda that might prove hazardous. The logs and handrails across nearby streams and marshy areas have been attended to in the pre- vious work service (kerja bakti) sessions, as has the cutting of weeds from the village paths. At about midday the guests begin to trickle in, the first ones being the kin from distant villages who attend only in small numbers. Closer villages attend pretty much en masse with each village traveling in a group accompanied by the beating of gongs. The gongs formerly served to pre- vent the encounter of unfavorable bird omens but, with the coming of Christianity, the Mualang no longer fear the bird omens. Before the guest groups enter the village, they stop at a stream nearby, but out of sight of the Village, to bathe and change into their best clothes. They then make a spectacular entrance into the village with the hosts firing off a very noisy twenty-or-so gun salute with their -260- homemade muzzle-loaders. Those not giving the salute rush the line of guests to ”pull" their kin and special friends into a commitment to store belongings in their bilik and begin the celebration by taking sugar-tea and sweets there. It is requisite that each guest step into each bilik in the longhouse for sugar-tea and sweets. This activity consumes most of the afternoon. The aggressive hospitality that began with the individual biliks fighting over the line of guests continues through the tea-drinking tour of the long- house. Each host is ever alert to see that no guest's tea cup gets low and no mouth is free from munching a sweet. By dusk each guest has fended off numerous invitations for the evening meal. The meal itself is prepared and distri- buted over the span of an hour or so since the vegetable accompaniment to the meat and rice is cooked communally and must be divided up among the bowls of pork; one to each guest. Each guest then takes his bowl into the bilik of his host where he is informally -- almost individually -- provided with rice and sugar-tea. He consumes the meal in a flash. The Mualang customarily eat very rapidly and no formality whatsoever attaches to eating. In less than five minutes the guests are back into the flow of activities on the veranda. During this "feeding" period the veranda is occupied by small groups of men in casual conversation. When the eating is completed and things are cleared away, the host bilik dresses up for the evening festivites. To -261- this point, in sharp contrast to the guests, the hosts have been in their everyday clothes. The evening festivities begin with a prayer service on the veranda in accordance with the standard Sunday morning service format, except that the visiting villagers are all likely to have groups pre- pared to "witness in song," thus giving the service exag- gerated length. The prayer service is followed by any adat ceremonies that are planned. It is customary to schedule marriages to be celebrated at this time, thus reducing the gawai expenses of the village significantly for that year (all gawais are communal affairs). After the adat cere- monies, the pace of the celebration component picks up although the sound of the beating of gongs has been constant since the first approach of the guests. The youngsters begin to form into roving gangs of tea-drinking "enforcers." By now the guest have consumed very large quantities of food and tea and, understandably, greet further offers with some reluctance. To ensure that the tea drinking will go on uninterrupted, these bands of youngsters carrying gongs, a tea kettle of tea, a couple of tea glasses,znula plastic bucket of water to rinse the glasses in, push about through the crowded veranda selecting guests here and there to re- ceive further hospitality. The guest invariably complies when he is surrounded by the band dancing in a foot-stomping, ear-shattering manner,znu1chanting a nonsense ditty to the pounding of the gongs. By now the focus of activity on the -Z62- veranda has become the area where several fine mats have been spread out as a dance floor and a gong and drum band has begun to accompany the dancing. All the dancing is per- formed by men, usually singly, and takes the form of per- sonal interpretations of stylized dances acting out episodes in head-hunting raids. The dancing lasts the entire night; it is very bad form to try to get some sleep. An important job of the tea-drinking enforcers is to discover, with a bilik by bilik search, anyone who has tried to slip off for a rest and get him back into the flow of things with this manuever of aggressive hospitality. The dancing dies away toward dawn and daylight finds people slipping off to the river to freshen up. A morning meal is taken in the same bilik as the previous evening meal, this time with much less preparation and distribution fuss. Sugar-tea drinking continues for those few who are not yet nauseated by it or who still have visits to make, but by now the level of aggression has diminished a bit. Presently the guest village groups begin to assemble for departure. Perhaps as many as half the guests have slipped out during the night, so if 800 attended, about 400 will be staging up for departure. A prayer for safe journey is offered and the guests descend the ladder of the longhouse in a long file to begin the journey home to the beat of the gongs. A parting fusillade of firearms as they head away down the path does not release them, however, from the grasp —263- of aggressive hospitality. Shortly they will come upon an obstruction in the path, commonly at a bridge or log across a stream, where several youths from the host village will be waiting. This gang is armed with several kettles of tea, a few tea glasses, a plastic bucket to rinse the glasses, and several sticks of charcoal and pig grease to mark any who are reluctant to receive a parting glass of sugar-tea. The action typically gets quite rowdy with brave lads "saving" their villages by chug-a-lugging entire kettles of tea, much smearing of charcoal and mud, and people breaking into dancing to the incessant gong beating. As the guests, having received until it hurts, "escape," the hosts slip back into the longhouse where things move pretty slowly for the rest of the day. The quezzy stomachs and frazzled nerves are soothed by catching up on lost sleep and the gradual return to everyday life. Th host villagers will, over the span of the next six weeks, be the guests at several of these post-harvest gawais in a reciprocative manner. They will select from the gawai calendar to attend the gawais of the villages where their closer kin live -- attending perhaps an average of four gawais per season. Occasional marriage gawais occurring sporadically through the year give some social color to the intensive agricultural portion of the year, which is broken up for the most part only by the upbeat planting season (nugal) and the Christmas-New Year's holidays. '264- We see in the organization of the gawai_the simultan- eous organization of the village by principles of both communal and domestic unit autonomy. The special aid and hospitality exchanged between kin is again evident. The principle of egalitarianism is demonstrated in everyone's being hosted in every bilik and in everyone's being entitled to accept an invitation to share the meal in anyone's bilik. The enthusiastic hospitality of the Mualang people is amply demonstrated and the balanced reciprocity nature of the large-scale gawai-giving complex seems apparent. Here, in this public context, changes in social status are proclaimed (e.g., marriage or adoption) and customary law (adat) case disposition is made for all to witness. This is no frivo- lous party but rather the sponsoring of a public context in which public business is transacted. When the households serve up a considerable share of their product for the gawai (see Table 36), they are up to nothing less than materially provisioning their society in the very best sense of the term. In concluding this consideration of exchange, it should be emphasized that, however interesting the nuances of reci- procityy inthe final analysis (in distribution) it is the balanced reciprocity between households that is decisive. The community production profile suggests this, and the analysis of the various categories of material provisioning behavior confirms it. ‘265- The Organization of Distribution Distribution was seen in Chapter II to have had two conventional senses. The first of these, in which the values of the productive factors are related to determine some returns-to-factors outcome, remains intractable for economic life not dominated by market exchange. In its second sense, distribution is the outcome of the material provisioning process or the arrangements that determine the economic outcome. Thus, distributional arrangements can be said to integrate the other formal analytic categories -- the core event sectors. The position on distribution adopted for this study is that it is: the process of reward allocation of product to the factors of production ...the process that integrates these sectors as a circular flow system and articulates this system with the larger sociocultural system. It is the dis- tributional process that regulates the circulation of wealth in a given society, and underwrites the structure and dynam- ics of its allocation among the various status groups of the social system (Cook 1973: 812). Put in this way, distribution is what has been at issue throughout this analysis of economic life in Sungai Mulau. It remains here under this topic to merely draw the distributional features together to demonstrate how the economic order is an integrated set of narrowed possibil- ities organizing the material provisioning of this society. In Mualang society, "the control of the means of pro- duction is in the hands of the producer." The factors of ~266- production -- resources, capital, and labor --are not com- moditized in Mualang society; that is, they are not bought and sold with the end of being combined in production at the risk of the buyer. The material resources in the Beli- tang Hulu are, for the most part, the forest, the streams, and the agricultural land the Mualang make from these. In the discussion of property rights and the land tenure system, it was noted that each domestic unit of the village commun— ity has use rights to all land that is not claimed tempor- arily by virtue of its having been cleared from primary forest within the time span of four croppings. The longtime occupation of this village territory means that most land is now available in common access. Likewise, the naturally occurring forest products are the property of any household taking the trouble to collect them. Although rights to fishing holes, tengkawang trees,£uuihoney trees were once inherited, the Mualang assume that by now every bilik has longsince established an inheritance link and so these resources are treated as the property common not only of the villagers of Sungai Mulau, but also of all the inhabi- tants of nearby villagers that are related to Sungai Mulau people. The capital involved in production in this low-level technological adaptation is quite meager and as a consequence, it can be fairly said to be generally available to all in the amounts required. -267- There have been many illustrations cited of the princi- ple that labor invested in a valued good or resource estab- lishes claims on it. The labor basis of value is a concep- tion indigenous to the system under study. In the context of a system such as this in which everyone has equal access to the means of production, it is quite obvious that "wage labor" is structurally distinct from the context in which laborers have only their own labor to offer, giving rise to the opportunity for "surplus labor" extraction. It has been shown that here, in contrast, exchange labor in its various forms and even "wage labor” can be a mild form of general- ized reciprocity. Still, labor is the decisive factor of production. It is the distribution of labor in the "domestic mode of production" that is determinate. The division of labor among ages and between sexes means that households, a complementarity of these labor statuses, will be variously constituted with respect to labor resources. Because the allocation of the product to the producers is quite direct, the household being the predominant unit of both production and consumption, the mode of production specifies unequal potentialities for materially provisioning the household. It is obvious that these are precisely the features of the "domestic mode of production" proposed by Sahlins (1972: 74-99) to be lurking "structurally" beneath the sociocul- tural order of certain kinds of primitive societies. In this society, however, they are actually instituted -- a -268- possibility Shalins' analytic scheme permits only in the peasant economic context. In the discussion of consumption, it was clear that differential consumption by households correlated directly with differential production outcomes, the consequence not only of the range of household consumer/worker ratios but also of the prevailing balanced reciprocity among house- holds. With spheres of exchange lacking, household sur- pluses are either stored or converted to consumer goods, and wealth takes the form of a higher level of consumption of consumer goods. Since wealth is not put to political or productive economic uses and there is no validation of differential social statuses, wealth is emptied of most of its sociopolitical content. The practice of heritable wealth being divided more or less equally among the children has in recent years become the common mode of inheritance. An important feature of wealth in such a context as this is that it is not cumulative. Each new separate hearth (bilik) is established with an unusually egalitarian set of life chances. In the course of the family life cycle, the bilik will pass from favorable to unfavorable and again back to favorable consumer-worker ratios. The shape of the com- munity production profile in Figure 12 attests mathemati- cally to this distributional state of affairs. It is the relations of distribution that make sense of the community production profile. -269- One of the strengths of economic anthropology through the years has been the attention given to how wealth is accumulated and distributed and the uses to which surpluses are put. Such considerations have long been recognized as socioculturally specified and, thus, a special contribution anthropology can make to a comparative economics. Wealth was considered above from the personal consumption perspec- tive; it is instructive to look at it now from the community perspective on surplus. The net income of the community (excluding biliks V and XIX, one of which perennially at- tains a surplus and the other perennially a deficit), is Rp 6,109,121. The income required for the minimal level of well-being for the community (based on 79.9 consumers) is Rp 4,594,250, yielding a 33 percxnn:"surplus" for the village as a whole. This surplus, however, is not for the most part put to public purposes. To get at the expenditure on public purposes a different tack must be taken. Table 36 shows the post-harvest gawai_expenses to be Rp 434,985. Removing biliks V and XIX as previously, this figure becomes Rp 383,115. Adding 60 percxnnzof this figure for a second marriage gawai in which 60 per cent as many guests were pro- vided for gives a total for both gawais of Rp 612,984, which is 10% of the community net product. Church contributions (Table 35) have a total value of Rp 71,585, which is 1.17% of the community net product. Finally, public work service (kerja bakti) constituted 5.9% of all workdays invested in -270- production. Although combining these figures is a bit like adding apples and oranges, the total comes to 17% of mea- sured production put to public purposes. It is clear that, for the most part, this society materially provisions itself indirectly through the efforts of the domestic unit. In the discussion of exchange, although all forms of reciprocity were documented as existing simultaneously, it was balanced reciprocity with respect to the important com- modities of rice and rubber that was decisive for the system of distribution in place. It is, then, a fair characteri- zation of distribution in this society as a highly egali- tarian ordering of the economic possibilities. Furthermore, the anticipation oszhigh level of correspondence between the economic order and the sociopolitical has been fulfilled since Sungai Mulau quite clearly is an egalitarian polity. There is one final distributive aspect that requires consideration. This will illustrate the point that, however much distribution might be said to integrate the economic system, it is in the exchange event sector that economic behavior most intimately impinges on the sociocultural. This final aspect is distribution within the domestic unit. Within the domestic unit, generalized reciprocity dominates relationships. It is not just the obvious fact that the returns to labor are not carefully calculated, but, further that the generalized reciprocity that provisions the dependent young, aged, and infirm can be manipulated -Z71- exploitatively. The domestic unit drawsznreconomic "curtain" around the social entity in which dependent people can be provisioned in a context of reasonable expectations of returns through the life cycle via generalized reciprocity. Generalized reciprocity contains the moral component of responsibility appropriate to interdependence and this inter- dependence is founded on kinship relatedness. This moral com- ponent of generalized reciprocity diffuses beyond the do- mestic unit along the lines of cognatic kinship. This is so because this economic curtain often proves to be un- realistic. As Sahlins has put it: "Almost every family living solely by its own means sooner or later discovers it has not the means to live" (1972: 101). The domestic unit, organized to provide boundaries to the interdependence of generalized reciprocity is thereby put into tension with the moral component of reciprocity among kin who could, on the basis of moral claims, seriously disturb the intra— domestic context of reciprocal expectations. Balanced reciprocity among kin is the resolution of this social organizational contradiction, but, as the analysis of ex- change has revealed, it is an uneasy resolution. This is where the tension in the sociocultural order lies. The dominant feature of marriage in this society is the struggle with the problem of the maintenance of economically viable domestic units in the ceremony of bepinta' (see Chapter III). This same struggle lies at the heart of the very common -Z72- practice of adoption (ngangku' anak). The sibling cluster arrangement of biliks in the longhouse community illustrates graphically the resolution of the tensions over where the boundaries of the domestic unit will be drawn. The ideal of keeping the married children together with the parents around a single hearth enjoying the material advantages of a favorable consumer/worker ratio is only rarely realized. Recall that the very deliberate complementarity of roles within the domestic unit attempts to provide a "practical reason" (Sahlins 1976) for the appropriate generalized reciprocity. Sooner or later, however, someone begins to calculate the economics of the relationship and, because that is anathema to generalized reciprocity, the compound domestic unit comes apart. Beyond the domestic unit, the lines of cognatic kinship continue to Carry, even if only in a latent form, the load of moral responsiblity that, on the occasion of a political episode in the longhouse com- munity, manifests itself as kinship-ordered factions. The domestic unit, surrounded by the kinship field of irrecon- cilable reciprocity potential, is the armature of the social movement. This study lends support to the idea, running through the work of Mauss and Polanyi to Sahlins, that exchange is the fundamental social act and its instituted modes are decisive for the sotiopolitical order. CHAPTER VIII APPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY TO MODELS OF TRADITIONAL ECONOMIES AND TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES This study attempts to understand the economic life of the village of Sungai Mulau in its ethnographic uniqueness. To avoid forcing on the data particular concepts and cate- gories from specific economic formations, Godelier's "formal model of a possible economic system"(l972: 262-279) was used. The case can be further elucidated by attempting to fit it to the relevant anthropological models. It was, in fact, the uncertainty of Hueappropriateness of the conven- tional anthropological models that provoked the design of this study from the start. This final chapter takes up several issues involved in these problems of the applica- bility of anthropolgical models. The analysis thus far has touched only tangentially upon the articulation of the community with external economic forces. It is obvious that the community cannot be understood as an isolated entity, because it is influenced to some extent by an encompassing economic and political order beyond its borders and beyond its powers to exert influence of consequence. The character of this articulation is at issue both in placing this vill- age in its larger economic context and also in the consid- erations of the fit of hinterland Bornean societies to the -273~ -274- predominant anthropological models of tribal and peasant society. Problems with the Tribal Model in Hinterland Southeast Asia Several writers have expressed difficulties with the use of the tribal model in analyzing hinterland Southeast Asian societies. Izikowitz (1951) refers to the Lamet of Laos as variously tribal and peasant from one page to another; however, it is clear that he decides them to be "hill peasants." For analyzing the Chin of Burma F.K. Lehman (1963: 2) coins the term "subnuclear society" because he feels that the relationships of the Chin with the Burman civilization make them "distinct both from peasant society and from purely tribal society.” Further, he states: This category comprises a whole series of mountain-dwelling peoples in a region stretching from Assam across all of main- land Southeast Asia and into the tribal area of Southwest China. The Chin repre- sent only a small segment of a wide arc of variation within this broad type of tribal peasant society and culture (Ibid.: 224-225)(Emphasis added). Halpern (1964) in his Economy and Society of Laos documents how the socioeconomic organizations of the Meo, Khmu,znu1Lamet are complex mixtures of tribal and peasant characteristics. In Halpern and Brode's article ”Peasant Society," they make the point that: -275- Southeast Asia poses certain unique prob- lems for peasant studies: although it contains historically old and complex na- tionrstates,with literate traditions, for a complex of reasons the boundaries sepa- rating peasant from tribal society have not been clearly marked, and ethnic iden- tities tend to shift over time. These factors are brought out in recent surveys and attempts to describe the cultures of the area (Burling 1965; Lebar, et a1. 1964) and are documented in a specific case study in northern Thailand (Moerman 1967) and a survey of Laos (Halpern 1964)(Halpern and Brode 1967: 116). Peter Kunstadter preserves the term "tribal" for the hinterland peOplesHuoswouH mOUHDOwOH ®>fiHUHHHuOHQ \ on mmouom HmcoHprwHu H 2 m m H a HH>H:m: H :OHuoswopm HmHoHoEEou < o>HmcoHov “mammod a :ooaosHHHm: o>HuHEHHH m H -288- production are traditional aspects of the social order, the traditional order and its customary ways of materially pro- visioning that order are threatened (Fisk 1964: 158). "Market exchange" has by now diffused into just about every corner of the world but market-integrated economic order is quite restricted in its distribution. In fact, much peasant economic order can be understood as a defense against the unacceptable forces of market organization impinging on hinterland economic life. The economic ration- alization of agricultural production is dependently corre- lated with the rationalization of production in the non- agricultural sectors of the economy, a condition giving rise to the "price scissors" which trims away the realization of increased well-being from increased output (Georgescu- Roegen 1960: 8; Wolf 1966: 43). As Midwestern commercial farmers express it: "farmers buy retail and sell wholesale." Herein lies much of the explanation of peasant resistance to economic transformation or "peasant conservatism." At a disadvantage with respect to the terms of trade with the more rationalized sector of the economy, the peasant sector is dominated by the rationality of "produc- tion for use" or "subsistence." Defensively the peasant producer strives, in the manner of a "survival algorithm" (Lipton 1968), to minimize risks in providing the socially- defined level of well-being rather than maximizing returns to factors (cf. Wharton 1971). The disadvantageous terms -289- of trade result in the socially-defined level of well-being settling near the capacity of production intensity for an average household at nearly worst prices (cf. Weeks 1970: 35, f.n. 7) in this traditional combination of production factors. It is the price-scissors effect that differentiates the peasant from the primitive position. In the primitive economic context, the socially-defined level of well-being is typically below the capacity of the traditional produc- tion arrangements for even the average household, a condi- tion referred to by Sahlins as "primitive affluence" (1972: 1-39; see also Fisk 1962, 1964; Fisk and Shand 1969; Jones 1969: 282). Primitive producers with traditional access to sufficient means of production can enter market exchange relationships to expand consumption possibilities as they please--or withdraw. Material goods of external origin are not primary goods in primitive economies. Consequently, they can be dispensed with when the terms of trade are not deemed suitable. Little influenced by the effects of the market price-scissors and the incessant struggle to compete to keep production economically rational, primitive producers tend towards "under-production" (Sahlins 1972: 41). Although both primitive and peasant producers produce for use, their different articulations with the market result in different responses to commodity price changes. The peasant producer frequently intensifies production (when he cannot switch -290- to a more advantageously priced product) to compensate for a drop in commodity prices. By contrast, the primitive producer, his socially-defined level of well-being not threatened, can slacken production of such commodities. In recognition of this dramatic difference between primi- tive and peasant societies in articulation with the market the external exchange relationship for primitive societies is designated "trade." These few generalizations about the microeconomic perspectives in primitive and peasant societies do not, of course, constitute microeconomic models. The expression "microeconomic perspective" has been used deliberately to permit reasoning about the microeconomic perspective but to differentiate such reasoning from specific microeconomic models. In such a small-scale study as this, it is not possible to specify with any confidence the relationship between the socially-defined level of well-being and production capacity --likewise the related "primitive affluence." Production capacity is not determined by merely technological consider- ations, but is as much qualified by the sociocultural system in place as the socially-defined level of well-being. There is little doubt that the Mualang could produce more by work- ing more, but surely that is not an interesting observation. As W.O. Jones has said, "There is...in most societies the capability of increasing the labor resources that are -291- brought into a desired employment" (1969: 282). Sahlins has cautioned that the socially-defined level of well-being should not be viewed as a utility map of subjective satis- factions as is the case in Chayanov's work (1972: 88 f.n.). ”To 'embourgeoise' the 'noble savage'" (1969: 24) in this way would cause one "to ignore the real differences in the way goods are handled in favor of apparent resemblances in the satisfactions gained" (1972: 127). Jones makes a similar point in criticizing Fisk and Shand's model (1969) relating underproduction in primitive societies to a low "demand ceiling": A new style in pottery or carving, the discovery or invention of new gods and of new ways to worship them (witness the medieval cathedrals), a charismatic leader with enthusiasm for war, or a new obsession with competitive feasts can provide the Opportunity and incentive to direct labor in new directions, and so, in the view of the populations engaged, to enhance the national product (1969: 282). At issue here are those mechanisms by which the increased participation in market exchanges "do violence to the very culture of the society concerned, as well as to its economic organization" (Fisk 1964: 158). Microeconomic models are inadequate for the purposes at hand because they ignore two more important considerations of the market- engagement process: the place of these goods in the local economic context, andthe terms of trade between the local economic context and the external economy. -292- The Comparison of Primitive and Peasant Types of ArtiEulation with the Market Market articulation as part of the community economic context was discussed in Chapter V and seen to be dominated by the barter of rubber for trade goods of commercial manu- facture. The analysis of these exchanges revealed a three- way movement involving rice, the basis of minimal well- being in Mualang economics. It has long been appreciated w - I". by economic anthropologists that exchange in a market can have different structural consequences for the local economy depending upon the place of those goods exchanged in the“ g local economic context (e.g., Bohannan and Dalton 1962, Neale 1971, cf. Pryor 1977: 27). The inquiry here will follow this line of reasoning. Significant changes have taken place in the past thirty years in the character of Mualang society engagement with the market economy. With regard to the position of rice in the exchange network, the increased availability of rice through external sources is the prominant feature. Tradi— tionally several households in each village failed to obtain their rice quota in production much as they do today. Be- yond resort to the "famine foods," the deficit could be made up by the exchange of rice among households. The loan-with- interest scheme discussed in Chapter VII was common for small-scale transactions while larger-scale transactions involved the exchange of heirloom wealth (brassware, Chinese vases, etc.) for rice. Under conditions of widespread harvest -293- failure, it was not uncommon for people to seek rice in other tribal areas enjoying a reputation for success in rice production. Rice could be obtained by the exchange of labor and/or heirloom wealth. Today, the access to rice on the market at government-controlled prices has led to the expectation on the part of all households that rice can be available everyday regardless of the success of the rice harvest if they are willing to compensate for production deficits with rubber-tapping. As will be explained below, the increased availability of rice has resulted in lessened emphasis on rice production, compensated for by increasing rubber-tapping. Two important changes are interrelated here: a change in the kinds of goods available, and a change in the manner of supplementing rice production. Formerly, heirloom pr0perty, acquired in trade forrdxxesurpluses and jungle products such as rattan and "native rubber," served to store wealth. Today, bilik families no longer strive to store wealth in heirloom property. This change from storing wealth as heirloom property to consuming wealth in the form of consumption goods is a significant change in the local economic order. Heirloom property as a store of value constituting an estate handed with pride to the succeeding generation charged with managing the bilik family estate has been replaced by the expanded consumption of material goods of external manufacture and the educationHH ucazaH OOOHOHHOO o H I Ragu II Yok III Yusak IV Payung V Akim VI Saing VII Gantung VIII Gum IX Jangi X Nyelan XI Mambang XII Sekios XIII Norcé XIIIB Lanas XIV Nyawai XVII Talip XVI Luya .HHOpco>:H HHHOHOHH OHnmusa XVII Banan XVIII Sandoi XIX Amoi XX Haron xuuonoum .H< OHan -315- H H H H N N H H H H H H H H H O N N N H H :ooam OOHOHOO ouHO : o NH 0 m snow 33:25: > N H N H N H H H N H H N H H H N H N H H :02? 5:553. ouhaH H. N N NH o N OH NH O NH m o OH NH v o NH NH N N NH N T5535: w :3 8.: mcoonm HHS-m u N H H Hos—PH H30: .6. H H H H H H H H hop—Hanan no» .— H N N H N H H H H H .325 team uHumaHa H. c m m m n v N n N N N n n N v H N n n N N >93 no..- Huuon a H H weapon» no» 0 N meluocu ouHu OH on ..N NH 3 ON OH O NH 3 O NH 3 O O OH ON OH OH O O 86H» 9.35:. a H H H N H32. out 3:55.: H O o m e m N n v N m n n m o v o H m Hzon uHfiauou ON-HHHH a ON OH ON OH NH vN NH H o NH OH «N Om m ON ON NH ON ON ON NH H303 uHfiuuou HHaam .n I .I m I u I H v I n n x I n u n N v w w. w. u x I I I I V V V V I X X X X X X X X X X X X H.O.OO66O .H< OHQMH sex OOO HuoH HH Hanna HH NNH omuo uHam HH ual canyon Nunam g: oHumon uchcaoq-ouHu um HMO-0 HWNH MQNH HMHH nuance mchcson-ouHu Hm flHmNNNM HpameH ouH>ov uonm::-ouHu oo v-QHHQ -316- uoHuuuu voou =HaHouHon we NNNNWNN H HNHNN HNHH HNHHN HF‘HNQ MNH uoHuuau OOOH achsdHa uu uoxmaa uHuman an canamHO oHumuHa an uoxuan OHumuHO uuuaH n NQMV uoxuan oHumaHg HHasm N M m N HOOOHO uHumaHn x II III IV VI VII IX XI VIII XII XIII XIIIB XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX H.O.H:OOO .H< oHan -317- von :ovoox Ax uoxcufia KR 'Q raumwn xonax i NIflOH NNWH mmopuuaa xonax t HNQ‘OH NNQ HMQM NMtfllflN HHNN HHMM NNVH HHNQ HHNF‘ uouuwa 53 hONflh up HNHWQQ muommaum mauzom mm HHH—{N unammMUm unauuau-uga: uh anuwdgmafiw av NNHN anan unannoun an mac“ ucwucas OO cuoucna CG new" :cmeeaaa= QMHNH M m N M niau can can ya II III IV VI VII VIII IX XI XII XIII XIIIB XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX m.w.ucouv .H< anmH -318- H.w.paouv H H H oHvau cc: H ocngul unHzom Huscaa 333 H H H H H H H H H H H H ocngan uconm oHvaouu HHH H H :uuaz umHuz xxx H H H xuoHu HHa: HHH v uHanu uHumaHn was :ouH HHH v N uHanu :ovoo: an: H v H N H H v H H guess mm» H H N N H H H H H H oHnau mum H H o>oum ocomouox 000 H H xunu H309 van uuan vac H H umogu mHHmcou: :oguuHx uuu H H H H H H umugu m0290Hu can m n N m m N N N N H N H N N m n H H H no: OuHaamos can H N H N H ton cahH an I I m I n n u w v m“ w m N” n m m mm m w mm m m mm m .H< oHan -319- acouum oHaaou uuHHm Haxmnoxu omaoHn “Hos Hnguuoxuca; HNNH ouonmaua H HNNHN uumeuocna DOE-fl-né‘v-t VNNN gnu oHaa ‘H NN II-IN unouam oHaa h HHoHaaom van oHaEV mx==uu aHzm mxuuHm oHaa U 'U HH NH mH nH muuocm NH oH HH NI‘Q’NHN GHNHHH VHQNN VMNH mH QOMN Q3001!) HQNWN QHNHNH G HoHanw Hz; 325 uuHH—m G .D \ «5508 .HHH onsou ouuommuu-onuu oHvuu OOO II III IV VI VII VIII IX XI XII XIII XIIIB XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX H.H.p:00v .H< oHan -320- uHch ucHuuoH-uooHa ouch mcHeoox 0 H QM ochx mcHnnau-uonnah H H noguua: U '0 086 MNHMO VN—GNN MNN NNHNMH NMH MNHN‘O QNNNM NM QMHNW VIN MNNWM WNHNQ HHHHN NHo-C oHch gas; a .O mHooe .>H mommaHuoxo Hozou «HHouaas QNMH NHHH «annum oHaacm v-OHNN moogm NMMNV NMN mucosa nonaau VN m QHHQ mmohv II III IV VI VII VIII IX XI XII XIII XIIIB XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX H.w_pcouv .H< mHan -321- muoucHa Homng oHHw ocmHn HW—‘H ouoa an 3am uoH ouuaH F1 Iowans: NHH NHH HHI-I hoses: H unHu HHMHH F‘HHHH HHHH omau uosm onHu «HM—0 umau 30:0 Houoa 0!" 3mm uaHuocuuan NHNNMN 0-0 H H ochx cauuo» M: II III IV VI VII VIII IX XI XII XIII XIIIB XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX H.w.H:ouV .H< mHQMH XII”. III-“ III ~322- uaon :: Hauoa anon mm moHuum mm H H Hmong Hannah on H N H H H H H H H H H H N N H H H H ocoum HchoaHagm on H H H H H H ouH>ov ucHzmou:H-ouHu uu uoxouam HuuHaogu an H ovaHn nooum as H H H H H H H H H H H H Ho>ocm n H H N H H H N H H v H H H H H as.» H an: QOOUm :mHm x N H H H H H H H H H H H Hanan gmHu : H H H H H H H H H H H H H H can coHuaHaaaou > H H H H H H H H H H Houaum «scouou : I I m I n r. n v r. n n“ x .1 u n nu w "v m w mu m x I I .1 V V V I Va vX X X X X X Y" X X VA H.H.H:ouv .H< mHQMH -323- can; oHaa uoHounun uHou uHusom ouaquo: Ho>HHm 'ra-IH ouaquoc uHom W4 ucHuuomch vHow anon HHaam N8 Tana :HHIU xauu ucH>uom macho ‘H cc cn oH oH H30; UHsauou “CNN—QM QOHI—O ouuHA uHflauou qau oxv uHaauou U '0 Han couauv HHuu QWHMNNNH Han yoga: 6.9 ‘ xuuomoum flooHuHo: omN an O m an em on an mumon Meagan II III IV VI VII VIII IX XI XII XIII XIIIB XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX H.u.quuU .H< mHQMH -324- HOu—H—QHA— :UGJM: a“ . uume :Huuuaa vosuuHum u guoHu :HaxH= Ho HHHHH H was wchuoz x umunu hoanou : Esau > Hanna : ochx Hchoaouou a uHon uo>HHm oHasow m mwcHuHao vHom oHuaom u uoHouaua Ho>HHm oHasou a a uoHoumun uoacuaH oHanm uoHouaun Haanm many; 0 «on uoHouaHn HHonm oHanu c uom uoHouaua HHonm oHal a II III IV VI VII VIII IX XI XII XIII XIIIB XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX H.w.pnouv .H< mHan .mho: vmuasou Ho: mH can mmhm HHHHm mcmHmsz any :H HHHHn.mwconm mH; :H mchEoH .mucmpHHomnH EooHHHm: HHHMHummmo .cmem xmm mo zunoaogm chuHoo .xnmhomEou wmumemzou qumn HHHHQ chu mo :oHumEHom onhz .ouo; wouqaou no: mH Hegemopm mea -prcHon nusm .quHHnHmH>Hw:H mo mmsmuon HHuqHOM voaso choEEou mH Hypoaoum EOQHHHmmn .uaoe -Hmm yucca mm mm mcoumm on» gummcmn mx23Hu EHzm MHmE may uma: ca :0503 How :oEEou mH HHH .:sm mmoHunoHoH on» scum mpouHsonm HHmnu Hm>ou on muHHnm Maw: 2050: Hue: meHm :wu .mpm: cmwsHunH Ho: ohm «so: Eopm Amzm noanHnu mo HHHoQOHm Hmcomuom one .moucmumESUHHu HmEHom pmos may cH :m>m mmzuoHu 0: cu 3mm Hum: :meHHnu HHmEm mmpnou mo .maonH>mH HHEHmm Ho: va maHp .voHHom xuoszmHm m:u mo dam «nu um uso umHHHmu mm: >0>Hsm mHsp omsmuom .ch5 .0w UHucmEom mHnu How mmHHowoumu m>Hpma may meucowH o» ummecm may mo muaHHmm on“ Scum wcHuHSmoH :on5mnou mo mmsmuon >0>H2m mHau :H amusHucH Ho: mum mmnu0Hu m.:oHuHH:u HHmemx -325- .:0m was Honuoa mHnu vmchunou HHHpm uH HH mm woummpu mH HHH> HHHHn mmHHouso>=H HHHmQOHQ Hague ow oHanmQEou GOHHmHomenou mHnu mxme ou .Ho>ozo: .oum: azmuv mm vmmHchm van wm>oumEH mm: xHHHn m.Hmcmh xmm mo conuuHx may omamnu mHnu oumcoEouum ch .Hmamh Ham mo xHHHn may :H munovaou HHMHOQEmu a: moxmu wan 6H0: -omso: man Scum HHHQm was com umoquo> Hm; ssz 530 :m Hman umnouuou msHu mqu An Omng .moHHou:o>:H Henna :HH3 mHnm -HmQEou Eonu mxma ow mmusmHm amonu :H wmvsHucH uo: mH was :mHm Hoon mmsozmcoH may oucH camuw mH mHSHuDHum so: mHsb .Eoon whoa mcH>oum ou Hump on» :H :o uHHsa comp um: 595mmvv conuuHx :auowoa: mHnu was voHHHmE was amE< Ham mums 0H0: manoEonsmamE ommnu oEHu onu >m+ .mpmmx mmuzp usonm How HHHHL HmQOHQ m cHHsn on mHmHuopwE mcHuuoHHou soon was acum: xmm .mmhw unmsunmmm o: m>mn Hana monmomm HHHUHHum om mmummmHHH> onHmm uHmnu mo whammmHmmHv may ow nosey mNHm man mo us: wHon m :H xHunmamEHmn mm>HH HHHHA m.:onm: Hang H.H.Huouv H< mHHmH wazmga< A HHH—4- REFERENCES CITED REFERENCES CITED Adair, C. Roy 1972 Production and Utilization of Rice. In D.F. Houston, Ed. Rice: Chemistry and Technology. St. Paul, Minn.: American Association of Cereal Chemists. Appell, G.N. 1973 The Distinction Between Ethnography and Ethnology and Other Issues in Cognitive Structuralism. Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenhunde. 129:1-56. 1976 Preface and Introduction. In G.N. Appell, Ed. The Societies of Borneo: Explorations in the Theory of Cognatic Social Structure. A Special Publication of the American Anthropological Association, No. 6. Asia Yearbook 1979 Hongkong: Far Eastern Economic Review. Barney, George Linwood 1970 An Analysis of Swidden Cultures in Southeast Asia. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Minnesota. Bartlett, Peggy F. 1980 Adaptive Strategies in Peasant Agricultural Production. Annual Review of Anthropology. 9: 545-573. Baudrillard, Jean 1975 The Mirror of Production. Translated with Intro- duction by Mark Poster. St. Louis: Telos Press. Bhar, Supriya 1980 A Headhunter Scare in a Simunul Bajau Village in Sandakan, 1979. Borneo Research Bulletin. 12(1): 26-28. Bohannan, Paul and George Dalton, Eds. 1962 Markets in Africa. Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press. -326- -327- Brown, Donald 1976 Principles of Social Structure: Southeast Asia. London: Gerald Duckworth 6 Co. Clammer, John, Ed. 1978 The New Economic Anthropology. London: The MacMillan Press. Clark, Colin and Margaret Haswell 1966 The Economics of Subsistence Agriculture. New York: St. Martin's Press.(2nd edition). Clark, Colin and J. Boyd Turner 1973 World Population Growth and Future Food Trends. In Miloslav Rechcigl, Jr., Ed. Man, Food and Nutrition. Cleveland: CRC Press. Collier, William and Suhud Tjakra Werdaja 1972 Smallholder Rubber Production and Marketing. Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies. VIII (2):67-92. Conklin, Harold C. 1961 The Study of Shifting Cultivation. Current Anthropology. 2:27-61. Cook, Scott 1973 Economic AnthrOpology: Problems in Theory, Method and Analysis. In John J. Honigmann, Ed. Hand- book of Social and Cutural Anthropology. Chicago: Rand McNally College Publishing. 1974 'Structural Substantivism': A Critical Review of Marshall Sahlins' Stone Age Economics. Compara- tive Studies in Society and History. 16:355-379. Dalton, George 1967 The Development of Subsistence and Peasant Econo- mies in Africa. In George Dalton, Ed. Tribal and Peasant Economies. Garden City, New York: The Natural History Press. 1969 Theoretical Issues in Economic Anthropology. Current Anthropology. 10:63-102. 1971 Peasantries in Anthropology and History. In George Dalton, Ed. Economic Anthropology and Development: Essays on Tribal and Peasant Economies. New York: Basic Books. , Dewaard, P.W.F. 1964 Pepper Cultivation in Sarawak. World Crops. 16:24-34. -328- Diamond, Stanley 1974 In Search of the Primitive. New Brunswick, N.J.: E.P. Dutton. Dick, Howard 1979 Survey of Recent Developments. Bulletin, of Indonesian Economic Studies. XV(1):1-44. Dumont, Louis 1975 On the Comparative Understanding of Non-Modern Civilizations. Daedalus. 104(1):153-172. Dunsmore, J.R. 1968 Wet Padi: A Manual to Assist Padi Planters in Sarawak and Elsewhere. Kuching, Sarawak: Borneo Literature Bureau. Durrenberger, E. Paul 1976a The Economy of a Lisu Village. American Ethnolo- gist. 3:633-644. 1976b A Program for Computing Sahlins' Social Profile of Domestic Production and Related Statistics. Behavior Science Research. 1:19-23. 1980 Chayanov's Economic Analysis in Anthropology. Journal of Anthropological Research. 36:133-148. Esmay, Merle, Soemangat, Eriyatno, and Allan Phillips 1979 Rice Production Technology in the Tropics. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii. Evans, Martin 1974 A Note on the Measurement of Sahlins' Social Pro- file of Domestic Production. American Ethnologist. 1:269-279. Fallers, Lloyd A. 1976 Are African Cultivators to be Called Peasants? In Jack M. Potter, May N. Diaz and George M. Foster, Eds. Peasant Society: A Reader. Boston: Little, Brown 8 Co. FAO 1977 Provisional Food Balance Sheets, 1972-74 Average. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Firth, Raymond 1958 Work and Wealth of Primitive Communities. In Raymond Firth, Ed. Human Types: An Introduction to Social Anthropology. New York: Mentor Books. (Revised edition). -329- Fisher, Charles A. 1964 Southeast Asia: A Social, Economic and Political Geography. London: Methuen. Fisk, E.K. 1962 Planning in a Primitive Economy: Special Problems of Papua-New Guinea. Economic Record. 38(84): 462-478. 1964 Planning in a Primitive Economy: From Pure Subsist- ence to the Production of a Market Surplus. Eco- nomic Record. 40(90):156-174. Fisk, E.K. and R.T. Shand 1969 The Early Stages of Development in a Primitive Economy: The Evolution from Subsistence to Trade and Specialization. In Clifton R. Wharton, Jr., Ed. Subsistence Agriculture and Economic Develop- ment. Chicago: Aldine Publishing. Fortes, Meyer 1969 Kinship and the Social Order. Chicago: Aldine Publishing. Foster, George M. 1967 Introduction: What is a Peasant? In Jack M. Potter, May N. Diaz and George M. Foster, Eds. Peasant Society: A Reader. Boston: Little, Brown 6 Co. Foster-Carter, Aiden 1978 Can We Articulate 'Articulation'? In John Clammer, Ed. The New Economic Anthropology. London: The Macmillan Press. Freeman, J.D. 1955 Iban Agriculture: A Report on the Shifting Culti- vation of Hill Rice by the Iban of Sarawak. Colon- ial Research Studies No. 18. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. 1958 The Family System of the Iban of Borneo. In Jack Goody, Ed. The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups. Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology, No. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1960 The Iban of Western Borneo. In George P. Murdock, Ed. Social Structure in Southeast Asia. Chicago: Quadrangle Books. 1961 On the Concept of the Kindred. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 91:192-220. -330- 1970 Report on the Iban. London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology, No. 41. New York: Humanities Press. Geddes, W.R. 1954 The Land Dayaks of Sarawak. Colonial Research Studies No. 14. Her Majesty's Stationery Office. 1957 Nine Dayak Nights. London: Oxford University Press. Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas 1960 Economic Theory and Agrarian Economics. Oxford Economic Papers. 12:1-40. Godelier, Maurice 1972 Rationality and Irrationality in Economics. Translated by Brian Pearce. London: New Left Books. Gudeman, Stephen 1978a The Demise of a Rural Economy: From Subsistence to Capitalism in a Latin American Village. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1978b Anthropological Economics: The Question of Distri- bution. Annual Review of Anthropology. 7:347- 377. Halpern, Joel M. 1964 Economy and Society of Laos: A Brief Survey. South- east Asia Studies Monograph Series No. 5. New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies. Halpern, Joel M. and John Brode 1967 Peasant Society: Economic Changes and Revolutionary Transformation. Biennial Review of Anthropology. Vol. 5. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Harris, Marvin 1980 Culture, People, Nature: An Introduction to General Anthropology. New York: Harper 8 Row. (3rd edi- tion). Howes, P.H.H. 1960 Why Some of the Best People Are Not Christian. Sarawak Museum Journal. IX Nos. 15-16 (New Series):488-495. Hudson, A.B. 1970 A Note on Selako: Malayic and Land Dayak Languages in Western Borneo. Sarawak Museum Journal. XVIII Nos. 36-37 (New Series):301-318. -331- 1972 Padju Epat: The Ma'anyan of Indonesian Borneo. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Humphreys, S.C. 1969 History, Economics,and Anthropology. History and Theory. 8:165-212. Izikowitz, Karl Gustave 1951 Lamet: Hill Peasants in French Indochina. Eth- nologiska Studier 17. Goteborg: Ethnologiska Museet. Jenkins, David 1978 The Dayaks: Goodbye to All That. Far Eastern Economic Review. 100(26):22-26. Jensen, Eric 1974 The Iban and Their Religion. London: Oxford University Press. Jones, L.W. 1966 The Population of Borneo. London: The Athlone Press. Jones, William O. 1969 Comment: The Demand for Food, Leisure and Eco- nomic Surpluses. In Clifton R. Wharton, Jr., Ed., Subsistence Agriculture and Economic Development. Chicago: Aldine Publishing. King, Victor 1978 The Mualang of Indonesian Borneo: Neglected Sources for Iban Studies. Borneo Research Bulle- tin. 10(2):57-73. Koch, Klaus-Friedrich 1974 War and Peace in Jalém6: The Management of Con- flict in Highland New Guinea. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Kunstadter, Peter 1967 Southeast Asian Tribes, Minorities and Nations. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Leacock, Eleanor B. 1978 Woman's Status in Egalitarian Society: Implica- tions for Social Evolution. Current Anthropology. 19:247-275. Leaf, Murray 1979 Man, Mind and Science: A History of Anthropology. New York: Columbia University Press. -332- Lehman, F.K. 1963 The Structure of Chin Society. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Lerche, Dietrich 1980 Efficiency of Taxation in Indonesia. Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies. XVI(1):34-51. Lipton, Michael 1968 The Theory of the Optimising Peasant. Journal of Development Studies. 4:327-351. Lockwood, Brian Albert 1971 Samoan Village Economy. New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press. Mackie, J.A.C. 1974 Konfrontasi: The Indonesia-Malaysia Dispute 1963- 1966. New York: Oxford University Press. Malinowski, Bronislaw 1922 Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge G Kegan Paul. (3rd imp.). Masefield, G.B. 1970 (1949) A Handbook of Tropical Agriculture. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Mauss, Marcel 1967 The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by Ian Cunnison. New York: W.W. Norton 8 Co. Minge-Kalman, Wanda 1977 On the Theory and Measurement of Domestic Labor Intensity. American Ethnologist. 4:273-284. Mixed Committee of Experts on Nutrition 1937 Nutrition: Final Report of the Mixed Committee of the League of Nations on the Relation of Nutrition to Health, Agriculture and Economic Policy. Geneva: League of Nations Publications. Morgan, Stephanie 1968 Iban Aggressive Expansion: Some Background Factors. Sarawak Museum Journal. XVI Nos. 32-33 (New Series): 141-174. McKinley, Robert 1976 Human and Proud of It! A Structural Treatment of Headhunting Rites and the Social Definition of Enemies. In George N. Appell, Ed. Studies -333- in Borneo Societies: Social Process and Anthro- pological Explanation. Special Report No. 12. Dekalb: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University. Nash, June 1981 Ethnographic Aspects of the World Capitalist System. Annual Review of AnthrOpology. 10:393- 423. Neale, Walter C. 1971 Monetization, Commercialization, Market Orienta- tion, and Market Dependence. In George Dalton, Ed. Studies in Economic Anthropology. Anthropo- logical Studies No. 7. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association. Oberg, Kalervo 1973 The Social Economy of the Tlingit Indians. Seattle: University of Washington Press. O'Toole, A.L. 1964 Elementary Practical Statistics. New York: The Macmillan Co. Ortiz, Sutti 1967 The Structure of Decision-Making Among Indians of Columbia. In Raymond Firth, Ed. Themes in Economic Anthropology. A.S.A. Monographs 6. London: Tavistock Publications. Padoch, Christine 1978 Migration and its Alternatives Among the Iban of Sarawak. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Columbia University. Pekkarinen, M. 1973 World Food Consumption Patterns. In M. Rechcigl, Jr., Ed. Man, Food, and Nutrition: Strategies and Technological Measures for Alleviating the World Food Problem. Cleveland: CRC Press. Polanyi, Karl, Conrad M. Arensberg and Harry W. Pearson, Eds. 1957 Trade and Markets in the Early Empires. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. Price, David 1981 Nambiquara Leadership. American Ethnologist. 8: 686-708. -334- Provinse, John H. 1937 Cooperative Ricefield Cultivation Among the Siang Dyaks of Central Borneo. American AnthrOpologist. 39:77-102. Pryor, Frederic 1977 The Origins of the Economy: A Comparative Study of Distribution in Primitive and Peasant Economies. New York: Academic Press. Raven, Peter H. 1981 TrOpical Rain Forests: A Global Responsibility. Natural History. 90(2):28-32. Redfield, Robert 1956 Peasant Society and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ricklefs, M.C. 1981 A History of Modern Indonesia: c.1300 to the Pre- sent. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Roseberry, William 1976 Rent, Differentiation, and Development of Capital- ism Among Peasants. American Anthropologist. 78: 45-58. Ross, Ellen and Rayna Rapp 1981 Sex and Society: A Research Note from Social His- tory and AnthrOpology. Comparative Studies in Society and History. Z3(1):51-72. Sahlins, Marshall 1960 Political Power and the Economy in Primitive Society. In Dole and Carneiro, Eds. Essays in the Science of Culture in Honor of Leslie White. New York: Crowell. 1962 Review of Sociological Aspects of Economic Growth by B.F. Hoselitz. American Anthropologist. 64: 1063-1073. 1965 On the Sociology of Primitive Exchange. In Michael Banton, Ed. The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology. A.S.A. Monographs No. 1. London: Tavistock. 1968 Tribesmen. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc. 1969 Economic Anthropology and Anthropological Econom- ics. Social Science Information. 8(5):l3-33. -335- 1971 The Intensity of Domestic Production in Primitive Societies: Social Inflections of the Chayanov Slope. In George Dalton, Ed. Studies in Economic Anthropology. Washington, D.C.: American Anthro- pological Association. 1972 Stone Age Economics. Chicago/New York: Aldine- Atherton. 1976 Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: The Uni- versity of Chicago Press. 1977 The State of the Art in Social/Cultural Anthro- pology: Search for an Object. In A.F.C. Wallace, et al., Eds. Perspectives on Anthropology 1976. A Special Publication of the American Anthropo- logical Association No. 10:14-32. Sanggau Dalam Angka 1977 Diterbitkan Oleh: Kantor Sensus dan Statistik, Kabupaten Sanggau. Kalimantan Barat, Indonesia. Saunders, R.M. and A.A. Betschart 1979 Rice and Rice Foods: Chemistry and Nutrition. In George E. Inglett and George Charalambous, Eds. Tropical Foods: Chemistry and Nutrition. Vol. 1. New York: Academic Press. Schlegel, Stuart A. 1976 From Tribal to Peasant: Two Tiruray Communities. Culture Change in the Philippines. Studies in Third World Societies No. 1:73-95. Shanin, Theodor, Ed. 1971 Peasants and Peasant Societies: Selected Readings. Baltimore: Penguin Books. Stevenson, Henry Cochrane 1968 (1943) The Economics of the Central Chin Tribes. Franborough: Gregg Press. Sutlive, Vinson H., Jr. 1978 The Iban of Sarawak. Arlington Heights, I11.: AHM Publishing. Timmer, C. Peter 1972 Employment Aspects of Investment in Rice Marketing in Indonesia. Food Research Institute Studies in Agricultural Economics, Trade, and Development. XI (1):59-88. -336- Trimberger, K.E. 1979 World Systems Analysis: The Problem of Unequal Development. Theory and Society. 8:101-106. Utomo, Kampto 1967 Villages of Unplanned Resettlers in the Subdistrict Kaliredjo. Central Lampung. In Koentjaraningrat, Ed. Villages in Indonesia. Ithaca: Cornell Uni- versity Press. Wagner, Roy 1975 The Invention of Culture. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Wallace, Anthony F.C. 1966 Religion: An Anthropological View. New York: Random House. Ward, Marion W. and R. Gerard Ward 1974 An Economic Survey of West Kalimantan. Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies. X(3):26-53. Warr, Peter G. 1980 Survey of Recent Developments: Bulletin of Indo- nesian Economic Studies. XVI(3):1-31. Webster's Third New International Dictionary 1969 Springfield, Mass.: G. and C. Merriam. Weeks, John 1970 Uncertainty, Risk, and Wealth and Income Distri- bution in Peasant Agriculture. Journal of Develop- ment Studies. 7:28-36. Weisskopf, Walter A. 1971 Alienation and Economics. New York: E.P. Dutton 6 Co. Wharton, Clifton R., Jr. 1963 The Economic Meaning of Subsistence. Malayan Economic Review. 8:46-58. 1969 Subsistence Agriculture: Concepts and Scope. In Clifton R. Wharton, Jr. Ed. Subsistence Agricul- ture and Economic Development. Chicago: Aldine Publishing. 1971 Risk, Uncertainty, and the Subsistence Farmer: Technological Innovation and Resistance to Change in the Context of Survival. In George Dalton, Ed. Studies in Economic Anthropology. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association. -337- White, Benjamin 1975 The Economic Importance of Children in a Javanese Village. In Moni Nag, Ed. Population and Social Organization. The Hague: Mouton. Whittier, Herbert L. 1978 The Kenyah. In Victor T. King, Ed. Essays on Borneo Societies. Hull Monographs on South-east Asia No. 7. Oxford: Oxford University Press. In press Religion, Social Organization, and Socio- economic Change Among the Kenyah Dayak of Sarawak, Malaysia. National Geographic Society Research Reports. Wolf, Eric 1966 Peasants. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Yanagisako, Sylvia Junko 1979 Family and Household: The Analysis of Domestic Groups. Annual Review of Anthropology. 8:161- 205. Yoshida, Shouichi 1975 Factors that Limit the Growth and Yields of Upland Rice. In International Rice Research Institute. Major Research in Upland Rice. Los Bafios, Philippines. I'I I I 'lll'lllllllll'l'l'lq