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Abstract
The study looks at historical and contemporary representations of rural native communities in Sarawak, East Malaysia. Through the analysis of representations, the study underlines the production of a distinct space for native rural communities in Sarawak and highlights its material implications. The first part of the paper focuses on representations deployed by the colonial administrations to govern native populations of Sarawak. The consequences of specific representations that produced native territorial communities based on codified customs and ethnic presuppositions are identified. Second, the paper focuses on representations deployed to support a corporate agricultural development project on customary land referred to as the Konsep Baru. It demonstrates that these representations reify essential characteristics of the native space as it was produced by colonial regimes and position native rural communities in duality with modern society. In turn, the scrutiny of representations produced by native land rights advocates in response to problematic forms of rural development in Sarawak highlights the dualisms portrayed in specific accounts and stresses their links with colonial constructions of the native space. Overall the paper suggests ways to reflect on the implication of representations about native communities in Sarawak, as representations are intertwined with development practices.
Acknowledgements
I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Rachel Silvey, Dr. Tania Li, Dr. Katharine Rankin and Jessica Wilczak for painstakingly reviewing and generously commenting on an earlier draft of this paper. I want to thank the three reviewers and especially the editor of the Journal of Cultural Geography, Dr. Alyson Greiner, for their detailed and constructive comments which were extremely helpful in clarifying my argument and amending certain statements. I owe special thanks to Rob Cramb for his intellectual support. The research undertaken was funded by the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC) and the Challenges of agrarian transition in Southeast Asia (ChATSEA) research project chaired at the University of Montreal. All shortcomings remaining are my own.
Notes
1. Although I mainly refer to Dayak populations in this paper, I use consistently the term “native” which encompasses 28 distinct groups accounting for a large majority of the population of Sarawak. My usage reflects the fact that “Dayak,” a majority of whom are Iban, is less widely used in the state of Sarawak for legal purposes. Moreover, “Dayak” excludes Malay populations that are legally recognised as natives in Malaysia and Sarawak and for whom legal and agrarian systems are distinct from those of non-natives (Shamsul Citation2001). In addition, some authors avoid referring to Muslim Melanau communities of Sarawak as Dayak, although they are part of the first inhabitants of Borneo and recognised as natives in Sarawak (Colchester 1993; King Citation1993). For these reasons, the concept of “native” appears less ambiguous and less exclusive in the context of Sarawak.
2. The Land Code stated that customary land rights can only be lawfully claimed if the area has been in continual use for given purposes prior to January 1958. Section 5(2) of the Sarawak Land Code, 1999: Native Customary Land rights can be established by: (a) felling of virgin jungle and occupation of the land; (b) planting of land fruit trees; (c) occupation or cultivation of land; (d) use of land for burial ground or shrine; (e) use of land of any class for rights of way; and (f) other lawful methods. Numerous amendments to the code brought by the postcolonial government have narrowed the definition of customary land (Bulan 2006; Ngidang 2003, 2005; Hooker 1999).
3. If ideological conceptions are fixed, concerns not to formalise customary laws permeate the pluralist legal construction of the state (Bulan 1998, p. 145). In fact, many adat codes have been changed through history to reflect new contexts, although land laws have not changed as fast.
4. Throughout colonial rule and more forcefully under Charles Brooke (1868–1917) the creation of hierarchical ethnic governance titles (Pringle 1970, p. 186) fixed the fluid and impermanent leadership prevailing in many native communities, notwithstanding the tradition of hierarchical rule in most Kenyah/Kayan, Malay and other communities (Rousseau Citation1990). This system was consolidated under the third White Rajah in the 1920s with salaries allocated to the Pengulu (native leader of a specific ethnic group in Sarawak, such as Iban, Bidayu, etc.). It also contributed to the institutionalisation of ethnic identities (Sutlive 1988, p. 144–145; Colchester 1993; Chua Citation2007).
5. For instance, the Melanau peoples’ intensive sago palm production was promoted under the Brooke's administration (as was the production of other forest products) and boomed in the second part of the nineteenth century (Cramb 2007b, p. 153).
6. Ngidang (1995, 1997); Cramb & Wills (1990) and Cramb (1993) have shown community-based strategies of development, the flaws of certain strategies and the greater suitability of others, while analysing state strategies and taking as a premise the rural community as a sustainable unit of administration.
7. Ministry of Land Development, http://www.mlds.sarawak.gov.my/project.html, http://www.mlds.sarawak.gov.my/background.html [Accessed 30 August, 2010] and the Ministry of Modernization of Agriculture, http://www.moma.sarawak.gov.my/modules/web/# [Accessed 30 August, 2010].
8. The discourse of development has a powerful symbolic load in Malaysia, this is largely due to the influence of the Prime Minister Mahatir on the articulation of Vision 2020 (Puyok Citation2006).
9. The 1988 and 1990 amendments to the Land Code were the most significant in that regard. These permitted private corporations, including foreign companies, to acquire Native Customary Land for development purposes (Bulan 2006, p. 52; Ngidang 2005, p. 67).
