. . . to understand another 's speech, it is not sufficient to understand his words - we must understand his thought. But even that is not enough - we must also understand h is motivation. - Vygotsky ( 1 986:252-253).
Introduction
This chapter is primarily about personhood - glimpsed through a series of snapshots which reflect my own intersubjective engagement with persons in the ethnographic context. It argues that knowing is not an event but a process of exchange and negotiation which takes place in the space between persons as experiencing subjects. In that exchange between self and other, opportunities are created for
awareness of difference as well as realizations about self. Nor is it a simple exchange, for in the words themselves and the silences between the words are unspoken and often unconscious assumptions and expectations which shape our way of seeing and hearing and knowing of the other, as well as our own self awareness. Relations of power also enter into this exchange.
This chapter is also framed within the context of a broader argument; that notions of normality and abnormality are culturally constructed categories. Words, as categories and concepts about illness, are embedded in a particular social life world; they have embedded within them the history of their origins as well as the history of their ongoing existence in social practice. These factors have shaped and continue to shape the way illness is perceived, the treatment measures deemed appropriate, and ideas about the likely course and outcome of an illness. D iagnostic categories of
psychopathology, in all cultures, are culture carriers, just as definitions of normality and abnormality are inextricably bound up with notions of what it means to be a person-in the-world in a particular cultural context. The extent to which these connections are
excluded, masked or revealed in social practice depends on what is at stake in the context in which they are invoked. The nature of that stake begins to emerge from the moment a person first enters the world.
Becoming and belongi ng
. . . our awareness of the other is primordial to and the basis of our awareness of our own being . . . relationship is not something added to our being. We are primordially in- the-midst-of-the-world-with-others. -Steger ( 1 998:26).
A new baby
I was in the front room of my house in Kpg Kuala Lama one morning when a van I recognised pulled up at the roadside. Someone called out . . . "Ann, come with us to the hospital - Kamal' s wife gave birth this morning!" Kamal (the new father), and Bet (his brother's wife) - both friends of mine, were in the van. As I climbed into the back of the van, Bet told me her sister-in-law had had a tough delivery and wasn' t too well. Kamal provided a taxi service around the villages and town in his van and his wife was a school teacher; this was their first child.
The new mother was on a bed in the small recovery ward and seemed very tired and weak. Kamal' s two sisters were already there, as well as his mother-in-law and another older woman; all were sitting on the floor chatting. The baby, wrapped in a blanket and sleeping
peacefully in a hospital crib at the end of the bed, looked fine. He had lots of black hair and a card attached to the crib indicated his birth weight was 3 . 1 kg.
There was an animated discussion going on amongst the women as Bet and I joined them; it seemed the baby hadn' t taken any milk yet and the mother was not producing any. The women didn't want the baby given a bottle and feared that this might happen if the situation
continued. Both of Kamal' s sisters declared that they had plenty of breast milk. The mother hadn't passed any urine yet and the women appeared to be worried about that too.
The new mother attempted to get out of bed - the women wanted to take her and wash her. She stood up and took a few steps before appearing to almost collapse and sat down on a chair. One of the women gave her some milk to drink. She seemed exhausted. Her mother (the baby' s grandmother), went over and whispered something into her left
ear, then blew strongly into it twice. This was repeated with the other ear. Someone had brought some betel nut along and the women sitting on the floor were chewing it; a piece was passed to the new mother which she ate. One of the
women got up, went to the Fig. 1 2 Kamal's new baby
locker beside the bed and got some biscuits out - I smiled as I saw a plastic bag of pusu ' (tiny dried & salted fish, similar to anchovies) in the locker and thought what a cross cultural survey of hospital lockers might reveal about local tastes. The women decided to get the new mother back onto the bed and drawing the curtains, changed her there. Immediately after the curtains were drawn back, and without a word being said, one of the sisters-in-law of the new mother picked up the baby, sat down on the next bed, and commenced to breast feed him. Both Kamal and his wife seemed to totally approve of this and so did everyone else, gathering round and making remarks about how well the baby was sucking. I was aware of my own feeling of slight discomfort at the "peremptory" nature of the action; a sharp reminder of my "otherness" in this situation.
While I was there, two nurses came and went unobtrusively to the two other new mothers and their babies in the ward; they seemed content to leave Kamal 's wife and baby in the care of their relatives for the moment. Lunch was wheeled into the room and Kamal distributed the trays to the other patients. The new mother ate a little rice and fish, but didn't seem to have much appetite. One of Kamal' s sisters ate the piece of watermelon from the lunch tray; someone commented that
watermelon was not good for new mothers.
From my role as an observer, it was as if only seeing through a wide angle lens could do justice to the scene; individual identity was elusive, it did not draw the eye. I saw a new baby who already had an identity constructed in terms of his social
collective interests of those relationships. The world he would join as he grew to adulthood was a changing world; he would both partake of and contribute to it. But in other ways it was a world which remained as it was fifty years ago, as Morris described it in his ethnography "The Oya Melanau" ( 1 99 1 ).
Becoming a member of a community
Morris ( 1 99 1 : 1 05), writing about the Melanau villages in the 1 950s, noted that the people in a cluster of neighbouring houses would refer to themselves as a-sega ' which means "close relatives". He goes on to point out that:
the central meaning of the word sega ' is proximity, and people seldom bothered to sort out whether their relationships with one another in these neighbourhood groups were those of kinship or neighbourhood . . . . They valued the sega ' relationships highly; for the people in them were those whom they worked with, whom most frequently they married, and who supported them in many other ways" (ibid: I 05).
Within the Melanau villages today, kinship support networks remain strong and relatives still tend to live in fairly close proximity to one another. The familial social structure which pertained in the tall houses a century and more ago continues to be replicated, albeit progressively more loosely, in the ka 'pangs of the 2 1 st century.
A longhouse was constructed as a set of adjacent, socially independent households . . . not unlike a row of houses in a terrace. . . . In ideal circumstances . . . each household was made up of one family (lagan), consisting of a married couple and their unmarried children. The numbers might be augmented by the father or the mother of the husband or wife, and a married child and grandchildren . . . . As a rule the youngest child stayed with the parents and inherited the apartment, which could normally be owned only by a single individual" (Morris 1 99 1 :78-80)
Births, marriages and deaths, Hari Raya and Christmas, are occasions for reaffirming kinship as well as membership of a particular village. In this way, family and community bonds are renewed and cemented at regular intervals in the natural flow of things. Marriage to someone within the same (or nearby), ka pang still appears to occur relatively frequently, though probably less frequently than in Morris' time due to the increasing mobility of young people. It is still common practice for a newly married
couple to remain in the household of either family for some time after marriage. Consequently an individual is seldom alone for any length of time, nor are individuals confined within a single relationship. There is constant coming and going of friends and relatives at any time of day; from time to time some of these persons might join as members of the household for an extended period.
Although it is possible for a person to withdraw mentally, physical and social withdrawal is difficult if not impossible in such circumstances as I have described. Besides, I was told, to be alone for more than a few hours is "the worst nightmare", something to be avoided. Why anyone should want to be alone or worse, to live alone, was almost a question beyond asking - something abnormal. The normal state of existence was to be surrounded by family and friends; the preferred mode of relating and communicating was face to face, a view of normality that was sometimes at odds with my own acculturated desire and need for regular periods of privacy and solitude. When I first arrived in Sarawak and was living in Lamin Dana, the newly built tallhouse in Kpg Tellian Tengah, I was aware that whenever I went to sit outside on my own, (my preferred habit and habitat for indulging in solitary thought), within a few minutes one or more persons would appear to keep me company. I subsequently adapted my behaviour and circumvented the problem by choosing to sit outside at night, long after most of the people in the village had gone to bed, knowing that I was unlikely to be interrupted. If the Melanau villagers eschewed being alone, then being alone at night was especially to be avoided. 1
Besides an identity as a member of an extended family, people also thought of themselves as associated with a particular ka pang, even those people who now lived outside the village. However, identification with a particular territory and group was also expressed in terms of antagonism towards another group. Someone in one village might comment that the people in another village (generally a village some distance away), "think themselves better than us" or are "difficult to negotiate with". In cases of illness or misfortune where black magic was thought to be involved, the blame would
1 Many people suffered from mangaeng gak padem (fear of the dark), and in the ka "pangs a light was left
burning all night in most houses. When Rohani had to go to Kuching for a few days she asked me if I would spend the nights at her house with her elderly mother and the Indonesian "helper" who looked after her. They retired to bed quite early in the same bedroom, locking the door behind them. During the night I woke to see Rohani's mother standing at my half open bedroom door. The next morning she told me she had got up in the night and seeing my door ajar, thought I must have gone home and left them on their own. She had been relieved to see me still there, sleeping.
often be located in another village with a comment such as: "A lot of that sort of thing goes on in Kpg Xl"
There were many opportunities for inter-village rivalry to be given benign expression during the course of a year, such as the Hadrah competition which took place outside the Mosque on the birthday of the Prophet, the annual Koran reading and
Nashid competitions, the longboat races during Kaul, cultural dance and music group competitions - also held during Kaul. 2 The annual football championship final was perhaps the zenith of inter ka 'pang rivalry; huge crowds would turn out to support their team and the roads at the side of and behind the padaeng would be blocked with
vehicles - cars, scooters and bicycles.
Hereditary rank, which Morris ( 1 994 : 52) singles out as a third aspect of identity (along with kinship and membership of a village), was so muted that the only time I heard it mentioned or acknowledged was at weddings and funerals. While the titles
Pengiran and Dayang survived as honorifics for the Muslim descendants of the
aristocratic representatives of the Brunei Sultan in times past, they conferred no special political or economic privilege within the community.
According to Morris ( 1 99 1 : 1 30- 1 3 1 ), when he lived in the area in the early 1 950s persons up to and including fifth cousins were counted as relatives, making for a very thick and complex web of interrelationships. My own observations in 2000/200 1 suggest that the same parameters apply today, and in fact this was confirmed by people I asked. In all spheres of social interaction, relationship seems to be constantly reaffirmed and underlined. An exploration of possible kinship links is frequently one of the first topics of conversation when two or more Melanau meet for the first time, and also often referred to in conversation at social gatherings. Once kinship links have been
established, there always seems to be a visible relaxing of social atmosphere, as if one has suddenly found a comfortable place to sit after a long period of standing.
The route to becoming an adult member of a ka 'pang community was a
recognizable, well maintained and communally monitored path. While there are no pre or post puberty rituals specifically performed for either sex to mark their transition to adulthood, there is an agreed-on point about when a boy becomes a man - "When he has his first child." A girl becomes a woman, I was told, "on the day she marries." As far
2 Nashid: Muslim devotional songs, often with an up market beat and rhythm and very popular.
as I could tell, no one ever chooses to remain childless; a childless couple might adopt a baby - sometimes a relative.
While no particular shame appeared to be attached to having a child born outside marriage - relatives and neighbours assist with the child's upbringing, there is a concern to see that the child's rights and welfare are taken care of and that the father (if he is not living with the mother) accepts some of the financial responsibility.
A special ceremony was carried out one afternoon in Tellian with this in mind, invoking the Adet Melanau (customary law). A mother had two young children, but she and the father had not married and were living apart. In front of the Penghulu
(Headman) and a group of witnesses - family and villagers, the young man
acknowledged that he was indeed the father of the children, giving them the right to use his name and in the eyes of those present thereby accepting some financial l iability for the children' s upbringing. According to someone who had been stopped as he was bicycling past and called as an independent witness: "It saves dragging it through the courts." On asking further I was assured that this was not considered in anyway unfair to either party and more in the nature of setting a seal of approval on a state of affairs than a "kangaroo court" forcing them to a decision. The atmosphere was therefore one of celebration amidst the feeling that a precedent already existed and had been upheld. This example seems to suggest that inclusiveness and integration is considered a more appropriate and practical way of dealing with minor breaches of or threats to the integrity of social relations than social exclusion and isolation; a model which is built around a notion of rehabilitation and reintegration (rather than punishment) and which simultaneously reinforces the integrity and standards of the cultural group. It also suggests that there was a sense in which the kinship network (and also the community), were prepared to share some of the moral responsibility for every person that belonged to it.
The A det Melanau ( 1 998) specifies more than three hundred different codes of practice concerning how one should conduct oneself as a member of a Melanau
ka 'pang, along with penalties to be imposed for transgressing them. With the exception of those regulations concerning a person who arrives uninvited to reside in the ka 'pang
(i.e. without the approval of the entire ka 'pang), who "shall be advised to return to his kampung ", none of the penalties prescribed involves isolating, socially excluding or confining the offender. The majority involve fines, including money, goods, services or restitution - or some combination of the four.
The prescribed penalty or solution might, in some cases, appear to "lack teeth" to someone l iving in a western urban community, but it also made apparent the things that were considered of most value to an individual. A det Melanau ( 1 998) Code 99, No. 3 states:
Whoever obstructs a footpath leading to a fann or garden of another person by any means shall remove or dismantle any obstacles and he shall not be compensated for his labour. If he refuses to comply, moral or public pressure shall be brought to bear upon him.
Two of the most precious assets a person possesses are at stake in this example; the value of his labour and the validation of his worth as a member of a close-knit community. The specific form this censure should take is not specified but there was no doubt that it took place and that it was an effective and expeditious solution. On one occasion I heard of the case of a young unmarried mother who had a child of about seven. Both lived with family in the mother' s village. The father of the child was known