Faculty & Centre

This paper examines the contribution of overseas scholars to Chinese studies. Given that eighty percent of the Chinese diaspora are located in Southeast Asia, it pays particular attention to social science scholarship in the region. The work of scholars in religion and ethnicity are highlighted. The authors argue that the rise of China in the last thirty years has led to a shift of research originating from the mainland. However, they suggest that China will not become the centre of scholarship on the Chinese; instead there will be multiple centres developing in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia.

Borassus flabellifer L., is a semi-domesticated palm of cultural and economic importance to local communities from the Persian Gulf to the Cambodian- Vietnamese border. Drawing from a qualitative study conducted in Southern India, we bring out its biocultural significance to the local people, and the mutualistic relationship between the palm and its tappers. Various parts of the palm are used as medicine and food by the local communities; it is celebrated in folklores, and even equated with gods. The tappers who add value to the palm by ensuring its produce is available to the local inhabitants, also take care of the semi-domesticated palm in its habitat. Energy is transferred from one partner (palmyra palm) to another (toddy tapper), and in return, the palm receives protection, seed dispersal and suitable habitat conditions to flourish. The claims of the tappers indicate that the relationship between the tappers and the palm is mutually beneficial.

In this paper, I trace the development of my work on race and ethnicity over my academic career, as a reflection in part of my biographical background. My interest in race and ethnic relations originated from my experience of the race riots in Kuala Lumpur on May 13th in 1969, subsequently grounded in graduate school in New Zealand where I conducted research on the Chinese and the Maoris. My early work on returning to Singapore was on Malay identity in the region. It moved on later to writing about the marginalization of Tamils as an underclass in Malaysia and then a broader consideration of race, class, and politics in Peninsular Malaysia precipitated by the General Election of 2008. Since the 1990s the representation of race and politics has pre-occupied many social science discourses, which is reflected in my work on the politics of racialization and Malay identity in Singapore.

The Malay peasantry in peninsular Malaysia has been the subject of fieldwork and ethnographic research by both colonial and local anthropologists. Raymond Firth’s Malay fishermen, based on fieldwork in Perupok, a fishing community in Kelantan, stands as an early and now classic example of the genre. I was born some seven years after Firth’s first fieldwork in another east coast Malay fishing village, Kampung Che Wan, Kijal, in Terengganu. This article is about my own process of remembering the ethnographic details of my home village, thinking like an anthropologist over the period of a lifetime. While this is essentially an exercise in comparative ethnography, I suggest that such remembering represents variants of both collective memory and individual memory. The method of recall comprises various snippets of collected memory in the form of a discontinuous flow of selective ethnographic soundscapes and visualscapes, empowered by both a reflexive and critical anthropological gaze. It also entails a constant juxtaposition between the insider – outsider roles: the ‘emic’ and the ‘etic’ positioning on the part of the anthropologist But remembering itself is ultimately part of a historical and political project, an indigenising research project It is not part of a misplaced nostalgia that accommodates an old, worn-out colonial anthropological design aimed at preserving an ‘unchanging society’. Nor should remembering be understood an act ‘to reinforce the system in place, never to transform it’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992: 21). Rather remembering is considered a form of agency, which empowers local imaginings and is a mediator of social change, transformation and identity.

There are an estimated 14,000 to 20,000 Iban living in Brunei, most of them in the Ulu Belait and Temburong districts. They migrated to Brunei from Sarawak just before the Second World War in search of new land and opportunity to improve their livelihood. Not recognized as one of the seven puak by the state, the common narrative is that they face challenges of incorporation into the Sultanate. In Mukim Sukang (Ulu Belait) there are eight Iban longhouses. This case study of the Iban of Melilas documents how one particular community has successfully negotiated and managed their acceptance as full citizens of Brunei while retaining their Iban identity.

Dispute, disagreement and debate are the very stuff of academic activity. The problem arises when the language of the debate takes on a personal dimension and the authority that is claimed in arguing in favour of a particular position, approach or perspective becomes so entrenched that other voices are assigned to the margins. This paper reviews the origins and development of the exchange of views between competing voices in the interpretation of the importance and ‘meaning’ of the ritual textiles of the Iban of Borneo and whether or not they embody and express a language of symbols. It also comments on the attempt to explain the social importance of Iban weavers in terms of an evolutionary conceptual framework, based on the principle of sexual selection, which claims that historically the Iban focused their attention on the formation of relations between skilled weavers and renowned Iban head-hunters. This was to gain, so it is argued, a genetic-biological advantage, in Darwinian terms, in the struggle for ‘survival’, but more particularly for social status and prowess in a competitive and relatively egalitarian Borneo society. The paper then addresses a recent turn in the debate which raises issues about the nature of certain academic engagements, the different styles adopted in these engagements, the language used to establish academic authority, and the constant struggle in anthropology, and, in this case, with reference to Borneo, between those who claim to command the field of studies and those who have alternative views.