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Tribal Communities in the Malay World: Historical, Cultural, and Social Perspectives. Edited by GEOFFREY BENJAMIN and CYNTHIA CHOU. Leiden: International Institute for Asian Studies; Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002. x, 489 pp. $50.00 (cloth); $39.90 (paper).
Tribal people in the Malay-dominated part of Southeast Asia are little known to the general public, often neglected by scholars, and generally misunderstood by government officials. Yet, the editors and authors of this volume argue convincingly that we must properly understand the tribal people if we are to understand many major social processes in the region, from the rise of Malay kingdoms in the precolonial period to the effects of economic-development projects today.
The senior editor, anthropologist Geoffrey Benjamin, defines tribal societies as societies that have taken positive steps "to hold themselves apart from incorporation into the state apparatus" (p. 9), whether the state is a traditional Malay kingdom, a European colony, or a modern nation-state. He emphasizes that the tribal societies of this region are societies that have deliberately resisted political and economic domination by states, not isolated survivals from before states arose. In this area, tribal societies typically form small politically autonomous units-extended families, villages, longhouse communities, and so on-rather than large politically integrated "tribes" led by chiefs, as found, for example, in Africa.
By the "Malay World," Benjamin means "the areas currently or formerly falling under kerajaan Melayu, the rule of a Malay king" (p. 7). These areas include the Isthmus of Kra in Thailand, peninsular Malaysia, Singapore and the Riau Archipelago, coastal Borneo, and Western Sumatra and adjacent islands. The editors' delineation of this area for study is not arbitrary. As many contributors show, Malay culture influences government policies and popular attitudes toward tribal people in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and Indonesia in very specific ways.
This volume grew out of a 1997 conference at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, which drew scholars-mostly anthropologists-from eleven countries. All the book's chapters are published for the first time here. The authors present original findings from their own field research, combined with theoretically informed interpretations and thought-provoking new ideas. The styles of writing vary, but all the chapters are clear and enjoyable to read. Each chapter contains a bibliography that would be useful to...