Female Heirship and the Reproduction of Matriliny

To what extent do the shifts outlined above constitute significant departures from precolonial patterns, whereby rights over previously inherited land typically devolved on a female proprietor's enates? More specifically, how has enatic heirship fared over the past seventy or so years, and how have female enates in particular made out in light of property, inheritance, and other economic changes?

A summary answer to these questions is fourfold. First, female heirs continue to be favored over males with respect to all categories of land titles that have been previously conveyed through inheritance. Second, a consistent and positive association exists between the temporal origin point of land rights on the one hand and the likelihood that such rights will be vested in women on the other; in other words, the more distant the origin point of a particular land title, the greater the chances that women will hold the rights to it (see also Fett 1983; Stivens 1985). Third, one long-range correlate of such trends is the maintenance and reproduction of a generally unbroken chain of property ties among matrilineally related women. Fourth, and perhaps of greatest theoretical relevance, patterns of

this nature derive largely from the interplay of principles of siblingship and gender, which thus perpetuate the conceptual significance and social entailments of matrifiliation and enatic descent and inheritance.

The implications of this situation force a major revision of earlier thinking about many features of Negeri Sembilan society and culture. The anthropological literature on Negeri Sembilan is replete with predictions and actual claims about the supposed transformation of inheritance relationships in favor of explicitly patrilineal or bilateral arrangements. De Josselin de Jong (1960, 165, 190), for instance, points to a shift whereby Islamic law governs the devolution of rights over jointly acquired acreage. A. Wahab Alwee (1967, 40–41) goes even further, proposing that "newly opened land [has] follow[ed] the Islamic laws of inheritance" ever since the mid 1920s, which decade also witnessed the beginning of a shift from matriliny to patriliny in the inheritance of rights over all noncustomary plots.^[5] Swift (1965, 172) asserts that sons tend to receive rubber lands, while daughters get residential and rice acreage, and that these patterns prevail regardless of the "legal status" of the land—by which he apparently means its cultural categorization as customary, noncustomary but ancestral, or noncustomary and nonancestral. Lewis (1962, 192–193) posits a generally comparable situation, contending that male children acquire larger shares of noncustomary rubber land through inheritance than do their sisters but are almost invariably excluded from inheriting noncustomary and customary rice and residential acreage. Here, too, the previous history of proprietorship over noncustomary land is regarded as a nonissue, and we are left with the impression that the devolution of rights over such land is characterized by bilaterality and, in the case of rubber holdings, a bias toward sons.

The basic problem with all such views is that they are products of essentially synchronic inquiries. Since they do not build on historical data obtained from cadastral surveys and household interviews, they fail to grasp the significance of the diachrony within the inheritance system. As a result, these views are wholly inconsistent with the fact that females are far more likely than males to inherit rights over previously inherited land in all agricultural categories, and that this dynamic serves to reproduce a form of matriliny.

Some of the data supporting my assertions are summarized in table 23. These data derive from a detailed study of all District Land Office records for the village of Bogang, which span the period 1888–1980 and thus

extend back to the very first year that land titles were recorded in written form. The collection and analysis of this material represents the first systematic attempt to examine female heirship in Negeri Sembilan from a diachronic perspective capable of illuminating the temporal dynamics of the system of inheritance itself.^[6] This material reveals that females still enjoy a privileged position in heirship, even in the case of land first registered in the past few decades. The tendency holds during the post-1909 era on the whole—that is, throughout the period in which lands were no longer formally redefined as ancestral in consequence of inheritance or designated legally as customary.

The fact that females still enjoy a privileged position in heirship is clear from table 23, where the percentages of land titles registered to females increase markedly over time in six of the eight columns. The exceptions are the first and last columns, which show no significant change. In the case of the last column, too little time has passed for any significant change to have occurred. In the first column, showing land titles first registered in 1888–1889, 93.2 percent were under female proprietorship at the time of initial registration, and fully 92.3 percent of these same titles were still under female proprietorship in 1980. The second column shows that, in 1890–1909, a smaller percentage of the land titles were under female proprietorship at initial registration than was the case in the preceding interval (66.3 percent and 93.2 percent, respectively). This relative decline in female proprietorship at the point of initial registration has nothing to do with inheritance; it merely reflects the increasingly pronounced impact of British colonial policies that encouraged males to purchase and register previously unalienated state lands in their own names. The second column as a whole, however, reveals significant historical increases in female proprietorship between initial registration and later decades, which are of course a result of females being favored in inheritance.^[7] The data summarized in the remaining columns of table 23 are generally consistent with both these trends, reflecting greater male involvement in the acquisition and registration of previously unalienated land on the one hand and increases in female proprietorship over time through inheritance on the other.

The second trend just noted can be seen in summary form by reading the 1980 row of table 23 from right to left. I should emphasize that the increase in female proprietorship of land through inheritance is

not confined to titles first registered before 1909, nearly all of which are designated legally as customary. The trend can also be discerned, though less strikingly, for land titles first registered after 1909, over 95 percent of which are, and always have been, designated as noncustomary. Particularly significant, too, is that this trend obtains with respect to all categories of land—including rubber.

What, then, of the contentions of earlier observers? Regarding the suggestion that the devolution of rights over newly opened lands, such as rubber holdings purchased from the state in the course of marriage, tends to be governed by Islamic law, it is certainly true that sons are occasionally awarded shares of the land that their parents acquired through conjugal effort. If this were not the case, increases in female proprietorship over time would be even more pronounced. The frequent implication by other scholars that, owing to Islamic influences, male shares are usually twice the size or value of those allotted to female offspring, however, is entirely unfounded. Even at present the property laws of Islam are commonly interpreted by villagers to mean only that sons merit inclusion in heirship, not that they are entitled to shares of inheritance larger than their sisters. Throughout most of the twentieth century, furthermore, secular and religious officials with authority over the distribution of intestate property rights seem to have held the same basic view, and in any event sought primarily to inform potential heirs (as defined by Islam) of their jural prerogatives in this area. Male children, I might reiterate, commonly choose to forego their legitimate claims in favor of their sisters.

Nor is there any evidence for a mid-1920s shift toward patrilineal inheritance of noncustomary land. The inclusion of sons as heirs to land jointly acquired by a married couple dos not generate patrilineal inheritance. For even if sons retain such land until they die, it typically then passes to their sisters, wives, or daughters, and subsequently from mother to daughter. Moreover, a great many of the heirs one would expect to encounter under patrilineal inheritance (F, FB, FBS, FBD, BS, BD, and SS, among others) have never been incorporated into the theory or practice of Negeri Sembilan inheritance. Comparable arguments could be advanced with respect to the system's putative evolution toward bilaterality (cf. von Benda-Beckmann 1979, 373–375).

The evidence given here is highly consistent with a complementary corpus of data, obtained from structured interviews at each of Bogang's 106 households, pertaining to proprietors' intentions or wishes concerning the

future devolution of rights over their houses, house plots, and agricultural acreage. Let us first consider the anticipated inheritance of rights over currently occupied houses, ninety-nine cases of which (93.4 percent of the village total) are suitable for analysis (see table 24). In 84.9 percent of households, the intended heirs are the natural or adopted daughters of current household heads (defined in most instances as the eldest resident female). The future heirs of another 11.1 percent are sisters, sisters' daughters, or other lineage females; in these cases proprietors have no daughters of their own and live on land registered as customary. Although some of these people could conceivably disassemble and relocate their houses with an eye to bequeathing them to their sons, most proprietors feel morally bound to pass over sons and all male relatives in favor of female collaterals in the matriline, regardless of who financed the construction of the house.

The question of why the vast majority of village houses will pass to daughters and other females in the matriline might be seen as a nonissue, since more than three-quarters of Bogang's residential structures rest on customary land. In other words, many owners who might wish to bequeath their homes to their sons could not do so without relocating onto noncustomary land. Such a possibility, moreover, does not really exist in the case of houses inherited, as opposed to constructed, by current owners. Although one could argue that houses pass to daughters or other female enates in the lineage owing to jural conventions originating in centuries past, which do not correspond with contemporary notions of propriety and inheritance, such arguments gloss over a critical issue: people of both sexes clearly prefer to bestow rights over houses on their daughters rather than—and to the exclusion of—their sons, regardless of whether the rights entail full or provisional title. This is so even in the few instances where houses are owned partly or fully by men. In fact, 86 percent (19 of 22) of the houses situated on noncustomary holdings are expected to pass to daughters.

The future devolution of rights to the homestead plots on which Bogang's currently occupied houses rest is much the same as for houses. As table 25 indicates, daughters and other females sharing lineage membership with the current household heads will be the heirs in approximately 92 percent of the cases at issue.^[8]

Data pertaining to the anticipated inheritance of rights over Bogang's agricultural acreage are summarized in tables 26, 27, and 28, revealing patterns similar to those pertaining to houses and houseplots. This data,

however, is far from comprehensive, partly because interviewees did not always divulge the full extent of their holdings.

In any event, table 26 suggests that rights over all sawah will pass to daughters or other female enates of household heads, regardless of the nature of the property rights at issue or whether the land is designated as customary or noncustomary. As for fruit orchards (table 27), the female enates of household heads will be favored overwhelmingly in the case of customary land, and to some extent in the case of noncustomary acreage as well. The least likelihood of female heirship as regards orchards is in noncustomary holdings purchased by current proprietors—resembling the case of residential acreage. Viewed conversely, male progeny are far more likely to receive shares of their parents' purchased rather than inherited noncustomary orchards and homestead plots.

The devolution of rights over land planted in rubber (table 28) is subject to the same set of temporal dynamics. Thus, we need not follow earlier observers in invoking a separate set of genealogical links or structural principles to account for the inheritance of rubber land or its relationship to other modalities of inheritance. At the same time, if we consider only residential plots and all types of agricultural holdings that have never before been inherited, the highest estimates for future male heirship are clearly those pertaining to rubber. This situation certainly derives in part from the fact that rubber land is utilized solely to generate cash income and is therefore strongly associated with domestic entrepreneurs, hence males. Yet the conceptual link between males and rubber land does not preclude females from inheriting purchased noncustomary rubber lands. For that matter, the conceptual link is far less pronounced with regard to noncustomary rubber lands that have already been inherited at least once, as evidenced by the projection that females will be the exclusive heirs in 60 percent of cases, joining their brothers in heirship in the remaining 40 percent.

The larger explanation for the extent of male inclusion in rubber acreage heirship lies with notions of siblingship and the pervasive view that brothers and sisters ought to be accorded equivalent shares of their parents' estate. The point is frequently made that, since daughters will inherit rights to houses, sawah, and residential acreage, sons should get at least some rubber land. Providing sons with access to rubber holdings is all the more important in light of the much-reduced economic and political significance of males' traditional inheritance shares, such as weapons and clan titles.

Beneath this concern with equivalence, however, is a more fundamental concern to provide daughters with property that will enable them to fend for themselves and their children if they are abandoned by or outlive their husbands. Rubber lands have become important components of such inheritance shares owing to declines in the economic value of women's rice plots. These factors help explain why so many women are expected to inherit rubber plots as well as rice and residential land, and why many, if not most, men will probably be bequeathed smaller shares than their sisters.