Ethnography among the Orang Asli: a reflexive account

PrefaceMalini Ratnasingam

Emplaced, Embodied, Multi-Sited, Collaborative Ethnography In Peninsular MalaysiaDiana Riboli & Ivan Tacey

The Perils of FieldworkPhilip Fountain

‘Exclusivity’ of Asian Women Conducting Fieldwork in South KoreaNoor Sulastry Yurni Ahmad

Ethnography Among the Orang Asli: A Reflexive AccountMehrdad Arabestani

Triangulation or Mixed Methods: Methods or Research DesignMalini Ratnasingam

Discourse Analysis: A Review in Sociological FieldworkRosila Bee Mohd Hussain

Transposing Western Psychological Measures: The Methods and Problems of Translating Scales from One Language and Culture to AnotherHaslina Muhamad

Using The Key Informants Interviews (Kiis) Technique: A Social Sciences Study with Malaysian and Pakistani RespondentsMumtaz Ali, Maya Khemlani David & Lai Lee Ching

BOOK REVIEW: Cumming, G (2012). Understanding the new statictics: Effect sizes, confidence intervals and meta-analysisMalini Ratnasingam

ANUSIA DAN ASYARAKATMAN AND SOCIETY

MSiri Baru Jilid 24 2013New Series Volume 24

Jabatan Antropologi dan SosiologiFakulti Sastera dan Sains Sosial

Universiti Malaya

61

Man and Society (24) 2013

Ethnography among the Orang Asli: A Reflexive Account

Mehrdad Arabestani1

University Malaya

Abstract

This reflexive article tries to position the ethnographer, as a non-Malaysian researcher with specific interests and background, conducting an anthropological study among the Orang Asli of Malaysia. Personal reasons for selecting a topic among the Orang Asli comprise the first part of the account. The next part, deals with the fieldwork and all the contradictory feelings the ethnographer experienced in the field. The ethnographer needed to adopt a language strategy for both communicating with the people and collecting the data. The main part of the strategy was working with informants who had good English language skills. Social change and the plural response of the Orang Asli to forces of change were the general analytical concerns of the study which were partly informed by the ethnographer’s sensitivity to “change” processes in developing countries. Instead of looking at the Orang Asli as a homogeneous community resisting cultural changes, the ethnographer tried to tell a story that involved the divergent views of the Orang Asli and included diverse responses, conscious and subconscious, from resistance to compliance.

Key words: Position, language, culture shock, change, plurality

INTRODUCTION

In 2006, when I was applying to University of Malaya for a doctoral programme of study in anthropology, I had few options to propose as my research proposal. As

an Iranian, Iran-related topics were the most convenient ones. I had already carried out fieldwork in Iran and had no difficulty entering Iranian field sites. I had done an ethnographic study on Sufism among the Kurds, which resulted in my Master’s thesis; and religiosity of the Mandaean, a Gnostic ethno-religious group in the south-west of Iran, which resulted in a book and few articles (Arabestani, 2008, 2010, 2012). Therefore, I did not need to start from scratch. One of my options was to propose developing any of these studies in a way that would suit a doctorate research. I was totally familiar with the field sites and the literature; thus, I was able to jump into the field and finish this ‘compulsory’ research in the shortest time. Since there was not a vast expertise on the anthropology of Iran in Malaysia, defending such a 1 PhD Graduate, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.


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research would also have been unproblematic. However, this very reason, that is the lack of expertise, could lead to the rejection of my proposal. Another option was to propose a research in Malaysia. This option was more challenging and difficult to accomplish; though, considering the opportunities for developing academic skills, it was more rewarding. Defining an ethnographic study in Malaysia was a chance to experience a new fieldwork setting and to learn what I had not known before. Working in another country, with a different language and with dissimilar social and political background could have been an explorative experience with all its risks and excitements. Therefore, I decided to develop a proposal based upon a study among the Orang Asli; after all, was it not the most ‘classical’ available field of anthropological study in Malaysia? It was challenging because the field was completely unfamiliar to me, and I was the first Middle Easterner who was going to study the Orang Asli in Malaysia. The authority of ‘white western’ researchers had already been established in the country. Moreover, Orang Asli studies have been part of almost all Malaysian anthropologists’ career and there were reputable internationally acknowledged scholars among Malaysians. On the other hand, it was rewarding because it was an opportunity to work in a field full of exploration and genuine ethnographic experiences.

Considering my previous experiences and interests, I proposed to study the interaction between religious missions and the Orang Asli. I wanted to look at the Orang Asli’s responses to Christian and Muslim missions and the socio-political and psychological meaning of their response to them.

Undoubtedly, my background intervened in the process of the research, the findings and explanatory approach of the study. The researcher occupies a “position” and observes with a particular angle of vision that both enables and inhibits particular insights (Rosaldo, 2000). All ethnographies are partial because any ethnographer is positioned. Exploring the position of the researcher can at least help the reader to read the ethnography as the product of a positioned ethnographer with a specific perspective. Here I would like to reflect on my “position” and its contribution and influence in shaping my research among the Orang Asli and consequent research findings. Particularly, I will focus on the process of fieldwork and the theoretical framework that I brought to the field.

FIELD EXPERIENCE: FINDING A WAY IN AN UNFAMILIAR LAND

I had read what was available about the Orang Asli in Iran. In these works the Orang Asli were portrayed as an indigenous people with a simple livelihood of hunting and gathering, far away from mainstream society and under the threat of cultural extinction and ethnocide (e.g. Endicott & Dentan, 2004). My first visit to an Orang Asli village happened about one month after my arrival in Malaysia. My supervisor,

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Dr. Juli Edo, planned a student group visit and short stay at Ulu Geruntom, a Semai village in Kinta district, Perak, on the occasion of a wedding ceremony. At the briefing session, Dr. Juli talked about the ceremony and what the students needed to know in their interactions with the Orang Asli. The only question that occurred to me was about the accommodation in the village. Influenced by my mental image of the Orang Asli settlements in the deep jungle, I asked him “Do we need to bring our sleeping bags?” He smiled and said, “No! You do not need a sleeping bag.” In fact, Ulu Geruntom was a relatively big village, with a three-story boarding school, a soccer ground, a chapel and a community hall. We settled in the boarding school; so, certainly we did not need sleeping bags. Ulu Geruntom people were mostly Christians. The bride was a Christian Semai from Ulu Geruntom and the bridegroom a Temuan from Selangor. During the ceremony, friends and relatives of the couple joined the party from nearby villages to far towns such as Penang. Therefore, the guests were very diverse, Semais, Temuans, Chinese Christian workers, Malay students, and an Iranian. During the ceremony that took about three days and two nights, especially the second day which was the main day of the ceremony, a large number of guests were entertained with generous food buffets and soft drinks, live music performances and choreographed dances that lasted until after midnight. It was like a festival. Later, I attended some other wedding ceremonies in Malaysia, but none were as big as this Semai wedding. This first visit modified my image of the Orang Asli as an isolated people with a subsistence economy. However, later I realized that these elaborate wedding ceremonies were common among “west Semai” rather than “east Semai”2. By finding people who could speak English, I tried to communicate with the people. Here, I met Bah Rahu, a Semai Christian Elder, who had a good command of English, and as an ordained clergy had a deep knowledge both of Semai culture and Christian missionaries and who later became one of my main mentors3.

Dr. Juli’s help in introducing me to some other Orang Asli villages and the official authorities was crucial in selecting my field sites, entering the field, establishing connection with the people and eventually becoming independent.

For the first time, I seriously faced the problem of communication when I entered the Temiar settlements of Cedak and Makmur, in the Kinta district, Perak. There was a young Temiar man in Cedak who could partially speak English. When he was not around, my social relationships would reduce to just nodding and smiling interchanges with the villagers. Communication with the people was inextricably linked to my research and because of the failure in communication, data collection

2 West Semais are more acculturated to Malays than east Semai; furthermore, despite the similarity of the kinship system, there are some differences between their kinship definitions (Arabestani, 2013, p. 140).

3 Bah Rahu passed away in January 2011, just a few days after I left his home at Ulu Geruntom. Tham Leong (2012) has written a biographical account of Bah Rahu’s missionary work (the book is still unpublished).


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was very slow, and I had to lie down in my corner at the village mosque, reading a book or just try to pass the time until my informant and interpreter came back. I gradually felt depressed, lonely and incompetent in furthering my research. This combination of emotions which is called ‘culture shock’ was not unexpected and many anthropologists reported such feelings in their fieldwork, including famous Aslianist Robert Knox Dentan (1970). The diary of the giant figure in the history of anthropology, Bronislaw Manlinowski, is especially well-known for its harsh and revealing statements about his emotional experience and his feelings toward Trobriand islanders (Malinowski, 1989, see: Diaries of 20 September 1914, 14 December 1917, 11 February 1918). Despite the ‘culture shock’, on these trips I succeeded in having some useful interviews and participated in gatherings and community activities such as ritual dance (sewing) and religious gatherings. Considering the time I spent in the field; however, the amount of information collected was not satisfactory. I thought I should learn the language, and I actually began asking about the meaning of words and short sentences. In fact, the procedure of learning the Orang Asli language was even more disappointing than data collection. Since there were not many resources, such as books, for practicing the language I had to completely rely on communication with the people and that needed long and continuous stay in the community. During my research, my family and I were living in a condominium in one of Kuala Lumpur’s suburbs. My wife was a post graduate student and my daughter a primary school student. I could handle regular short stays in the field, but I could not afford to leave my family alone for a long time and stay in the field. I also could not financially afford long stays in the field.

I knew the ideal of fieldwork is a Malinowski type of learning the language and living with the people for years. Typical western researchers show the same tendencies in their research. Most notable is Dentan’s research on the Semai people that is based on months of stay among east and west Semais (see: Dentan,1970). However, except implicit statements about “speaking the language” (Dentan, 1970: 88), one cannot see a clear report about his practical level of mastery of the native language. What level of language skill would suffice to do fieldwork? In fact, doing intense interviews and getting complicated, sometimes abstract, information needs a high level of proficiency in the native language, which is hard to obtain.

Considering my limitations, I needed to adopt a language strategy that suited my situation. Since achieving a high level of mastery of the native language was not quite feasible, relying only on native language for communication was not a good strategy. However, I continually asked about the native terms and statements. In particular, I paid special attention to the language used in beliefs, rituals and their implications (Arabestani, 2013). Almost all the Orang Asli spoke the Malay language and one could use Malay as the medium of communication. This is the main language strategy of Malaysian researchers. I had a much better command of English than Malay and I preferred to work with through the informants who could

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speak English. Meanwhile, I started taking Malay lessons and tried to improve my Malay.

I was lucky to meet some English-speaking Orang Asli from the beginning. At first glance, it might seem that one can hardly find an Orang Asli who knows English. English is a recognized language in Malaysia. According to the National Language Act 1967, English is permitted for official purposes, in parliament and legislative assemblies, and authoritative texts. As a country that was once a colony of Britain, English is widely spoken as a second language in Malaysia at the level of mesolect (Asmah Haji Omar, 2001). I do not deny that the number of English-speaking Orang Asli is less than the whole society. Nonetheless, there are college graduates, clergies, workers in tourist facilities, local guides, and employees of government sectors and entrepreneur Orang Asli who know English in a continuum from basilect to mesolect, and even acrolect levels. Indeed, the strangeness of the English Speaking Orang Asli picture comes from dominant depiction of them as an indigenous people with a self-contained livelihood, living in remote parts of Jungle, which is not a realistic picture of the Orang Asli. To sum up, my language strategy was intense work with English-speaking informants or assistants, using English and partly Malay for communication, and to focus on Semai terms and phrases when they carried particular cultural meanings. Moreover, in a few cases, I also asked some non- Orang Asli Malay speakers to assist me. The Orang Asli informants at the same time were my mentors and assistants. They would introduce me to their contacts and with their help I could gain access to a network of different types of people. They also were my translators when we meet other people. Life history, memories and experiences of my Semai mentors were priceless sources of information. In fact, when the boundaries between ‘interview’ and friendly chat became blurred, I had the opportunity to see the inner reaches of the people’s lives inaccessible through formal interviews.

The topic of my research required that I consider other involved parties besides the Orang Asli. In particular, missionaries, Muslim and Christian, were to be included in the study. Approaching missionaries was not that problematic. Muslims generally considered me as a fellow Muslim, someone ‘on their side’, and had a friendly attitude. Christians, on the other hand, were welcoming to anybody who asked about their religion and their activities. I think the inherent missionary tendency in Christianity contributed to their welcoming attitude towards outsiders. Therefore, I did not have any problem with joining religious activities and attending religious gatherings, whether Christian or Islamic ones. In comparing these two parties, Muslim missionaries usually had less command over English than Christians. Sometimes, they could hardly express themselves in English. Certainly, Islamic education, with its emphasis on Arabic, played a role in their lower English skills. On the contrary, Christian missionaries spoke English well and in Christian missionary schools, English was an important subject. Despite the welcoming attitude of


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Christian missionaries, when it came to topics of conversion and missionary work among the Orang Asli, some church authorities were discreet in opening up. In fact, because Islam is part of the government ideology, inter-religious relations are charged with political considerations. Nonetheless, Christian workers and missionaries in the field did not show such a cautious attitude.

I regularly visited my field sites in Perak and Pahang. During these visits, I stayed in different places, from a corner in the village hall or mosque to people’s houses, guestrooms, and budget hotels. I usually brought with me some gifts, such as rice, oil, canned foods, cookies and books, for the people and my informants to reciprocate their help and hospitality. In some other cases, I paid the informants to accompany me in my trips and arranged some visits to other villages and meetings with key persons. ‘Culture shock’ did not persist to the end of my research; however, feelings of depression and incompetence, with a lower frequency and lesser intensity, never completely ceased occurring. Especially, when the flow of the research was slow, and I could not find satisfactory answers to my questions.

PERSPECTIVE: THE LOGIC OF CHANGE

It is an undeniable fact that the Orang Asli are left behind in mainstream society’s development. The Orang Asli have an under-developed and under-privileged situation in a rather developed country. For me, this situation was reminiscent of the situation of Middle Eastern and ‘developing’ countries in relation to developed countries4. The people of ‘developing’ (undeveloped?) countries show contradictory feelings about their situation. They want the change and development, and they want to preserve what they have at the same time. They complain about the enforcing uniformity of globalization, but they want to be global. This leads to an ambivalent attitude toward ‘change’. That is why we see different responses to the forces of change, from resistance against any change to embracing the changes. These responses, though, are complicated by historical experiences, politics, ideologies and political economy. Many studies (e.g. Dentan, Endicott, Gomes, & Hooker, 1997; Endicott, 1979; Hasan, 1989, 1992; Hood & Hasan, 1984; Juli, 1998; Lai, 2008; Lim & Gomes, 1990; Nicholas, 2000; Nowak, 1985; Yong, 2006) have critically dealt with the social, political and environmental impact of development on the Orang Asli. These studies are valuable for policy makers and can be used for monitoring the impact of current policies. Undoubtedly, the Orang Asli have suffered from environmental destruction, and sometimes cultural dislocations, caused by developmental programs. But they have also welcomed many changes that enhanced their quality of life, such as new roads that have been made since the 1980s (Lye, 2005). These roads have dramatically increased the mobility of the Orang Asli, and have enhanced medical 4 ‘Developed’ and ‘undeveloped’ are relative terms. A given society that is ‘developed’ in relation to a

society might be ‘undeveloped’ in comparison to another society.

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and educational services. Some researchers now address questions of citizenship and human right (Nah, 2003, 2006, 2008), configuration of the relationship between the state and the Orang Asli in the legal arena (Idrus, 2008); and criticize the assimilation programs, bumiputera and Islamization policies from the perspectives of equality and social justice (Dentan et al., 1997; Nicholas, 2003). The debates about the Orang Asli and the changes that have been imposed on them by ‘outsiders’ reflect a long-lasting debate about the relationship between indigenous people and their dominant neighbors. These debates are well exemplified in Stephen Corry and Lucy Mair’s exchanges in the Royal Anthropological Institute News (RAIN) (Corry, 1975a,1975b, 2002; Mair, 1975a, 1975b).5 Corry and Mair represent two different approaches to development among indigenous people. One approach criticizes and condemns governmental and the dominant culture’s manipulation as ‘ethnocid’; because their actions annihilate these groups and perpetrate forms of education, which degrade and eventually destroy the indigenous culture (Corry, 1975a). Another approach criticizes the idea of ‘ethnocide’ and locates the indigenous people problem in the paradigm of progress and cultural change; an approach that Lucy Mair (Mair, 1975a) holds. Corry describes ‘ethnocide’ as “destruction of an ethnic group by a dominant ethnic group by means other than deliberate killing”(Corry, 1975a). Mair (1975a), on the other hand, says:

Some people speak of ‘ethnocide’ when what they mean is the abandonment of their previous way of life by populations which have continued to live and to reproduce themselves through the generations and indeed the centuries; this in fact is the history of the vast majority of the present inhabitants of the world. We were all food-gatherers once.

(Mair, 1975a: 4)

Therefore, for Mair, cultural changes, in any form, are the inevitable fate of human societies. Corry responded to Mair’s argument by saying that ‘ethnocide’ is the destruction of the group, and not the cultural change which are occurring because the group wants them to happen. However, he immediately added, “what any group ‘wants’ or ‘does not want’ when it comes to interaction with a different society is, of course, a very complex question” (Corry, 1975b: 15).

No Orang Asli study can be carried out without consideration of the subject of ‘change’ among them. Undoubtedly, the Orang Asli are not just the victims of development. They have also benefitted from the changes. Social and cultural changes are a given in human societies and within a people there is always resistance and compliance towards these changes. To balance the study of change, we need to consider both resistance and compliance among the various parties of a society, and try to understand the underlying causes of each reaction. However, it is always necessary to deal with injustice and ill planned development programs that an under-5 Corry and Mair’s articles and letters were reprinted in an edited book by Jonathan Benthall (2002).


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privileged ethnic group, such as the Orang Asli, face from the stand point of social justice and humanitarianism.

Perhaps we can imagine a time in the past when societies developed according to their intrinsic logic. Nowadays, however, extrinsic development is inevitable. We are always exposed to other societies, and thus we have to define our relation to them. The Orang Asli, like other people, have responded to forces of change, whether by resistance or acceptance and making new hybrids. Missionary work by Christians and Muslims among the Orang Asli is an extrinsic factor that suggests a significant cultural change. I decided to study how the Orang Asli reacted to this factor.

Here, I am not going through the details of my analysis. Instead, I will try to depict the general theoretical view that shaped my particular viewpoint. Orang Asli communities are not static communities living in secluded areas and in total harmony with the environment. Exoticism lies at the bottom of most ethnographic accounts, but when it reaches the point when it distorts the portrayal of a people, it would then be counterproductive. The Orang Asli are not only victims of development and subjects of governmental irresponsible policies, but also they enjoy the comforts of development. They are agents who in one way or another contribute to the situation. I intended to view the Orang Asli community as a plural community with people having different views, who consciously or subconsciously responded to external forces of change and participated in shaping their reality.

Many Orang Asli have resisted missionary work and did not convert to Christianity and Islam. This is, however, only a partial reality. About 40% of Orang Asli in Perak and 18% in Pahang have converted to Islam and Christianity. Even if we deem that these numbers are not valid indicators, the presence of a considerable number of converts among the Orang Asli is undeniable. The converts, the changed people, are as much Orang Asli as the non-converts; thus, the researcher should include consideration of their reality. In the same way as ‘developing countries’ respond to forces of change; resistance is not necessarily a sign of loyalty to the respected culture, neither does embracing the change unavoidably indicate surrender or betrayal. Both are the responses of different people who are equal in their ethnic or national affiliation; and are entitled to have their choice. Who can really say which option is the best for them? Investigating the mechanisms of their responses to change, however, may only reduce the effects of adverse consequences.

CONCLUSION

All knowledge is relative. The position of the researcher and his/her perspectives and experiences has a crucial effect on the findings. The reader cannot ever be sure if a ‘reflexive’ self-report is uncontaminated by the ideal presentation of self, or

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whether it is a creative manipulation of image. Even if the writer does not deliberately try to deceive the reader, the subconscious motives may distort the report. Indeed, realistic self-awareness or honest self-disclosure is a pre-Freudian idea based on the availability of all personal parameters to the consciousness (Salzman, 2002). Therefore, a reflective report can only claim minimum disclosure to the extent of what the writer, consciously or unconsciously, can reveal. A reflexive account at its best can help the reader to see the writer behind the text.

Fieldwork in a foreign country and among totally stranger people was accompanied by a ‘culture shock’ that I had not experienced in my previous fieldwork among people of my country. Despite the difference between the ethnic, religious and language background of those Iranian people and mine, I never had felt the despair, incompetence and depression that I felt in my fieldwork among the Orang Asli. Mainly it was because of the lack of a common language for everyday communication. Later, with finding English-speaking informants and by using my broken Malay I tried to overcome the problem. Even though this language strategy led me to experience some joyful moments with my Orang Asli friends and mentors, it inevitably prolonged the research process.

Change is a given fact in any society. Having the experience of being brought up in a country where for several decades the government’s propaganda had insisted on evil outsiders who interfered in society and tried to spoil our culture and prevented us from progressing, had taught me a lesson. Getting stuck in this victim-view, outsider-blaming discourse perpetuates the problems of change through denial of the contribution of the internal agents and their diverse interests. If we accept ‘change’ as a given fact in every society, we need to find a way out of the ‘victim based, outsider blaming’ discourse through acknowledging the people’s plural contributions to the status quo.

In the case of the Orang Asli, I preferred to view the Orang Asli community as being in the process of change. They are not living museum objects or a national, or world, cultural heritage to be preserved. Rather, they are a people who are changing exactly the same as other people in history. And like other people, they responded to the forces of change which comprised both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. The Orang Asli’s response to these factors was not unanimous and encompassed reactions from resistance to compliance according to each group’s conscious interests or subconscious motives. This view is different from the portrayal of the Orang Asli that ignores the differing responses of the people and sees them as a homogeneous and conservative people. Studying these divergent views, their underlying rationale and their consequences was the main goal of my research.


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Ethnography among the Orang Asli: a reflexive account

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