PART 1
GENDER IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
2
Gender, Prestige, and Political Economy in the Nineteenth Century
Malays have a high sense of personal honour; and as in the interior the necessary weapons for avenging an insult are always carried about their persons, the outward deportment of natives to each other is remarkably punctilious and courteous. Europeans, particularly sailors, not aware of this sensitiveness, were formerly in the habit of trespassing upon it by practical jokes, but soon found that inexperienced persons playing with edged tools are liable to have their fingers cut.... To wipe out a stain on his honour by shedding the blood of an offender, even if assassination be the means employed, is accounted as little disgraceful by him as the practice of duelling by others in civilized Europe.
T. J. Newbold, Political and Statistical Accounts of the British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca (1839)
The approach developed in this and subsequent chapters is informed by recent work on gender and prestige. In particular, it builds on Ortner and Whitehead's (1981a) demonstration that cultural constructions of gender and sexuality are most profitably analyzed as comprising hierarchies or systems of prestige or status (social honor, social value); and that the logic and social and cultural entailments of gender systems are keyed to—and in important ways determined by—the workings of the most encompassing systems of prestige in the societies in which they are found (see also Collier 1988; Atkinson and Errington 1990; Kelly 1993).[1] The first section of the chapter provides an overview of prestige, kinship, and political organization in nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan. Of primary interest here are data bearing on the criteria for allocating prestige, and the prestige considerations of the political elite, especially their concerns with what I refer to, following Errington (1990), as spiritual power or "potency." Of broader analytic relevance are the links between the systems of prestige, kinship, and political organization on the one hand, and the structure of marriage and affinal relations on the other, and the ways
in which (untitled) in-marrying males were pressed into the service of generating property rights, wealth, and prestige for their wives' kin. The second section of the chapter deals with contrasting representations of marriage and affinal exchange, which I analyze by employing a modified version of Bourdieu's (1977) distinction between "official" and "practical" kinship. I demonstrate that while official representations of the system of marriage and affinal exchange portrayed the system as focusing on men's exchange of rights over women, practical representations depicted the system as focusing on women's exchange of rights over men. In the third and final section of the chapter, I argue that the practical system of representations was more in keeping with everyday practice in the nineteenth century. I also address some of the comparative and theoretical implications of the system, including the importance of reassessing the widely held position that institutions of kinship and marriage (e.g., the "exchange of women") constitute the ultimate locus of women's secondary "status" vis-à-vis men. I suggest that prestige differentials between men and women were rooted in cosmological views that accorded men more spiritual power and potency than women, and that these broadly grounded views—rather than institutions of kinship and marriage—lay at the heart of women's secondary "status."
Before turning to a discussion of nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan, two caveats are in order, the first of which is that my references to "the nineteenth century" pertain specifically to the period 1830–80. Many aspects of the reconstruction presented in the following pages are applicable to Negeri Sembilan during the post-1880 era, and are probably relevant as well to the decades immediately prior to 1830. My decision to focus on the period 1830–80 is based partly on the limited availability of sources on the pre-1830 era; it also reflects a concern to avoid delineating the impact of British colonialism (which was introduced into some areas of Negeri Sembilan as early as 1874) in the initial sections of the chapter. The local effects of colonial rule are discussed in subsequent chapters and elsewhere (Peletz 1987b, 1988b).
The second caveat is more in the form of a warning to the nonspecialist about the language employed in this chapter and some of the conceptual and analytic issues addressed here. This chapter is the most technically daunting in the volume as a whole, and my treatment of various issues (bearing on "official" and "practical" kinship, marriage and affinal relations, the exchange of men, and the like) will undoubtedly strike some nonspecialist readers as highly detailed, rather abstract, or both. Suffice it to say that the technical material is deeply important since it provides the
basis on which we can evaluate and challenge some of the most widely held theoretical views on women, kinship, and marriage; that many of these views are packaged abstractly; and that engaging them and laying the foundations for new theoretical orientations thus requires descriptions and analyses that incorporate some degree of technical and abstract discussion. Uninitiated readers who proceed with patience are likely to find their efforts rewarded, and will, in any case, see that subsequent chapters focus more directly on case studies and other discussions of real people and are for these and other reasons more accessible.
Prestige, Kinship, And Political Organization
Malays and other Southeast Asians are intensely concerned with prestige and status.[2] The intensity of prestige and status concerns in Southeast Asia is well documented in Leach's (1954) work on the highlands of Burma and Volkman's (1985) study of the Toraja (Sulawesi), though it is perhaps best illustrated in Geertz's (1973) analysis of the Balinese cockfight. The Balinese cockfight is a ritual dramatization and "celebration of status rivalry" which underscores that "prestige is the central driving force in society" (1973:43, 60), and that status relationships are matters of life and death. Cockfights, and the gambling associated with them, are by no means confined to Bali. They have long occurred throughout the Malay Peninsula (Newbold 1839 II:179, 183; Gullick 1987:330–32, 344–45) and other parts of Southeast Asia, as have myriad other contests and amusements which, at least in times past, frequently ended in the shedding of human blood (Reid 1988:143, 183–91).
The Malay terms that most closely approximate the meanings of the English terms "prestige" and "status" are pangkat and taraff. Pangkat denotes rank, degree, standing, position; rank or grade in a career. (Sepangkat refers to being of the same rank, social position, grade, degree, or age; berpangkat to having a rank, position, or grade; being noble, distinguished.) Taraff denotes social rank or standing, status, position in a society, standard of living. The two terms are frequently employed as synonyms, though pangkat is, at least at present, the more commonly used of the two terms.
In the nineteenth century there were various criteria that were used to allocate and claim prestige: descent, age, birth order, religious knowledge and experience, spiritual power or potency, and wealth were the most common. Each of these criteria may be seen as the axis within a particular system of prestige, though it is important to note that these systems were
not equally valorized. Some were more significant than others in the sense of being more encompassing and hegemonic. This is clear from the following observations of Newbold (1839 II:124), which pertain specifically to Malays in the Rembau district of Negeri Sembilan, but which are relevant to Malays elsewhere as well.
Although the Malays, like the Greeks and Romans, entertain the highest veneration for old age, still the claims of descent supersede those conferred by years , particularly with regard to the heads of tribes [i.e., clans], who take precedence in the councils of the state, conformably to the rank of the ... [clan] they represent. (emphasis added)
Newbold (1839 II:124) goes on to describe a ceremony he observed in 1833 that involved
a boy, whose dress and weapons betokened some rank, and to whom a considerable degree of deference was shewn by the natives. On inquiry I found him to be the ... [leader] of the principal ... [clan]; and that, although a younger brother, he had been elected ... to that dignity, in consideration of his elder brother's imbecility. This boy affixed his name, or rather his mark (for neither he nor any of his seven compeers could write) immediately after the Penghulu [District Chief] of Rumbowe, before the rest of the ... [clan leaders], some of whom were venerable old men, and grown grey in office.
The most encompassing and hegemonic system of prestige in nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan was the system of hereditary ranking or descent (keturunan ) which was encoded in the political system, and which operated through the kinship system. The kinship system was composed of matrilineally constituted descent units, such as dispersed and localized clans (both referred to as suku ), lineages (perut ) and lineage branches (pangkal ).[3] Clans and lineages were ranked relative to one another and had their own political leaders, who, along with the District Chief (variously referred to as Undang, Penghulu , or Penghulu Undang ), constituted the formal leadership of the (political) system. The relative status of these leaders was, in theory, fixed, and depended largely on the relative status of the kinship and territorial units over which they presided. The heads of dispersed clans, for example, were ranked in relation to one another on the basis of the ranking of their respective dispersed clans, each of which was defined, partly through mythic charters, either as a "gentry" or "commoner" clan, or as a "dependent" (satellite) clan of one or another gentry group. In practice, however, the relative status of political leaders also depended on how well they worked the system of political patronage
to attract supporters and dependents and otherwise build up their nama ("names," "reputations").
As in other parts of the Malay world and Southeast Asia as a whole, building a name for oneself presupposed the accumulation and display of invisible spiritual power or "potency" (kesaktian, kekayaan, ilmu, kuasa ).[4] outward signs of which were large numbers of followers and substantial wealth (see Skeat [1900] 1967:81; Milner 1982:130 n.5; Gullick 1987:48; Anderson 1972; Wolters 1982; Reid 1988:120, 125–27; Errington 1990). Political leaders at all levels of the hierarchy sought to bolster their claims to spiritual potency and thus build their names primarily by gaining control over human resources (only secondarily by acquiring land). They amassed supporters and dependents in a number of ways: through military campaigns; through various forms of "adoption"; and by attempting to use their female relatives—especially their sisters and their sisters' daughters—as "bait" (to use Ortner's [1981:371] term) to attract and gain control over men, who, as in-marrying males, would ideally add property rights, wealth, and prestige to the kinship and territorial groups over which political leaders presided. My reference to women as "bait" is not meant to suggest that women were pawns in the status games of men; as I discuss further along, it is arguably more appropriate (assuming we can speak of pawns) to suggest that untitled men, not women, played this role.
Political leaders were typically males, but one should not conclude from this fact—or from the existence of a gendered division of labor—that there were radical prestige differentials or other pronounced inequalities between men and women. As in the nineteenth-century Malay world generally, women were not really viewed (or treated) as inferior to men (Gullick 1987:210), though for reasons noted below they were accorded somewhat less prestige and were likewise regarded as more vulnerable than men. Men's and women's roles and activities were viewed in terms of complementarity rather than hierarchy, as is clearly the case at present. Thus, men were accorded the primary role in matters of statecraft, formal politics, diplomacy and warfare, and in extralocal trade; they also assumed the major role in the production of metals used for tools and weapons, and thus effectively monopolized production of the means of violence. In addition, men performed much of the labor involved in household construction as well as the heavy labor of clearing forest and other land for residential and agricultural purposes. Women, for their part, engaged in fishing and surface mining (as did men), performed most of the tasks associated with rice production, and were primarily responsible for mak-
ing cloth, for processing foodstuffs, and for everyday cooking as well as the preparation of food for ritual feasts. Women also predominated in childcare and in the exchange of rights over children (informal child transfers). In these and other ways they exercised considerable autonomy and social control, acquired prestige, facilitated the acquisition of prestige on the part of their male kin, and helped maintain and reproduce households and the larger kin groupings and social units of which these households were a part.
The spheres in which men moved were more extensive and inclusive in a physical or territorial sense than the spheres of women and did in fact encompass women's spheres, though it should be noted that women were not subject to strict seclusion or segregation and did not wear veils (Newbold 1839 1:246). Whether men's activities were for this reason alone viewed as more directly related to universalistic concerns or "the social good"[5] is difficult to say (there are no data on the subject), though this is arguably the case at present. What is clear is that Western notions of the universality of "public" and "private" domains—and the attendant universalistic assumption linking men with the public domain and women with the private—do not fit comfortably with the situation in nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan. True, women were more directly associated with matters of the household than were men, but their activities clearly transcended the domains of household, as well as those of lineage and clan. Women's predominance in rice production was clearly seen as a public and not simply a private activity; so, too, was their centrality in marriage and affinal exchange, funerary ceremonies, and spirit cults.
It merits remark as well that women could and did assume the roles of midwife (bidan ) and healer (dukun ). They could also become shamanic specialists (pawang ) and thus find themselves in the critically significant position of being responsible for mediating relations of metaphoric kinship between the realm of humans and the worlds of nature and spirits. In some parts of Negeri Sembilan, moreover, women held political office (Lister 1887:88; cf. Lewis 1962:44–45). Women's abilities to assume important ritual and political roles had counterparts elsewhere in the Malay world and in other parts of Southeast Asia both in the 1800s and in earlier times (Reid 1988), as was undoubtedly well known in nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan. More generally, women's involvement in the public domains of communal ritual and formal politics served to mute the cultural elaboration of prestige differentials between men and women (and males and females on the whole).
The situation described here should not obscure the fact that women's involvement in ritual and political activities during the nineteenth century was far more constricted than it had been in earlier times. During the early part of the period 1450–1680, women had been extremely active in communal rituals throughout much of Southeast Asia due in large part to the fact that their reproductive and regenerative capacities gave them "magical and ritual powers which it was difficult for men to match" (Reid 1988:146; Andaya and Ishii 1992:555–56). This had changed by the latter part of this period, however, due to the development in Southeast Asia of Islam and other "Great Religions" (especially Buddhism and Christianity), none of which "provide any textual basis for female participation in religious rituals at the highest levels" (Andaya and Ishii 1992:555). More generally, the highest ritual positions of the dominant faiths came to be reserved for males, who thus presided over communal rituals. Women's public ritual roles became progressively less apparent, and they were increasingly "relegated to the domains of shamanism and spirit propitiation. In the process, the status of the shaman, both female and transvestite, declined.... and women became the principal practitioners of 'village' as opposed to 'court' magic" (Andaya and Ishii 1992:555–56). In the Malay case, and throughout much of Southeast Asia, this gendered skewing of ritual (and political) activities was usually rationalized in terms of beliefs relating to spiritual (and/or intellectual) power or potency—that men's was greater or stronger than women's—as discussed later (see also Andaya and Ishii 1992:556–57).
Alam beraja
Negeri/Luak berpenghulu
Suku bertua
Anak buah beribubapa
Orang semenda bertempat semenda
Dagang bertapatan, perahu bertambatan
The realm/empire has a raja,
The district has a district chief,
The clan has an elder/clan chief,
People of the clan have clan sub-chiefs,
People who marry into a clan have relatives through marriage,
The stranger finds a place as the boat an anchorage.
Customary sayings or aphorisms (perbilangan ) such as the one reproduced here (which is cited by Hale 1898:53–54; Parr and Mackray 1910:98; other colonial scholar-officials; and contemporary villagers) provide a suc-
cinct overview of political relations in nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan. These relations were organized at the district (negeri/luak ) level, and were overseen by district chiefs. Some of these chiefs formed an unprecedented but largely ineffectual politico-military union in the 1770s, the titular head of which was styled Yang diPertuan Besar (He Who is Made Lord), though he was sometimes referred to as Raja (King). The Yang diPertuan Besar served in some respects like the sultans of other Malay states, one principal difference being that he had no real authority within districts in which there were Undang .[6]
The Undang sat at the apex of the (district-level) political hierarchy and was regarded by his subjects as God's Caliph or Vice-Regent (berkhalifah ) and as sacrosanct (berdaulat ). He served as the supreme arbiter and final court of appeals for disputes that could not be settled by lower ranking political figures, and he was vested with the right to invoke capital punishment (stabbing below the collar bone with a keris or dagger). The Undang also enjoyed the right to conscript (male) villagers for defense purposes, to make periodic demands on household labor and food resources, and to claim all illegitimate children born in the district (Parr and Mackray 1910:52). In addition, he was entitled to collect annual payments in kind from the proprietors of certain categories of land. The resources which he commanded in these and other ways were used partly to sponsor lavish feasts held in connection with coronation rituals, marriage, circumcision, and death, as well as Islamic holidays (e.g., the Prophet's birthday), all of which testified to the Undang's grandeur and largesse. Other resources were deployed in support of the Undang 's military campaigns, many of which were geared toward acquiring or maintaining control over river traffic and other extralocal trade routes, and thus generating the wealth and followers that were outward signs of his spiritual potency. In these and other ways (e.g., through the public display of ritual paraphernalia and certain styles of clothing forbidden on pain of death to all others), the Undang legitimated his claims to berkhalifah and berdaulat .
The Undang was the only person in the district who could legitimately maintain that he was God's Vice-Regent or Caliph, and that he had royal power, sanctity, or majesty (daulat ); but he was by no means the only person who could legitimately claim to have spiritual potency. Indeed, one of the central tensions in the system was that while the Undang could legitimately contend that he possessed qualitatively superior forms or concentrations of spiritual potency (manifested in daulat ), others (i.e., pretenders and other detractors) could counter with some justification that the Undang 's spiritual powers were at best quantitatively superior forms
of the mystical knowledge cum power (sakti, kesaktian, ilmu ) which was concentrated among certain classes of ritual specialists (shamans, healers, midwives), and which was at the same time broadly distributed (albeit in less concentrated or potent forms) throughout the population, especially among men. Moreover, since the external signs of invisible spiritual power were large numbers of followers and substantial wealth, pretenders and other adversaries needed only amass followers and wealth comparable to or greater than the Undang to render concrete their claims to have comparable or superior forms (or concentrations) of sakti/ilmu . And if they succeeded, through trickery or force of arms, in capturing the regalia or kebesaran (literally, things or symbols of greatness) of an incumbent Undang , they were all the more likely to prevail over him, particularly since the paraphernalia of office were suffused with the same sanctity that permeated the body of the ruler (Skeat [1900] 1967:36; cf. Andaya and Ishii 1992:547). Such was a dangerous undertaking, however, and could entail kena daulat , which Skeat ([1900] 1967:23–24) described as being "struck dead by a quasi-electric discharge of that Divine Power which Malays suppose to reside in the king's person ..., [and which] is believed to communicate itself to his regalia, and to slay those who break the royal taboos" (cf. Newbold 1839 I:223, II:193; Gullick 1958:44–45, 1987:35).
Compounding the dilemmas both for the Undang and for leaders at all levels of the political hierarchy was the fact that extensive involvement in the affairs of their subjects was inimical to the accumulation and display of the spiritual potency that was a sine qua non for any political office and for being a "big man" (orang besar ) or "man of renown" generally. Spiritual potency presupposed and had as one of its outward signs a high degree of refinement, detachment, and studied restraint—immobility was a sign of divinity (Gullick 1958:45)—all of which indexed not simply the predominance of "reason" over "passion" but also the divinely inspired cultivation of "reason" in the pursuit of the highest forms of knowledge and enlightenment (see Milner 1982). Concerns with the accumulation and display of spiritual power were thus partly responsible for the highly decentralized regulation of local affairs (and the attendant frequency of challenges to the authority of the Undang and other political leaders). Put differently, such concerns help explain why Malay political institutions did not entail "an exceptional concentration of administrative authority" and did not "consist in exercise of pre-eminent power" (Gullick 1958:44). Such concerns were, at the same time, one of the reasons much of the regulation of such affairs fell to women; for women were held to be less preoccupied than men with the accumulation and display of spiritual po-
tency, and, in any event, were assumed to have less developed spiritual capacities.
More broadly, the myriad restrictions on the Undang meddling in the affairs of his subjects without their express request for his intervention (see Parr and Mackray 1910:48, 58) were not merely "checks and balances that helped ensure the autonomy of lower-ranking officials and the untitled majority. They also helped secure the Undang's spiritual potency. More importantly, given the explicit links between the spiritual and general health of the ruler on the one hand, and the welfare of his subjects and the world as a whole on the other, these same restrictions helped guarantee the balance and well-being of the universe and all of its constituent elements (Skeat [1900] 1967:36; cf. Anderson 1972; Jordaan and de Josselin de Jong 1985).
Clan chiefs (lembaga ) occupied the next highest rung on the political ladder, and presided over dispersed clans (or territorially defined segments of them). Like the Undang , they were entitled to collect taxes of various kinds and to call upon the labor resources of the households within their jurisdiction. Similarly, they helped settle disputes among their kin, for which they received certain fees. Clan chiefs also enjoyed the rights to wear certain styles and colors of clothing that were denied to both lower-ranking figures and the untitled majority. These and other ritual prerogatives were highly valued, as was clan chiefs' knowledge of adat and ilmu , which was manifested in their eloquence, oratorical skills, and overall abilities to attract followers.
There were relatively few clan chiefs for any given (dispersed) clan. Partly for this reason, but also because of the indigenous construction of power, responsibilities for regulating a broad range of political affairs typically devolved on the immediate subordinates of clan chiefs, who were referred to as buapak or ibuapak , which I gloss "clan subchief(s)." These individuals exercised authority over the compounds of a localized clan (Lister 1887:45–46) and concurrently served to link village residents with extralocal political figures. Clan subchiefs also helped guarantee that the members of their communities received equitable treatment at the hands of clan chiefs, in much the same fashion as the latter effected a check on the activities of the Undang (see Parr and Mackray 1910:36–39).
Titled individuals occupying the lowest rung of the political hierarchy were also charged with promoting justice in accordance with adat and with increasing the likelihood that their immediate superiors did right by their relatives. These "big people among the kin" (orang besar dalam anak buah ) helped ensure that capricious, partisan, or extortionary behavior
Figure 6.
Clan chief
Figure 7.
Male elder
on the part of subchiefs either did not occur, or, if it did occur, that it resulted in the appropriate punishment (Parr and Mackray 1910:34). In the latter instances, portions of the fine paid by a guilty subchief to the clan head were shared with the lineage heads, and apparently fines constituted the main source of income associated with the office. Lineage heads also received direct remuneration in the form of percentages of
the fees paid by male clan members in the village who were involved in "irregular marriages" (e.g., marriage by storm or abduction), although they were prohibited by adat from levying fines on their own accord.
Though I have spoken of "big people among the kin" as occupying the lowest rank of the political hierarchy, the customary saying cited earlier refers to yet another relationship of hierarchy or asymmetry: that between tempat semenda ([the place of] the wives' kin) and orang semenda (the people who marry in). This was clearly a political relationship; it was, moreover, the focus of considerable cultural elaboration. Some of the entailments of this relationship were encoded in the following perbilangan (cited in Hale 1898:57 and Caldecott 1918:36–37; cf. Parr and Mackray 1910:87, 116–17):
Orang semenda bertempat semenda.
Jika cherdik, teman berunding;
Jika bodoh, disuroh diarah,
Tinggi banir, tempat berlindong
Rimbun daun, tempat bernaung.
Orang semenda pergi karna suroh,
Berhenti karna tegah.
Jikalau kita menerima orang semenda;
Jikalau kuat dibubohkan dipangkal kayu;
Jikalau bingong disuroh arah,
Menyemput nan jauh, mengampongkan nan dekat;
Jikalau ia cherdik, hendakkan rundingan;
Jikalau maalim, hendakkan doanya;
Jikalau kaya, hendakkan emas;
Jikalau patah, penghalau ayam;
Jikalau buta, penghembus lesong;
Jikalau pekak, pembakar bedil.
Masok ka-kandang kerbau menguak;
Masok ka-kandang kambing membebak,
Bagaimana adat tempat semenda dipakai;
Bila bumi dipijak, langit dijunjong,
Bagaimana adat negeri itu dipakai.
Orang semenda dengan tempat semenda,
Bagi mentimun dengan durian,
Menggolek pun luka, kena golek pun luka.
The married man is guided by [moored/subservient to] his wife's kin:
If he is clever, they seek his counsel,
If he is stupid, they see that he works;
Like the buttress of a big tree, he shelters them,
Like the thick foliage, he shades them.
The married man must go, when he is bid, and halt, when he is forbid.
When we receive a man as bridegroom,
If he is strong, he shall be our champion;
If a fool, he will be ordered about
To invite guests distant and collect guests near;
Clever, and we'll invite his counsel;
Learned, and we'll ask his prayers;
Rich, and we'll use his gold.
If lame, he shall scare chicken,
If blind, he shall pound the mortar;
If deaf, he shall fire our salutes.
If you enter a byte, low;
If you enter a goat's pen, bleat;
Follow the customs of your wife's family.
When you tread the soil of a country and live beneath its sky,
Follow the customs of that country.
A bridegroom among his bride's relations
Is like a cucumber among durian fruit;
If he rolls against them, he is hurt;
And he is hurt, if they roll against him.
One might ask here, Which of the "bride's relations" would be most likely to "roll against" a bridegroom on a day-to-day basis? More generally, assuming in-marrying males experienced difficulties living up to the expectations of, or otherwise dealing with, their affines, were the difficulties they experienced primarily in the context of the relationships with their wives' male kin, their female kin, or some combination of the two? I am inclined to think that in-marrying males experienced most difficulty with their wives' female kin. This is largely because, at the local level, a man's female affines enjoyed considerable autonomy and social control. Let me sketch out the reasons for this.
A married man lived in or near his wife's natal compound, and thus with his wife's closest female kin, other in-marrying males, and unwed individuals associated by birth with his wife's descent and residential unit. Even though a married man fell under the formal jurisdiction of his wife's clan spokesmen, they did not live with him in the same lineage compound or even (necessarily) in the same hamlet or village; in a community settled primarily by a single exogamous clan, for example, they would reside in a separate village, as would his wife's brothers (and mother's brothers). Circumstances of this nature clearly limited the extent to which out-marrying men could exercise direct or indirect control over their sisters and their sisters' children and spouses, or even take part in relatively im-
Figure 8.
Female elder
portant decisions bearing on resource allocation and the imposition of informal sanctions within the lineage or its households (as did, of course, temporary out-migration or merantau [see below]). This despite the fact that as adult male consanguines their role in the judiciary affairs of their lineage and its residential domain was theoretically preeminent.
A central issue here is that clans, lineages, and their component segments differed from the residential clusters of households representing them, and that women (especially female elders) exercised considerable autonomy and social control over the affairs of their natal households and compounds. This meant that the female elders of a lineage branch probably emerged as the de facto loci of authority (as clearly occurs at present), particularly since genealogical groupings below the level of lineage were not political units in the sense of having representative spokesmen assuming permanent titled offices. The implications of these facts are discussed elsewhere (Peletz 1987a, 1988b; see also chap. 3, below). Here I might simply point out that it was undoubtedly the activities and expectations of such women (rather than their male counterparts) that engendered many of the tensions experienced by in-marrying men owing to affinal demands on their loyalties and productivity.
In this connection it is especially significant that some of the customary sayings cited previously have been translated by early colonial-era scholar-officials as referring specifically to a married man's relationship with his mother-in-law , even though she represented but one of his in-laws or tempat semenda (see, e.g., Hale 1898:57; cf. Parr and Mackray 1910:87, 116–17). Such translations may well have been informed by scholar-officials' first-hand familiarity with the realities of local practice. This seems quite likely since individuals such as Abraham Hale, who served as the District Officer (Collector of Land Revenue and Chief Magistrate) for the administrative district of Tampin (which included Rembau), had many opportunities, and were in fact required, to gain first-hand knowledge of the workings of the local system. Be that as it may, Hale's (1898:57) commentary on the first of the texts cited above merits note.
One can imagine the satisfaction a Malay mother derives from thinking over this saying, and reciting it to her cronies and her daughter when she has made up her mind to receive a son-in-law into her family; be he sharp or slow, clever or stupid, either way she cannot be a loser. Her daughter's house will be built behind her own; if the man is clever he will get enough money to build the house by easy means; if he is stupid, she will so bully him that the poor man will be glad to labour with his hands at her bidding; it would seem to the anxious mother that she and her daughter cannot but be the gainers by this contract; perhaps they forget for the time that there is another side to the question, namely that they may have to pay his gambling debts.
Hale's remarks raise a number of issues worthy of further analysis, particularly since they might give the reader the erroneous impression
that we are dealing with a "matriarchal" society. I address such issues in subsequent sections of the chapter, which focus on various aspects of the system of marriage and affinal relations. Before turning to a detailed analysis of marriage and affinity, however, we need to consider a few other entailments of the political system, such as how one attained political office, and how competition among political leaders and "big men" generally informed local understandings and representations of femininity.
How Did One Get to Be a Political Leader?
Succession to political office was determined partly by ascriptive criteria in the sense that it was confined largely to males, and depended partly on being born into an appropriate kin group. Achieved status was also important, however, as we will see.
Rights to political offices were defined as the "ancestral property" (harta pesaka ) [ 7] of kin units associated with specific territorial domains. Succession to office rotated in theory among the units defined (through mythic charters) as eligible to furnish candidates for the office. For example, rights to the title of Dato Perba (the head of the Lelahmaharaja clan) rotated in theory between the four "founding" villages deemed eligible to provide candidates for this office. When the Dato Perba from village A died or relinquished his title, it was village B's turn to provide a candidate; next was village C's turn, then D's, then back to A, and so on.
The scheme of rotation was actually more complex than this, for in theory the different lineages comprising the Lelahmaharaja clan in village A took their turns in supplying candidates whenever it was their village's turn to provide someone for office. The same for villages B, C, and D.
There were no circuits beyond this, however, and there were no rules of primo- or ultimogeniture (or anything of the sort commonly reported for conical clans) specifying which male within a sibling set, lineage branch, or lineage merited preferential treatment when their kin group had its turn at providing a candidate for office. (This despite the importance attached to birth order in most other contexts.) Brothers and other males belonging to the same lineage thus competed with one another for the privilege of holding office, thereby giving rise to invidious intralineage cleavages in the very units they sought to represent. That many such competitions were fierce and frequently bloody is a common theme in the literature on the nineteenth century. More generally, the literature is replete with accounts of armed aggression and full-scale warfare between
men, kin groups, and larger territorial groupings linked to one another through siblingship (see Peletz 1988b).
Men thus competed with one another to attract supporters and dependents and otherwise build up their names. As noted earlier, this entailed developing and displaying spiritual potency, knowledge of adat , expertise in the recitation of the Koran and other religious texts—and eloquence and oratorical skills generally—as well as competence in economic activities (e.g., the collection and trade of forest products). Bear in mind, too, that the proceeds of economic activities were in many cases used to sponsor feasts that would not only impress supporters and potential supporters alike, but also enable them both to bask in the sponsor's majesty and to revel in the blessings of the various local spirits that were attracted to and pleased by such feasts.
Where did men seek followers? Men sought supporters both among their own kin and among affinal relations. Support from their own kin was necessary since, in theory, a man's succession to (and continued tenure in) office presupposed consensus on the part of his kin (male and female alike) that he was the most appropriate candidate for the office. Support from affines, especially male affines, was also highly advantageous. For the sake of convenience, male affines may be divided into two categories. The first (and for present purposes less important of the two) consisted of the wife's brothers and her other male matrikin. A man could seek political support and various types of assistance from such individuals, but he was constrained in doing so by the fact that he was ultimately beholden to them since he stood as their orang semenda (they were his tempat semenda ). The second (and for present purposes more important) of the two categories consisted of the men married to a man's sisters and sisters' daughters. The men married to a man's sisters and sisters' daughters were, both in theory and in practice, beholden to him since he was their tempat semenda (to whom they stood as orang semenda ). Of comparable if not greater significance, the labor power and productivity of such men helped create property rights, wealth, and prestige for the households and lineage into which they married and thus enhanced the names of all such groupings and members thereof. These, in short, were the male affines who were of greatest strategic importance to a man with political aspirations.
Let us assume, then, that men with political aspirations used their sisters and their sisters' daughters as "bait" to attract men who, as in-marrying males, would create property rights, wealth, and prestige for their kin groups. In what sense did they do this? First, they helped ensure
that their sisters and their sisters' daughters had at least respectable (and ideally, impressive) holdings of land and other property to bring to their marriages. And second, they guarded the virginity and moral standing of these women so as to enhance the likelihood that they commanded impressive marriage payments and were otherwise able to be matched as wives with men who not only had comparable or higher status, but also clear potential for contributing to their stores of property and wealth. In these ways they could ally themselves with prestigious clans or segments thereof. Some "beautification" rituals such as teeth filing may also be interpreted in a similar light (i.e., as attracting men) even though many such rituals did not occur until after marriage ceremonies were well under way.
Note, though, that men did not appropriate the labor power of their sisters or their sisters' daughters. Nor, for the most part, were they in a position to appropriate the labor power of the men married to these women. Not only did women retain control over the fruits of their agricultural and other labor; they also exercised important control over the labor power of in-marrying males. In short, we are not dealing with what Collier and Rosaldo (1981) refer to as a "brideservice society" (see also Collier 1988), or a situation in which, in the words of Lévi-Strauss (1949:115), "men exchange[d] other men by means of women."
Some Relational Features of Femininity
There is very little precise information on the ways in which femininity and female sexuality were experienced, understood, or represented in nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan. However, certain broad inferences can be drawn from the system of prestige outlined in the preceding pages. If we accept the proposition that the prestige considerations of the political elite were instrumental in motivating understandings and representations of femininity, then it seems reasonable to assume that, in relational terms, the category of "female" was dominated by understandings and representations of women in their roles as sisters and sisters' daughters, as opposed to, say, mothers and/or wives. To the extent that this was true, the gender system of nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan is similar to the gender systems of Polynesia, as described by Ortner (1981), and significantly different from the gender systems found in most other areas (e.g., Buddhist, Mediterranean, Catholic, and many Middle Eastern Islamic societies). In most societies, the category "female" is defined by female relational roles such as mother and wife, which serve to emphasize women's sexuality,
reproductive capacities, and links with "natural functions," and which in these and other ways effectively "pull women down."[8] In Polynesia, however, this does not really occur (or occurs on a much reduced scale), for the simple reason that the category "female" is, as noted earlier, defined primarily by women's roles as sisters and sisters' daughters. This is one of the reasons women in Polynesia enjoy "higher status" than women in most other societies (see Ortner 1981). Women in nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan, for their part, also enjoyed "high status" relative to women in most other societies, and did so for much the same reason(s) as women in Polynesia.
The situation in nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan both differed from and is more complex than that of Polynesia, however, for while the systems of kinship, prestige, and political organization in these two areas are in many respects quite similar, Negeri Sembilan has long been a Muslim society, whereas Polynesia has never been Muslim. More to the point, Islamic doctrines and cosmologies (like those of Buddhism, Christianity, and the other Great Religions) tend to focus on women in their roles as wives and mothers, rather than sisters and sisters' daughters. In these and other ways—most notably by emphasizing that women have less "reason" and more "passion" than men—Islam highlights women's sexuality, reproductive capacities, and links with natural functions. The fact that nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan was a Muslim society means that the "Polynesian features" of the system existed alongside and were in some contexts encompassed within a Muslim framework. (In other contexts, Muslim features of the system were encompassed within a "Polynesian framework.") Many but by no means all elements of these two systems were mutually inconsistent, which is to say that there were structural contradictions in the relations between the systems, and that, in relational terms, femininity was thus constituted of diverse heterogeneous elements whose cultural implications and social entailments were in many respects characterized by relations of structural contradiction as well. As we will see later on, some of these contradictions provided crucial structural precedents for historical changes during the period of British colonial rule (1874–1957).
Broadly similar types of contradictions characterized nineteenth-century constructions of masculinity. To understand the nature and locus of these contradictions—and the attendant challenges of masculinity—we need to look more closely at the ways in which in-marrying males were pressed into the service of generating property rights, wealth, and prestige for their wives' kin.
Marriage, Affinal Relations, and the Challenges of Masculinity: An Introductory Sketch
A man marrying into another tribe [i.e., clan] becomes a member of it. (Newbold 1839 II:123)
On marriage a man passes from his mother's [clan] to become a lodger in his wife's home.... A married man, by the fact of his marriage, is severed from his own [clan], which has no claims on him and no obligations toward him except in regard to "life and blood," so long as his married life continues. (Parr and Mackray 1910:86, 95)
A man passes on marriage from the control of his mother's [clan] to that of his wife's, so that a large proportion of the males in the charge of any one [clan] do not belong to that [clan] at all by descent. (Wilkinson 1911:316)
A man definitely passes into his wife's [clan] and becomes subject to her [clan] chief in all matters affecting her and her family.... He remains a member of his own [clan] for certain limited purposes but he is definitely subject to his wife's [clan] chief in all matters affecting her [clan].... The sole exception is the Undang . (Taylor 1929, cited in Winstedt 1934:78; emphasis added)
Nineteenth-century observers such as Newbold mistakenly assumed that, upon marriage, men were incorporated into their wives' descent groups. Later observers, such as Wilkinson, had a more accurate understanding of the system. In-marrying males were not actually incorporated into their wives' descent groups in any formal or legal sense; for example, although postmarital residence was uxorilocal, men did not change their descent group affiliation on marriage, and they still owed formal allegiance to their own political leaders. In social and political terms, however, and with respect to their day-to-day experiences, the lives of in-marrying men changed in fundamental ways as a consequence of their marriages. These changes were realized in the kinship terms with which in-marrying men were referred to and addressed. In his natal village, for example, a second-born male would be referred to and addressed by same-generation juniors as bang ngah or simply ngah ("elder brother, second born," or "second born," respectively). If he married a woman who was first-born, however, same-generation juniors in his wife's village would refer to and address him as bang lung or simply lung ("elder brother, first born," or simply "first-born," respectively), thus reinforcing the change in his social identity. More generally, he would be defined as orang semenda in his wife's village, and thus subject to all the constraints entailed in the relationship between orang semenda and tempat semenda . Some of these
constraints were expressed in customary sayings noted earlier, which suggest that the labor power and material resources of in-marrying males were of critical concern to their wives' kin.
These and other data (presented below) indicate that a man's economic competence and social status and prestige within his wife's community were defined largely in relation to how well he provided for his wife and children. A "good provider" built a house for his wife and children on land that was part of (or adjacent to) his wife's natal compound, and he worked with his wife to expand her agricultural (wet-rice) holdings; he also provided his wife and children with cash and commercial items (cloth, jewelry, etc.) acquired through the rearing and sale of livestock and the collection and sale of forest products. Property rights thus created were defined as "conjugal earnings" (carian laki-bini ), but the bulk of these rights would pass to the man's wife and children in the event of the dissolution of his marriage through divorce or his death. (They would devolve upon the children and the wife's matrilineal survivors in the event that she predeceased her husband.) These features of the property and inheritance system highlight the structurally important role that married men played in the creation and initial transmission of property rights that would ultimately pass only among their wives' matrilineally related kin; more generally, they illustrate that in-marrying males played a crucial role in the reproduction of the material base of descent units and the larger systems of kinship, politics, and prestige of which they were a part.
We do not know how affinal relations were experienced by in-marrying men, but if the present is any indication of the past, married men often found that they could not live up to the prestige-driven expectations and demands of their affines, and otherwise found these situations both rather oppressive and out of keeping with Islamic ideals, which recognize no such political asymmetries or parochial distinctions (see below). One solution to a married man's dilemma would be to divorce or simply abandon his wife, along with any children he might have. This was but a temporary solution, for divorced (like widowed) men would not necessarily be welcome in their mothers' or sisters' homes for extended periods. Nor was living alone (in a local prayer house or mosque, or in a home by oneself) a viable alternative; for socialization and the sexual division of labor left men with little direct knowledge or experience concerning the domestic tasks necessary to maintain themselves, and houses were defined as female property. Avoiding marriage altogether was not feasible either,
for marriage, along with fathering (or adopting) children, was a sine qua non for adult male personhood.
Another possible and more long-term solution to the predicaments experienced by in-marrying males was to attain political office (alternatively, to become a healer or a shaman). This would enable a married man to establish a separate base of political support and thus partly offset his dependence on, and subordination to, his affines. It would also provide a separate basis for social identity and self-esteem arguably more in keeping with Islamic ideals emphasizing the seamless brotherhood and equality obtaining among all members of the Muslim community (umat ).
This solution to the dilemmas encountered by in-marrying males indicates that there was a critically important but largely "hidden" prerogative of political office: Compared to untitled males, political leaders were not nearly as dependent on the cooperation and goodwill of their wives' kin, and were relatively autonomous in relation to them. In their roles as in-marrying males, in other words, political leaders were relatively unconstrained by the political and economic entailments of the system of marriage and affinal relations. This was especially true in the case of the Undang , who, as noted earlier, is singled out by Taylor (1929) as "the sole exception" to the rule that "a man definitely passes into his wife's [clan] and becomes subject to her [clan] chief in all matters affecting her and her family." I suspect it was also true, though less pronounced, for clan chiefs, though there is no direct evidence for this other than clan chiefs' exemption from the ritual fetching of the groom and his kin during certain stages of wedding ceremonies. In any event, Undangs' freedom from the constraints of the system enabled them both to exert critical leverage toward social and cultural change in the latter part of the nineteenth century (and throughout the colonial era in general), and to confer legitimacy on myriad departures from tradition (see Peletz 1988b).
One should bear in mind, however, that there were not all that many political (or ritual) offices to go around, and that most men were therefore unable to claim roles as political leaders or ritual specialists, or otherwise define themselves in "positional" terms. Rather, most men were defined simply as kinsmen: husbands, fathers, brothers. In light of the material presented earlier, it seems reasonable to assume that they were defined first and foremost as in-marrying males, and as husbands and fathers in particular.
Nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan is by no means the only society in which the majority of men, and constructions of masculinity generally,
were defined largely in "relational" terms. Such was clearly the case in nineteenth-century Aceh (northern Sumatra), which had systems of kinship, marriage, and prestige that were in many respects quite similar to those in nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan. Siegel (1969:68) notes, for example, that in nineteenth-century Aceh, "[male] villagers were first of all husbands and fathers." This is to say that men's primary identities and senses of self were defined not by their roles or positions in the political economy, or in terms of citizenship, nationality, or religion, but rather in "relational" terms of the sort that, according to much of the literature on women and gender, are ostensibly reserved for women (see, e.g., de Beau-voir 1949; Ortner 1974; Ortner and Whitehead 1981a; Chodorow 1974, 1989; see also chaps. 6 and 7, below). Of additional interest here is that "even when [Acehnese] men lived up to their material obligations, they had little place in their wives' homes. Women were independent of men, even if they [men] could pay their own way" (Siegel 1969:54). Stated differently, "Although men tried to create a role as husbands and, especially, as fathers, women thought of them as essentially superfluous. They allowed men no part in raising children and tolerated them only so long as they paid their own way and contributed money for goods that a woman could not obtain through her own resources.... A man's role as a husband-father in the nineteenth century was small indeed.... Men were like 'guests in their own homes"' (Siegel 1969:54). Many and perhaps all of these generalizations pertain to nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan as well, and are also relevant to contemporary Negeri Sembilan (Siegel 1969:183), as will be discussed later.
Having drawn attention to the pressures and difficulties that many (perhaps most) men experienced in their roles as husbands and fathers (and in-marrying males generally), I should emphasize that some men undoubtedly did succeed in living up to and gaining prestige from these roles. They did this partly by being "good providers," especially by raising and selling livestock and collecting and selling or trading forest products for commercial items and/or cash that could be used to supplement the rice and other agricultural products their wives contributed to the household coffers.
Another way in which men gained prestige was by making the pilgrimage to Mecca (the haj ). Recall that married men, like the rest of the population, were Muslims and thus bidden to undertake the haj should they be financially able. Making the pilgrimage was not merely a way of carrying out one's religious obligations, however; it also brought the pilgrim considerable prestige both as a person of means and as someone who had
acquired uncommon and otherwise highly valued religious experience and knowledge. Equally important, the haj was apparently widely seen as an "outlet for humiliation" (Gullick 1987:233 n.53, 250; see also Ellen 1983:74) in the sense that its performance enabled individuals to make partial atonement for their social sins and shortcomings.
Not surprisingly, gaining sufficient funds to make the haj was a principal objective of men who engaged in cash-cropping in the early years of colonial rule. Even before that time, the sale of forest produce and livestock had been undertaken for this purpose. Thus, in 1892 Lister wrote that the Yang diPertuan Besar had informed him that
The money supply for luxuries had always been obtained from the sale of fruit, vegetables, and orchard produce generally but in a far greater degree from the sale of buffaloes, goats, and poultry reared on these lands.... It was also by this industry that the people of the country were able to save up money to accomplish the pilgrimage to Mecca.... In former times, prior to the natives having been given facilities in regard to working for wages, this was in most cases the sole source of cash wealth. (quoted in Gullick 1951:48)
We see here the mutual reinforcement of two separate though interrelated criteria for prestige ranking: the one based on the cultural construction of affinal obligations, relatedness, and cleavages keyed ultimately to the system of hereditary ranking and prestige; the other resting on a more transcendent ideology according to which all men are equal before God, but those among them who journey to Mecca enjoy exalted spiritual and social standing. That a man could earn prestige on both accounts through trading activities is, I think, a critical factor in motivating their involvement in trade in the first place, and in encouraging both the colonial-era acquisition of land by males and their involvement in cash-cropping on the whole (see Peletz 1988b).
It would obviously be useful to know something of the effects of the pilgrimage experience on men (and women) from Rembau and other parts of Negeri Sembilan. Unfortunately, there is very little information on such matters, or even on more basic issues such as how many men (or women) from Negeri Sembilan were making the pilgrimage in the mid-or late nineteenth century. Gullick (1958:141) writes that six of thirty "notables and headmen" assembled in Rembau in 1883 had been to Mecca, though he hastens to add that it is highly improbable that a full 20 percent of the entire population had undertaken the pilgrimage. It is quite likely, in any event, that men from Negeri Sembilan who made the pilgrimage
had experiences similar to those of pilgrims from other parts of the Peninsula and the Malay-Indonesian world generally. These experiences may well have led to the development of a deeper appreciation of the broader Muslim community to which they belonged, and the beginnings of a clear sense of some of the similarities and differences between Malayan (especially Negeri Sembilan) Islam and adat on the one hand, and Middle Eastern variants of Islam and "custom" on the other. As such, they might have entailed a greater awareness of the ways in which their roles as husbands and fathers, and as in-marrying males on the whole, contrasted with the roles of married men elsewhere in the Muslim world. Regrettably, however, the precise extent to which this greater awareness may have helped motivate men to effect changes either in their roles as husbands and in-marrying males, or in the more encompassing system in which these roles were embedded, is unclear, at least for the period prior to colonial intervention. Unclear, too, is the extent to which developments of the sort at issue here might have led to the increased salience (in local society and culture) of the concepts of "reason" and "passion."
Contrasting Representations Of Marriage And Affinal Exchange
Much of what I have described thus far has been couched in the terms and concepts of the outside observer. We also need to know how the actors represented their system. For this I turn briefly to marriage and funerary rituals, which indicate that nineteenth-century representations of marriage and affinal exchange were in many respects quite contradictory. Before addressing such matters it will be useful to provide a few comments concerning the negotiation of marriage and ideal marriage partners.
Nineteenth-century marriages were arranged, and senior kin, especially females, appear to have played the principal role in spouse selection. Newbold (1839 I:254), for example, notes that "the [marriage] alliance is first agreed upon by the friends of both parties, generally the matrons " (emphasis added). Precise information on which female relatives played a decisive role in arranging marriages would certainly be of interest, but unfortunately no such information exists. At present, mothers, mothers' sisters, and other matrilineally related female kin typically play the decisive role in arranging marriages, and this situation has probably always obtained (cf. Lewis 1962:166-67; Abdul Kahar bin Bador 1963). Situations such as these, which prevail in other parts of the Malay Peninsula and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, are part of a larger Southeast Asian pattern
of women's predominance in diplomatic matters, trade, and marketing—and in managing information and social relationships generally—which serves both to insulate men from the haggling, negotiation, and compromise that could pose serious threats to their status concerns, and to help ensure that the latter concerns do not interfere with "good business" (see Reid 1988:163–72; see also Brenner 1995, and chap. 7, below).
Female preponderance in arranging marriages in nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan is noteworthy in light of the fact that men rather than women were accorded the role of giving, receiving, and otherwise publicly validating affinal transactions in the formal context of engagement and marriage ceremonies. This suggests an implicit gendered division of labor—between "practical" and "official" tasks—of the sort which is found in many other parts of the world (see Bourdieu 1977:33–38), and which is sometimes keyed to a more encompassing (analytic) distinction between "practical" and "official" kinship, about which more in a moment.
As for ideal marriage partners, contemporary accounts suggest that, in the nineteenth century, the ideal groom-to-be was an industrious man with a demonstrated competence in agriculture and trade, as well as Koranic recitation, adat lore, various elocutionary skills, and one or another domain of ritual knowledge. He was also at least a few years older than his bride-to-be, of generally comparable status and untainted pedigree, previously unwed, free of physical disabilities, and neither "insane, leprous, impotent, nor lost to a sense of shame" (Parr and Mackray 1910:80–81). Corresponding qualities were sought in brides (they should be neither "insane, nor afflicted with dropsy or hemorrhoids, and should be capable of consummating the marriage" [Parr and Mackray 1910:80–81]), one principal difference being that a girl's prior marital status and virginity were of greater social concern. A girl's competence in cooking, washing, sewing, and agricultural labor also counted for much more than her mastery of Koranic verse and verbal skills.
There also seems to have been a preference for local (but not necessarily village-level) endogamy, and for marriage within the same relative generation, even though a "good match" might join a man with a woman held to be one generation his junior. In addition, marriage with (nonmatrilineal) relatives (saudara ) was favored over marriage with non-kin or strangers (both glossed orang lain or "other people"), as described by present-day villagers and by the accounts of earlier observers (e.g., Lewis 1962:164–65). More precisely, ideal marriage partners were of comparable status and wealth, and stood related as cross-cousins of the same generation.[9]
Less clear, however, is whether these latter ideals pertained to cross-cousins of the first degree or simply to all individuals related as cross-cousins. It is also difficult to determine the extent to which matrilateral cross-cousins might have been favored, if at all, as potential spouses for eligible bachelors (or their marriageable sisters) (but see de Josselin de Jong 1951:174, 1977:250–51). The data suggest only a general preference for marriage with classificatory cross-cousins on either the maternal or paternal side (Lewis 1962:164; Peletz 1988b:64–70).
Official and Practical Kinship
To help make sense of the contradictory representations of marriage and affinal exchange to which I referred earlier, I draw upon and employ a modified version of Pierre Bourdieu's (1977:33–38) distinction between "official" and "practical" kinship, which I find heuristically valuable, though ultimately somewhat simplistic. Bourdieu develops these terms as part of a larger program designed to help social scientists better appreciate that static, highly abstract formulations and models of formal or "official" rules and principles of social structure (such as those for which Lévi-Strauss is justly famous) do not get us very far in understanding social actors or the myriad contexts in which they organize themselves, relate to one another, avail themselves of resources, or create meaning and order in their lives. Bourdieu argues that if we want to understand these phenomena we need to devote far greater attention to social actors' contextually variable behavioral strategies, especially those everyday practical strategies geared toward the attainment of locally defined value. These strategies are of course informed by "offical" rules and principles, but they are also conditioned by culturally induced but largely implicit (and sometimes unconscious) dispositions as well as material and symbolic interests, and are thus not in any way "mere execution[s] of the model (in the ... sense of norm ... [or] scientific construct)" (Bourdieu 1977:29). Of more immediate relevance is that, for Bourdieu, the term "official kinship" refers to "official representations" of kinship and social structure, which "serve the function of ordering the social world and of legitimating that order" (Bourdieu 1977:34). Official kinship is "explicitly codified in ... quasi-juridical formalism" (Bourdieu 1977:35), and is, at least with respect to kinship as a whole, "hegemonic" in Raymond Williams's (1977) sense of the term. "Practical kinship," on the other hand, denotes the uses and representations of kinship in everyday practical situations, which are more oriented toward "getting things done" than to formal representa-
tions of kinship and social structure (though I would emphasize that they, too, have important legitimating functions).[10] In many societies the distinction between official and practical kinship is highlighted in the institution of marriage. As Bourdieu (1977:34–35) notes, "marriage provides a good opportunity for observing what ... separates official kinship, single and immutable, defined ... by the norms of genealogical protocol, from practical kinship, whose boundaries and definitions are as many and as varied as its users and the occasions on which it is used." To paraphrase: It is practical kin—"utility men," in Bourdieu's terms—who do much of the actual work in arranging marriages; it is official kin—"leading actors," in Bourdieu's terms—who publicly celebrate and validate them.
Bourdieu's distinction between official and practical kinship is useful for my purposes, but it is insufficiently precise both for Negeri Sembilan and for many (perhaps most) other societies. This is partly because official kinship is rarely if ever "single," with all that is implied in terms of being monolithic, internally undifferentiated, and free of contradiction. It is, moreover, essential to appreciate that in some cases—such as those of the Merina and the Andaman Islanders (see Bloch 1987; Ortner 1989–90, respectively)—there are three or more contrasting sets of representations bearing on the culturally interlocked domain of gender (to which domain the distinction may be applied), not simply the two that are suggested by Bourdieu's terminological and analytic distinction. To this we need add three other important qualifications. First, contrasting representations bearing on kinship, gender, and so on, may be invoked—and contested—in all kinds of different contexts (practical and official alike). Second, the majority of (if not all) such representations may be thoroughly grounded in practice, though differently so (e.g., in different contexts and domains, to different degrees, in different ways, with different effects). And third, all may speak to "partial truths," the more general point being that cultures-or, to be more precise, elements of ideological formations—" get things right" (are truly illuminating) in some contexts, but are "wrong" or "false" (profoundly distorting or mystifying) in others.
Caveats such as these should be borne in mind throughout the ensuing discussion. So, too, should the more basic and in some ways far more important point that distinctions of the sort proposed by Bourdieu, which have deep roots in Marxist contributions to theories of ideology, are not intended to effect "an ontological carving of the world down the middle" (Eagleton 1991:83), but rather to highlight the existence and entailments of the different perspectives, discourses, and registers that invariably constitute any given ideological formation. There are, of course, other con-
Figure 9.
Clan chief at wedding
ceptual and analytic frameworks available for handling the polyvocality and multiplicity at issue, but they, too, have their limitations and need not concern us here.[11]
The modified distinction between official and practical kinship that is proposed here is particularly relevant to an understanding of marriage and funerary rituals in nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan. These rituals are of interest not only because they shed valuable light on how people represented their systems of kinship and gender. They also illuminate highly significant ("on-the-ground") dynamics of the nineteenth-century systems, the historical reproduction and transformation of which are crucial for an understanding of kinship and gender at present.[12]
In nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan, official representations of kinship, gender, and affinal exchange were especially evident in the first day of formal wedding ceremonies. This day served as the occasion for lavish feasting as well as the ritual presentation of "marriage gold" (mas kawin ) from the clan chief of the groom to the clan chief of the bride (Parr and Mackray 1910:36, 94). This ritual not only validated the bond between husband and wife and the linkage between their respective descent units. It also highlighted clan chiefs, and men more generally, as "leading actors," effectively denying the role, in arranging and maintaining marriage and affinal relations, of untitled males and women as a whole.
The same day served as the occasion for the specifically Islamic dimension of the wedding, which also symbolized the official view of kinship and gender. This ritual called for the presence of a local mosque official, the bride's Islamic guardian (or wali ),[13] the groom, and a few male onlookers as witnesses. It focused on the mosque official's recitation of the "marriage service" (khutbah nikah ) and symbolized, but did not actually effect, a transfer of legal responsibility and control over the bride from her Islamic guardian–usually her father but conceivably her father's brother or another of her father's close male relatives–to her husband. This ritual represented the system of affinal alliance as composed of descent units linked to one another through exchanges of rights over women. As such, it entailed a mis representation of the practice of affinal exchange and social reproduction more generally; for the practice of marriage and affinal exchange did not really center on a father relinquishing rights and obligations with respect to his daughter and doing so in favor of his daughter's husband; rather, it focused on a mother's transfer of claims and responsibilities over her son to the son's wife and the latter's immediate kin.
I will return to this theme (the exchange of men) in due course. Before doing so I might explain the basis of my contention that the mosque official's ritualized recitation of the "marriage service" symbolized but did not effect a transfer of legal responsibility and control over the bride from her Islamic guardian to her husband . The bride's Islamic guardian was not vested with the control over the bride that was encoded in this feature of the marriage ritual; rather such control was vested in the bride's matrilineal kin. The groom, moreover, did not really acquire full legal responsibility and control over the bride, though he did acquire certain rights in his wife's sexual services, labor services, and property (see below); such control remained with the bride's kin.
Why then did this ritual exist? Put differently, what purposes, if any, did it serve? One could conceivably argue that this ritual was simply integrated into local marriage practices when elements of Islam began to be incorporated into various domains of Malay society and culture subsequent to "the coming of Islam" beginning around the thirteenth century. Such an argument begs the question, however, just as it glosses over the possibility that a structurally similar ritual might have existed in the Malay world before "the coming of Islam." It also says nothing about the purposes such a ritual may have served. We can only speculate on this issue, but it is reasonable to suggest the following: By (mis)representing the system of marriage and affinal relations as composed of groups of men
exchanging rights over women, this ritual statement helped disguise and render more palatable to men, especially the untitled majority, the basic social fact that it was the exchange of rights over men, untitled men in particular, which made possible the production and reproduction of the material and social basis of households and lineages, and the larger systems of kinship, politics, and prestige of which they were a part. In this view, the ritual statement at issue was structurally motivated by the prestige considerations of titled males such as the Undang (and perhaps clan leaders as well), who clearly had much to gain by the reproduction of the system and were at the same time largely immune to its imperatives and constraints, at least in their roles as husbands and in-marrying males. Prestige considerations of the Undang aside, the ritual also resonated deeply both with Undangs' experiences as husbands and in-marrying males, and with the prestige differentials which obtained between men and women generally (titled and untitled alike), and which were sanctified and rendered theoretically inviolable by their grounding in a heavily (but by no means thoroughly) Islamicized cosmology.
Most other elements of marriage ritual served to foreground practical representations of marriage and affinal exchange, which were clearly contradictory to their official counterparts insofar as they emphasized not only that men–as opposed to women–were being exchanged, but also that they were being exchanged by groups of women, not by other men. Thus, the second day of wedding festivities witnessed the groom's relatives traveling to the bride's home bearing gifts of food, along with a lavish feast sponsored by the bride's mother. Subsequent to the feast, the groom formally entered the bride's mother's home, bringing gifts of food along with a bundle of clothes and other personal possessions, which symbolized the severance of residential ties with his mother, sisters, and other close kin. Once inside, he was welcomed by his in-laws and formally accepted into their household. Other ritualized introductions typically stretched over the course of the following week or two. One such series of introductions involved visits by the bridal couple to various households inhabited by the groom's kin. Not surprisingly, these were glossed mengulang jejak , which refers to the groom's "going over," or "retracing," his footsteps for the very last time.
Many of these same practical representations of marriage and affinal exchange were highlighted in funerary rituals. In the event of the husband's death, for example, the widow financed the burial as well as the principal funerary rituals and feasts (Parr and Mackray 1910:88, 91; Taylor [1929] 1970:123), all of which occurred in her village. Particularly
noteworthy is the ritualized exchange which ideally took place during the final feast in the funerary cycle, and which consisted of a pair of pants, a coat, a sleeping mat, and a pillow (Parr and Mackray 1910:88; DeMoubray 1931:149–50); in short, the very same items the husband brought with him when he began living among his wife's relatives and simultaneously severed residential ties with his own kin. It is especially significant that these items passed from the widow to her mother-in-law. The design of the transfer symbolized both the end of the daughter-in-law's relationship with her former husband, and a return to the mother-in-law of the son that she had in effect "given away" in marriage. Moreover, just as this ritual depicted the principal exchanges in the formation of conjugal and affinal bonds as centering on transfers of rights over males, so, too, did it portray such exchanges as entailing transfers between women, who were thus represented as trafficking in men, or in rights over them.
The rituals following the dissolution of the conjugal bond owing to the wife's death conveyed generally similar messages. Suffice it to say that they highlighted the peripheral and "guest" status of the widower among his affines, underscoring that he could only remain among them if his children indicated a desire to have him stay.
Practical representations of marriage and affinal exchange were largely congruent with everyday practice in the nineteenth century. These circumstances help account for the references in the early colonial-era literature to men "becoming members of" their wives' clans upon marriage. They also help clarify the meaning of the customary sayings or aphorisms that I discussed earlier.
The Exchange of Men
The data outlined here suggest that the nineteenth-century nexus of affinity hinged on the exchange among localized descent units of rights over grooms (rather than brides), and that males (rather than females) served as the connective elements in the system of affinal exchange and alliance. To appreciate the point one need only step back from the details of marriage ceremonies and funerary rituals and examine the principal categories of rights transferred at marriage. First, however, we might consider some more general theoretical issues.
The "exchange of women" is a shorthand gloss that has been widely utilized in anthropology ever since the publication in 1949 of Claude Lévi-Strauss's The Elementary Structures of Kinship . The concept of the exchange of women is central to Lévi-Strauss's theories of kinship and mar-
riage, human sociality, and the origins of culture itself. Lévi-Strauss has theorized that the exchange (or giving) of women occurs in all systems of affinal alliance; that it was necessarily entailed in the initial institutionalization of incest taboos that gave rise to (human) kinship and marriage; and that it simultaneously constituted the earliest act of social exchange. Many other anthropologists (e.g., Leach [1954] 1965, [1961] 1966; Needham 1962, 1971; Fox 1967; Dumont 1970; Rubel and Rosman 1978) have made use of the concept even though they reject certain of the evolutionary, historical, and other assumptions underlying Lévi-Strauss's theoretical edifice. In this regard Gayle Rubin's observations are especially instructive.
The "exchange of women" is a seductive and powerful concept, ... an acute, but condensed, apprehension of certain aspects of the social relations of sex and gender.... "Exchange of women" is a short-hand for expressing that the social relations of a kinship system specify that men have certain rights in their female kin, and that women do not have the same rights either to themselves or to their male kin.... [But it] is ... debatable that "exchange of women" adequately describes all of the empirical evidence of kinship systems. Some cultures, such as the Lele and the Kuma, exchange women explicitly and overtly. In other cultures, the exchange of women can be inferred. In some—particularly those hunters and gatherers excluded from Lévi-Strauss's sample—the efficacy of the concept becomes altogether questionable. (Rubin 1975:175–77)
Rubin's last point is especially relevant to nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan. This is because the concept of the exchange of women, which appears in earlier accounts of Negeri Sembilan (e.g., de Josselin de Jong 1951, [1956] 1977). obscures the major transactions inherent in the formation of conjugal and affinal bonds. These transactions centered on rights over males rather than females, which is why I argue that the system is more aptly characterized in terms of the exchange of men.[14]
In the latter connection we might bear in mind Leach's ([1961] 1966:107–8) observation that "the institutions commonly classed as marriage are concerned with the allocation of a number of distinguishable classes of rights," and that marriage usually involves the allocation of rights over brides and grooms. Leach is reminding us that systems of affinal alliance focusing on exchanges of women are typically characterized by certain types of transactions over males as well. Perhaps more to the point, when we speak of systems characterized by the exchange of women we are actually referring to systems in which the majority, or the
most important, but by no means all, of the rights transacted at marriage entail (legitimate) claims over women.
More recently, Goody (1990) has explored the implications of these and related themes, arguing, among other things, that the concept of the exchange of women is at best a misleading gloss and more often than not a serious impediment to our understanding of the practice of kinship and marriage since it frequently carries the implication of women's "complete incorporation" into the domestic and kinship groups of their husbands, and their "thorough dissimilation" from their natal kin.[15] Goody illustrates that even in the "extremely patrilineal" societies of China, India, and the Islamic world, married women (both as heiresses and in other capacities) have long retained important moral and material rights and obligations with respect to their natal kin (particularly their brothers). More generally, women are "carriers of property as well as of sentiments, ties and relationships" (Goody 1990:480), which may compromise unilineal hegemonies and social arrangements in the direction of bilaterality, but which are nonetheless central to "strategies of heirship" and other "mechanisms of continuity" (domestic reproduction). The idea of the total assimilation of women into their husbands' domestic and kinship groups (like the notion of their complete severance from their natal kin) is thus revealed to be a fiction of Western categories informed by market metaphors of purchase, sale, and exchange, and by other features of economistic thinking. (Goody does emphasize, however, that this idea "may suit the notion of the one-way gift" enshrined in Brahminic writing and other texts of the Great Religions, as well as "the idea of the male receiver," and may serve, in any event, to " 'mystif[y]' rather than represent the actual transactions" [1990:168].) Goody concludes that while gender inequality is quite pervasive in the Asian societies on which he focuses his investigation, "women [in these societies] are never simply the pawns of others but themselves players in the game, especially as heiresses" (1990:68); and that the literal and metaphorical "domestic slavery" that Westerners have long associated with the Orient is a chimera (1990:317, 425).
The implications of these arguments for Negeri Sembilan are quite straightforward, though neither Leach nor Goody would be able to make provision in their theoretical frameworks for a society such as Negeri Sembilan and would thus undoubtedly take issue with the way I draw upon their insights to elucidate Negeri Sembilan data. It follows from Leach's arguments that a society characterized by the exchange of men
would be one in which the majority or the most important, but not necessarily all, of the rights transacted at marriage involve (legitimate) claims over men. And it follows from Goody's arguments that the analytic positing of the exchange of men should not be taken to mean that men are completely incorporated into their wives' kin groups or thoroughly dissimilated from their own, or that they are passive objects with no agency.
In the pages that follow I first provide a summary overview of the rights over women that were transferred at marriage. I then proceed to an overview of the rights over men that were transferred at marriage. Finally, I attempt to demonstrate that, in practice, though not necessarily in local (official) ideology, men were being exchanged by women and not by other men.
Rights over Women
The rights over a woman that a man and/or his kin acquired in consequence of the man's marriage may be spoken of in terms of three analytically distinct categories: (a) sexual services, (b) labor services, and (c) property.
(a ) Sexual Services A man enjoyed an absolute monopoly on his wife's sexual services. There were no forms of polyandry, and all variants of extramarital and premarital sex were explicitly prohibited and severely sanctioned. (It merits emphasis that a husband's exclusive sexual access to his wife did not entail appreciable rights over offspring of the union or any children adopted by his wife.)
(b ) Labor Services A man obtained rights in his wife's labor services, particularly her domestic labor services. (Note though that a man did not enjoy the right to appropriate the proceeds of his wife's agricultural labor.) A man's close female kin (his mother and other women of his lineage branch) were vested with limited rights in the fruits of his wife's nonagricultural labor; for instance, they were entitled to periodic prestations of dodol cakes that she prepared.
(c ) Property A man acquired use rights in the property (harta dapatan ; e.g., land) that his wife brought to the union or inherited while married. (Note, however, that neither a man nor his kin could unilaterally alienate, or obtain permanent rights over, any form of harta dapatan [Newbold 1839 II:220; Lister 1887:44, 1890:316; Hale 1898:55; Parr and Mackray 1910:87, 92].) A man also obtained rights over roughly one-half of all movables (cash, livestock, etc.) classed as conjugal acquisitions. (Equally
important though, neither a man nor his kin had any permanent rights over conjugal acquisitions in the forms of houses, homestead plots, or agricultural acreage.)
These constituted the major types of rights over a woman that a man and/or his kin obtained as a result of his marriage. Both the alienation and acquisition of such rights were of considerable importance. So, too, of course, were the marriage payments due the wife's kin (such as the "marriage gold"), which helped secure such rights.[16] The larger issue, however, is that exchanges of the sort noted above were of far less social and cultural significance than transactions over the labor, productivity, and reproductive powers of males.
Rights over Men
The rights over a man that a woman and/or her kin acquired in consequence of her marriage were more varied and extensive than the corresponding rights obtained by a man and/or his kin, and are best discussed in terms of five analytically distinct categories: (a) sexual services, (b) offspring, (c) labor services, (d) property, and (e) political control.
(a) Sexual Services A woman enjoyed a "near monopoly" on her husband's sexual services. Although polygyny was permitted in Islam, it was strongly discouraged by adat and extremely rare (Hale 1898:45; Parr and Mackray 1910:78–79). As noted above, all variants of extramarital sex were explicitly prohibited and severely sanctioned.
(b) Offspring A woman and her kin were vested with monopolistic control over all offspring produced by her marriage.
(c) Labor Services A woman and her kin acquired extensive rights in her husband's labor services. As indicated, a husband was expected to build a house for his wife (and children), and to add to the residential and agricultural holdings claimed by his wife and her kin. A husband was also expected to add money to the household coffers, to help his wife at certain stages of the agricultural cycle (such as the harvest), and to contribute labor to various feasts and public works projects sponsored by her kin or other members of her village.
(d) Property A woman was accorded use rights in the property (harta pembawa ; weapons, livestock, cash) that her husband brought to the union or inherited while married. Wife's kin could obtain permanent rights over non-"ancestral" arta pembawa if the husband agreed to "pa-
ternal provisioning" by formally designating his children as the rightful heirs to such property. Wife and her kin enjoyed permanent rights over all conjugal acquisitions in the form of houses, homestead plots, and agricultural acreage; they also obtained permanent rights over roughly one-half of all conjugal acquisitions classed as movables (livestock, cash, etc.), and could even end up with rights to all such property.
(e) Political Control Wife's kin enjoyed extensive political control over the husband in that they exercised formal and informal authority over him, commanded his loyalties and labor services, and so on.
One need only compare the rights gained by a woman and/or her kin with the previously noted rights that a man and/or his kin acquired to appreciate that the majority of the rights transferred at marriage entailed claims over males. While wives and husbands obtained roughly equivalent rights in one another's sexual services, wives (and their kin) were accorded extensive rights over their offspring as well as their husbands' labor services, property, and political loyalties, which clearly outweighed the corresponding rights that husbands (and their kin) acquired over their wives. This comparison, along with other data presented above, suggests that "the exchange of men" rather than "the exchange of women" is the appropriate gloss for the nineteenth-century system of marriage and affinity.
Women Exchanging Men
It remains to underscore that, in practice, women were exchanging men (men were not exchanging other men by means of women), but were not necessarily doing so in an explicit or overt fashion. This feature of the system was largely implicit and culturally distorted even though various aspects of marriage and funerary rituals provided clear symbolic statements that men were being exchanged by women.
My argument that women were exchanging men is based partly on my assumption that senior women played the principal role in selecting spouses for junior kin deemed eligible for marriage. This assumption is consistent with twentieth-century observations and with the limited (admittedly somewhat ambiguous) references found in the nineteenth century (Newbold 1839 I:254; Hale 1898:57). In Bogang, for example, mothers and other female elders (aunts, grandmothers) play the major role both in gathering and "processing" information pertaining to the eligibil-
ity and desirability of potential spouses for their junior kin, and in initiating preliminary discussions and negotiations with their potential in-laws. (This is also true for the neighboring district of Kuala Pilah, as noted by the Malay anthropologist Abdul Kahar bin Bador [1962].) Women's initiatives in these and other areas help ensure that their wishes prevail over those of husbands, brothers, and other males, and testify to the influential roles they have long assumed in selecting spouses for their children and other junior kin.
We should bear in mind, too, that a man's female kin were vested with the majority of the rights that were subsequently relinquished (or compromised) as a consequence of his marriage; and that his female affines derived the greatest benefit from these rights. It may be recalled that female kin derived the most immediate and long-term benefit from an unmarried man's labor services and his contributions to agricultural production, and that an unmarried man's mother and sisters were the most direct beneficiaries of his labor power insofar as they held provisional rights to the agricultural holdings he was enjoined to help maintain and expand. In economic terms, a man's mother and sisters had the most to lose from his marriage and from his obligations as husband and in-marrying male. Of special relevance here, a man's mother and sisters bore the primary (if not sole) responsibility to help him raise the "marriage gold" and other marriage payments due his wife's kin. I might add that their difficulties in meeting this responsibility could lead to—and constituted one of the few legitimate grounds for—the mortgage or sale of the "ancestral" properties to which they held provisional rights (Parr and Mackray 1910:70–75).
We might also consider the origins of the harta pembawa property that a man brought to his marriage, and the ways in which a man's female kin could be affected by the subsequent devolution of rights over such property. The harta pembawa property typically originated in the conjugal or domestic fund of his mother and/or sisters, and thus provides additional evidence that the resources of a man's mother and sisters could be diminished in consequence of his marriage. So, too, does the fact that through the procedure known as "paternal provisioning" (tentukan ) a man could formally designate one or more of his children as the rightful heirs to all harta pembawa property that was not classified as "ancestral." In circumstances of this latter sort, a deceased man's mother and sisters would be unable to reassert their claims to the (non-"ancestral") harta pembawa property they had given him at his wedding, and thus would experience further property loss as a result of his marriage.
One could argue that a man's mother and sisters experienced similar, but far more extensive, property losses owing to conventions specifying that rights over conjugal acquisitions in the form of houses, residential plots, and agricultural acreage were not divided between spouses (or their [matrilineal] survivors) upon the termination of a marriage, but remained instead under the control of the wife or her surviving kin. This argument seems plausible when one considers that, in the absence of such conventions, the rights at issue would have probably devolved upon the man's mother or sisters, in accordance with the gender-based demarcation in property and inheritance, which defined houses, land, and certain other types of property in relation to females. It should also be remembered that a man could formally designate his children as the rightful heirs to those conjugally acquired movables that his mother and sisters could otherwise claim upon his death. These latter conventions provide further evidence that the property losses experienced by a man's kin as a result of his marriage were felt most heavily by his mother and sisters.
What then of the other side of the marriage/affinity equation; namely, the extent to which a man's female affines were accorded, or derived the greatest or most direct benefit from, the rights that were obtained in consequence of his marriage to one of their female kin?
I argue that a man's female affines were informally vested with, and in any event enjoyed, the greatest and most direct benefit from the rights his affinal kin acquired over his sexual services and the offspring produced by his marriage. This argument is based partly on my observation that in twentieth-century Negeri Sembilan, adult women exercise greater control than their male kin over young children and never-married adolescents. For example, informal adoptions or child transfers are extremely common and typically involve a reallocation of rights and responsibilities between women (natural and adoptive mothers) associated with the same lineage branch or lineage. These transactions between women are also initiated by women, who thus assume the major role in transferring and acquiring these rights and responsibilities.
A man's wife (and female affines) also enjoyed extensive rights in, and otherwise derived the greatest benefit from, his children's labor power and productivity. Children of both sexes were expected to help maintain and expand the agricultural and residential acreage held by their mother and mother's sisters, which would ultimately pass to female heirs. Children were also morally bound to provide sustenance and care for their mother in the event that she became incapacitated due to illness or old age. These were perhaps the most sanctified of all social obligations and
they clearly outweighed children's responsibilities to their father, mother's brothers, and other male relatives.[17]
The extent to which rights over a married man's labor power and productivity were vested in or exercised by his female (rather than male) affines needs little comment except to recall that upon the dissolution of a man's marriage, rights over all land he helped his wife prepare for agricultural or residential purposes were claimed by either his wife or her matrilineal survivors, and that these rights were earmarked for females. This same generalization applies to rights over the house he may have built for his wife (and offspring), to rights over the "asking ring(s)" (or cincin tanya ), and to portions of the "marriage gold" as well as the movable property that he conveyed to his children.
My contention that a man's female kin were originally vested with the majority of (and the most important) rights that were subsequently relinquished (or compromised) as a result of his marriage receives little support when one considers the domain of formal political control and the fact that men monopolized most (provisional) rights to political office. However, as should be readily apparent, the formal structure of political authority had relatively little direct bearing on the realities of local practice.
To elaborate, the political obligations imposed on a man by his wife's relatives undoubtedly entailed significant political and prestige losses for his own kin, at least some of which were felt most directly by the titled men (lineage head, clan subchief, clan chief, etc.) who exercised formal political control over him and derived prestige therefrom. In particular, these officials probably found themselves less able to command the labor services and political/military support of untitled male relatives once the untitled men had married and severed residential ties with their matrilineal kin. Equally important though is the previously noted fact that female elders exercised considerable autonomy and social control over the affairs of their natal households and compounds, and probably comprised the de facto loci of authority within lineage branches, especially since genealogical groupings below the level of lineage were not political units in the sense of having representative spokesmen with formal titles or offices. Female elders were thus vested with, and in a position to exercise, extremely important political and other rights over the men residing in their households and lineage branch compounds, many of which rights had to be relinquished in consequence of the men's marriages.
None of this is to suggest, however, that we are dealing with some sort of "matriarchal" society. Recall here that men monopolized rights to most
political offices and that political leaders such as the Undang (and quite possibly clan leaders or lembaga as well) stood in many respects "above" the system of marriage and affinal relations insofar as they were largely immune to the imperatives and constraints the system imposed on husbands and in-marrying males generally. Recall, too, that men clearly monopolized both the means of violence and external exchange, and, as a group, enjoyed more prestige (and freedom of movement) than women.
The fact that men were accorded more prestige than women but enjoyed less autonomy and social control with respect to marriage and affinal relations—and were in fact exchanged by women—is significant for three reasons. First, it indicates the analytic importance of distinguishing—as the local system clearly (if only implicitly) did—between prestige on the one hand, and autonomy and social control in marriage and affinal relations on the other. Second, it indicates that prestige may be—and in this case clearly was—ascribed on the basis of variables other than autonomy and social control of the sort at issue here. And third, it demonstrates, contra Lévi-Strauss and those who have adopted the general lines of his argument, that men's greater prestige and formal authority was not predicated on, and did not entail as part of its institutional realization, a system focusing on the exchange of women.
Before addressing some of the implications of these last two points, I should emphasize that nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan is by no means the only society having institutions of marriage and affinal alliance based on the exchange of men. Similar institutions exist among (Sumatran) Minangkabau and Acehnese, among Malays in the state of Pahang, among the commoner stratum of the Punan Bah of Sarawak (East Malaysia), and beyond Southeast Asia as well. Concerning the Minangkabau, for example, Umar Junus (1964), who is himself Minangkabau, implies (but does not develop the argument) that the social systems of certain (but not all) Minangkabau communities can be described in terms that are generally comparable to those I have employed for nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan. Significantly, he also uses the terms "groom exchange" and "bridegroom exchange" when describing various features of Minangkabau systems of marriage and affinity (Umar Junus 1964:300, 311, 312). Similar conventions appear in Thomas's (1985) work on the Minangkabau and are compatible with material presented in Lando and Thomas (1983); Tanner (1982); and Errington (1984:65–70). Schwimmer (1982:8, 11), moreover, states quite clearly that "the Minangkabau have a system of circulating connubium between kaum [localized descent groups] ... [involving] the exchange among females of male marriage partners" (em-
phasis added). Finally, Pak (n.d.) devotes an entire essay to demonstrating the relevance of the concept of the exchange of men to contemporary Minangkabau society, though I should perhaps note that her analysis focuses not on "rights" over men—which she claims are "not clearly present in the social philosophy of the [Minangkabau] region," but on "obligations" and the idea that "men are valued in Minangkabau and exchanged because they are transmitters of 'good blood'" (Pak n.d.:4, 5; see also Pak 1986; Ng 1987; Krier 1994).[18]
Much the same situation has been reported for some of Southeast Asia's putatively "bilateral" societies. Jayawardena (1977b:36), for example, concludes his discussion of women and kinship in Aceh with the remark that "anthropologists [need] to take a second look at such interpretations of marriage rules as constituting the exchange of women by groups of men.... The question may well be asked: who is giving what to whom? In Aceh there are no descent groups to exchange women. Marriage customs can be interpreted as exchanges between two groups of women , not necessarily defined in terms of descent" (emphasis added). Jayawardena does not go on to state explicitly that women are exchanging men (as opposed to other women), but such seems to have been the case for some time now, judging from the accounts of Snouck Hurgronje (1906), Siegel (1969), and others. A similar case has been made for the Malays of Pahang, as indicated by Massard's (1983:112) comments that various aspects of wedding rituals "symbolically prefigure the passage of a man from one domestic group to another," and, more generally, that women "control ... the circulation of men." Generalizations of the latter sort are also applicable to the commoner stratum of the Punan Bah in Sarawak (Ida Nicoleisen, personal communication, 1986).
There are occasional references to the exchange of men outside of Southeast Asia as well. In her reassessment of the status and future of matriliny in Africa, for example, Mary Douglas (1971:128) includes a passing reference to the existence of (African) societies "where intermarriage takes the form of the exchange of males."[19] There is, moreover, the case of the Eastern Cherokee discussed some time ago by William Gilbert ([1937] 1955), who mentioned that Eastern Cherokee institutions of marriage and affinity focused on the exchange of men (albeit apparently by men, not women), and who was perhaps the first anthropologist to draw attention to the existence of any such institutions.
The data and interpretations presented in the works cited here indicate that the case of nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan is less anomalous than might be assumed. They also point up the importance of reassessing
various aspects of conventional anthropological wisdom concerning the roles of men and women in marriage and affinal exchange, the autonomy and social control enjoyed by women, and the extent to which women's secondary status vis-à-vis men is invariably grounded in systems of kinship and marriage.
Lévi-Strauss and Leach are among those who are unprepared to accept the possibility that certain systems of affinal exchange focus on transfers of rights over men. It warrants remark, however, that both Lévi-Strauss and Leach make partial provision for such scenarios, or at least for their appearance . For instance, in a footnote to his often repeated statement that "it is men who exchange women, and not vice versa," Lévi-Strauss ([1949] 1969:115) registers the following caveat:
Certain tribes of South-east Asia ... almost provide a picture of the inverse situation.... This would not be to say that in such societies it is the women who exchange the men, but rather that men exchange other men by means of women. (emphasis added)
Similarly, in a subsequent essay, Lévi-Strauss (1956:284) appends the following comments to a discussion of the exchange of women:
The female reader, who may be shocked to see womankind treated as a commodity submitted to transactions between male operators, can easily find comfort in the assurance that the rules of the game would remain unchanged should it be decided to consider the men as being exchanged by women's groups. As a matter of fact, some very few societies , of a highly developed matrilineal type, have to a limited extent attempted to express things that way . (emphasis added)
This latter view might be interpreted as representing a departure from Lévi-Strauss's earlier position, although I do not regard it as such. Even if one concludes that the 1956 statement reflects a (limited) change in Lévi-Strauss's perspective, the fact remains that the statement is qualified in such a way as to all but rule out the existence of societies in which men "are (or were) being exchanged by women's groups." Note, for example, that Lévi-Strauss's sole concession is that "some . . . societies . . . have to a limited extent attempted to express things that way." This concession is rendered more or less meaningless by the fact that Lévi-Strauss does not assume any necessary correspondence between societal "expressions" and patterns of behavior or social relations (see, e.g., Lévi-Strauss 1953, 1960).
A slightly different version of the 1956 passage quoted above appears in Lévi-Strauss's The View from Afar (1985:60). There and elsewhere
(Lévi-Strauss 1960:51) we are reminded that Lévi-Strauss is concerned with the "formal properties of the structure," in which "nothing would be changed" if men were being exchanged instead of women. While this point may be valid so far as Lévi-Strauss is concerned, it also draws attention to one of the major shortcomings of his approach: his preoccupation with forms of exchange and his relative neglect of the contents and strategies of exchange (see Leach [1961] 1966:90; Bourdieu 1977:1-30; Comar-off 1980; Collier and Rosaldo 1981:315–16; Strathern 1984; Goody 1990).
Even among anthropologists who, contra Lévi-Strauss, focus on the contents and strategies of exchange, there is a refusal to acknowledge that certain systems of marriage and affinal alliance focus on the exchange of men. Leach ([1961] 1966:101), for example, allows only that "there are cases [he refers to the Minangkabau of Sumatra] where the wife's group ... 'buy' the sexual services of the husband from the husband's group." The problem with statements of this sort is that they reflect an extremely limited appreciation of the full range of rights that may be acquired by a woman and her kin in consequence of the woman's marriage. In nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan, such rights ranged well beyond claims to the husband's sexual services (and monopolistic control over the offspring of the union); as we have seen, they included critically important claims to the husband's labor power and productivity; permanent control over jointly acquired earnings in the form of houses, homestead plots, and agricultural acreage; and extensive social and political control over the husband. Similar generalizations apply to the Minangkabau and Acehnese systems, and to all others involving the exchange of men.
Such cases indicate that there are more than a few societies in which women exercise far more autonomy and social control than the earlier literature on kinship, marriage, and social structure would have us believe. This is a common theme in relatively recent work on "matrilineal" societies (see, e.g., Schlegel 1972; Brown 1975; Weiner 1976, 1992; Smith 1983; Tanner and Thomas 1985; Whalley 1993; Krier 1994), but it is also relevant beyond matrilineal settings. Numerous anthropologists working in "bilateral" (cognatic) and other contexts in Southeast Asia, Africa, and elsewhere have commented upon the relatively high degree of autonomy and social control enjoyed by women in various "traditional" and "modernizing" societies (see Burling 1965; Tanner 1974; Draper 1975; Rogers 1975; Bacdayan 1977; Sacks 1979; Sanday 1981; Van Esterik 1982; Reid 1988; Ong 1989; Atkinson and Errington 1990). They have also demonstrated that an understanding of these (and other) societies requires that we devote sustained analytic scrutiny to the gendered division of labor
and exchange, and its relationship to kinship, marriage, and other domains of social life (cf. Siskind 1978; Collier and Rosaldo 1981; Collier 1988). In this same spirit, I suggest that we not only look more closely at the diverse forms, contents, and cultural realization of the gendered division of labor and exchange, but that we also reexamine earlier assumptions about the universality of the exchange of women and the purported nonexistence of institutions predicated on the exchange of men.
In light of the foregoing I should perhaps make explicit that cases of the sort with which I have been concerned also pose a serious challenge to those who follow the general lines of Lévi-Strauss's argument concerning kinship and marriage as the ultimate locus of women's secondary "status" vis-à-vis men (see, e.g., Rubin 1975; Collier and Rosaldo 1981; Collier 1988; see also Chodorow 1978). In nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan, as we have seen, women were accorded less prestige than men, yet they were not exchanged by men. Prestige differentials between men and women thus cannot be explained in terms of the system of kinship and marriage. One could conceivably argue that men's greater prestige standing reflected their predominance in arenas of (regional) exchange that encompassed the system of marriage and affinal exchange overseen by women, but this leaves unanswered why this should be so, that is, why men's predominance in such arenas garnered them more prestige. Men's control of the production of the means of violence and their effective monopolization of weapons and tools might also be invoked as an explanation of their superior prestige standing relative to women (see Whitehead 1986, 1987). But this too leaves unanswered why it is that men were accorded more prestige owing to their preeminence in such realms. More generally, as Kelly (1993) makes clear in his incisive analysis of the cosmological grounding of social inequality among the Etoro, all such arguments imply that gender hierarchies are unique in relation to other hierarchies of prestige (based on descent, age, birth order, etc.) insofar as they alone are assumed to rely for their moral force and reproduction on brute strength or force of arms.[20]
Prestige differentials between men and women in nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan are best seen in relation to—and, in important ways, determined by—the most encompassing system of prestige, which was the system of hereditary ranking or descent. This system, as we have seen, was encoded in the political system, operated through the kinship system, and effectively defined as the ultimate value the accumulation and display of spiritual potency. As has long been the case in much of Southeast Asia,
men were assumed to have more spiritual potency than women and were for this reason accorded more prestige (see Reid 1988; Atkinson and Errington 1990; Andaya and Ishii 1992).
The basis for this cultural assumption lay in largely implicit understandings of the fundamental similarities and differences between men's and women's temperaments, personalities, and behavioral inclinations, which, in turn, were grounded in basic understandings concerning the person, the body, and the relationships among the constituent elements of such entities and the universe as a whole. These assumptions and understandings derived much of their force from and were otherwise informed by beliefs concerning "reason" (akal ) and "passion" (nafsu ) and their differential distribution among men and women; to wit, that men have more "reason" and less "passion" than women. These (Arabic-origin) concepts (discussed in greater detail later; see, esp., chap. 5) are of central importance in contemporary understandings and representations of gender in Negeri Sembilan, among Malays elsewhere in the Peninsula, and in the Muslim world at large. We cannot presume that the present-day scope and force of these concepts accurately reflect their cultural salience in the nineteenth century, but there is ample evidence to indicate that they did inform experiences, understandings, and representations in various domains of Malay society and culture both in the 1800s and in earlier times.
Malay texts from the early part of the nineteenth century, for instance, cite as negative examples despised political leaders becoming sombong (arrogant, haughty), acting unjustly, and otherwise behaving in accordance with their "passion"; and they warn their own not to follow such examples (Milner 1982:43). So, too, do texts dating from the seventeenth century, such as The Malay Annals (Sejarah Melayu ) (Milner 1982:43, 50, 106). Similarly, Islamic modernists of the late nineteenth century objected to spirit possession and exorcistic rituals not simply because they entailed "the worship of false gods," but also because of the "unbridled license—'loss of reason'—which a seance gave to the baser elements of human nature" (Gullick 1987:322, 327 n.31; cf. Swettenham [1895] 1984:208-10). Noteworthy as well is that women have long been more susceptible than men to the culture-bound syndrome known as latah , which involves echolalia, echopraxia, and other forms of "pathomimetic" behavior that index a loss of control over speech, gesture, and the person or self generally (Kenny 1990:127–28). For these and other reasons, women have long been viewed as having weaker semangat or "life force" than men, and as
otherwise more vulnerable to the afflictions of spirits and human malevolence that (masculine) "reason" and spiritual potency ideally guard against.
These ideas (along with contrasting discourses on gender that are keyed to contrasting representations of marriage and affinal exchange) will be described and analyzed in much greater detail further along. The main point here is that prestige differentials between men and women were broadly grounded in cosmology. So, too, of course, was the system of kinship and marriage, but it was not this system, which focused, in any event, on the exchange of men not women, which lay at the heart of women's secondary status.
3
Kinship, Gender, and Sexuality from the Nineteenth Century to the Present
The systems of gender, prestige, and political economy outlined in the preceding chapter existed throughout much of the nineteenth century (and perhaps long before as well). There are, moreover, numerous elements of these systems and their interrelations that have been reproduced more or less intact since the late nineteenth century, though it is also true that many others have been radically transformed. In the first section of this chapter I provide an overview of some of the more salient patterns in nineteenth and twentieth-century social history, briefly examining the ways in which changes in political, economic, and religious organization affected the structure of prestige (including prestige differentials between men and women) and various aspects of kinship, marriage, and sexuality (especially sexual impropriety). Also included here is a discussion of pondan (gender-crossers), which emphasizes, on the one hand, that locally defined communities have long been highly accepting of individuals associated with this mediating (once sacred) category; and, on the other, that recent state policies and initiatives bolstered by the Islamic resurgence are geared toward restricting the behavior of such individuals and eliminating the (increasingly contaminating) category altogether. The second and third sections of the chapter are devoted to a description and analysis of a social drama, culminating in a "shotgun" marriage, which occurred in Bogang in 1979. This drama provides poignant testimony to themes of continuity and transformation outlined in the first section of the chapter, particularly since it helps illustrate some of the ways in which prestige and stigma are allocated in a contemporary setting. These themes are also taken up in subsequent chapters, all of which focus on the present.
Structural Transformation and Reproduction
Political and Religious Organization and the Structure of Prestige
The indigenous system of political organization experienced unprecedented challenges and stresses during the mid-nineteenth century, largely as a result of the development of Negeri Sembilan's tin-mining industry beginning in the 1830s. The 1830s witnessed the early stages of a massive influx of Chinese labor and capital into many of the tin-rich regions of Negeri Sembilan, which was followed by the infusion of European, especially British, capital into these regions as well. These developments greatly increased the stakes in competition over local and regional trade, and likewise rendered the skirmishes and battles over such resources all the more bloody and costly in terms of human life; indeed, the situation in certain parts of Negeri Sembilan in the mid-1860s was described by some observers as bordering on civil war and anarchy.[1] This situation, in turn, prompted alliances between highly placed Malay political leaders and Chinese, British, and other foreign investors for protection to help secure their investments; it also paved the way for greater British involvement in the region, especially since the British, with their superior firepower, were in an excellent position to help shore up embattled political leaders and ensure that their burgeoning and increasingly transnationally oriented enterprises remained profitable, or at least continued to operate.
For these and other reasons the British were increasingly drawn into local affairs and ultimately established various types of "protectorates" in parts of the Peninsula. Some protectorates were established in portions of Negeri Sembilan as early as the 1870s, though in other areas of the state the British did not get centrally involved until the 1890s.[2]
When the British colonized Negeri Sembilan (and other Malay states), they introduced a colonial bureaucracy and British-style civil and criminal courts whose structure and operations were geared toward the attainment of British political and economic objectives as well as the institutionalization of British notions of propriety and morality. These institutions eviscerated indigenous precolonial polities (and simultaneously transformed and undermined many features of Malay adat ), though they did not actually abolish the indigenous political system. In fact, they operated through the system and thus strengthened many of its key features even though they effectively stripped most indigenous leaders of any real political or economic power. Ironically, these same policies ensured that Malay leaders would find themselves at considerable remove from the actual corri-
dors of power, despite their retention of traditional titles, royal regalia, and other symbols of authority and prestige. Such policies also encouraged established leaders at the uppermost levels of the indigenous polity to assume increasingly pivotal roles in religious (specifically, Islamic) affairs. This is partly because the domain of Islam (like that of adat ) was one of the few spheres in which Malays enjoyed a constitutionally guaranteed measure of autonomy vis-à-vis the British. Relevant as well is that modern education and greater contact between local elites and (mostly foreign-born) Muslims in Melaka, Singapore, and other parts of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago enhanced Malay awareness of and dialogue with developments in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other regions of the Muslim world. This had the effect, in the Malay world, of galvanizing diverse currents of Islamic nationalism and reform, and of promoting nationalist discourse on the virtues of Islamic rationalization and the necessity of eradicating the "backward" (e.g., pre-Islamic [animist/Hindu-Buddhist]) elements of Malay culture so as to help bring Malays and Malayan Islam into the "modern era." This goal was partly achieved by elite-backed efforts to upgrade the quality of religious instruction and to curtail the performance of largely pre-Islamic rituals. With the same goal in mind, the elite provided much of the impetus for the creation and consolidation of district- and state-level Islamic administrative hierarchies charged with overseeing the affairs of all Muslims. Developments such as these led to the institutionalized differentiation and segregation of adat and Islam, about which more in a moment.
The progressive expansion and empowering of state-controlled Islamic administrative hierarchies that began under colonial rule continued after Malaya attained its independence from the British in 1957, and has clearly led to the more centralized and standardized (rationalized) implementation of Islamic religious law. Among other changes, Islamic magistrates (kadi ) have been accorded authority over many domains of activity that once fell within the jurisdiction of clan leaders and their councils: for example, the formal registration of marriage and divorce, issues of conjugal maintenance and child support, and the payment of religious taxes and tithes. Islamic officials have also acquired far more authority with respect to the distribution of rights over intestate property and the settlement of various types of inheritance and other property disputes, all of which further undermined the prerogatives and social standing of clan spokesmen.
These same developments were partly responsible for the progressive delegitimization and subsequent decline (though not disappearance) of various types of spirit cults and shamanism. I already made brief reference
(chap. 2) to late nineteenth-century Islamic modernists who sought to discourage royal and chiefly rituals involving spirit possession and exorcism on the grounds that they entailed "loss of reason" on the part of the practitioners. (Some of these rituals were discouraged for other reasons as well; e.g., for being economically unsound or wasteful, and for being incompatible with modern education and medicine, and "science" and "progress" generally.) Islamic denigration of "unbridled license" was part of an ongoing process which had begun some centuries earlier (and which continues today). As Anthony Reid (1988:81, 86–88, 89, 148–51, 156–57) has noted for Southeast Asia generally during the period 1450–1680, Islam discouraged nakedness, placed greater emphasis on sexual restraint, and suppressed the use of penis pins and balls that were surgically inserted under the skin of the penis to enhance women's sexual pleasure (which were once common throughout much of Southeast Asia and which are still found among non-Muslim regions of the Malay world [see Reid 1988:89, 148–51, 162]). So, too, of course, did the other Great Religions introduced into Southeast Asia.
Even so, the system of prestige outlined in the previous chapter has remained very much intact. This despite the fact that it has clearly lost some of its moral force and other constraining qualities due, on the one hand, to the revalorization of nineteenth-century criteria for prestige, and, on the other, to the emergence and spread of new and cross-cutting criteria that accord prestige to wealth, modern education, and the like, rather than descent. Spiritual potency, for example, is still highly valued; and significantly, there is little if any skepticism among villagers concerning either royal sanctity or majesty (daulat , berdaulat ) or the efficacy of the mystical knowledge/power that is concentrated among ritual specialists but which is also widely dispersed throughout local society, especially among men (see chap. 4). At present, such knowledge/power is typically referred to by the Arabic-origin term ilmu , rather than by the Sanskrit-origin term sakti , which seems to have been the most commonly used term in the nineteenth century (and before). This conceptual shift (from sakti to ilmu ) parallels an earlier shift from sakti to daulat (an Arabic-origin term) which occurred during the period 1500–1800 (Andaya and Ishii 1992:546), and which presumably reflects efforts both to put a more Islamic face on the "divine kingship" of political leaders, and to better distinguish their powers from those of lesser leaders and the untitled majority.
It is nonetheless true that villagers are increasingly ambivalent and nervous about the pre-Islamic features of such knowledge/power. This
situation is due for the most part to diverse currents of Islamic nationalism and reform, including in particular the largely urban-based, middle-class dakwa movement that dates from the late 1960s and early 1970s. As mentioned earlier, twentieth-century currents of Islamic nationalism and reform have contributed to the delegitimization and subsequent decline (though not the disappearance) of shamanism and spirit cults, and have, at the same time, raised serious doubts among villagers concerning the Islamic validity of ilmu and other local traditions. Such matters are discussed at length in chapter 4.
Prestige differentials between males and females, for their part, are still conceptualized and rationalized in terms of spiritual potency: Men are still believed (by men and women alike) to have stronger "life force," or semangat , and to be more likely to possess ilmu . These phenomena (semangat and ilmu ) are not systematically related in local discourse, however; though, all things being equal, persons with unusual amounts or concentrations of ilmu are seen as having unusually strong semangat (the latter being a prerequisite [necessary but not sufficient] for the former). It is important to emphasize, in any event, that the gendered contrasts at issue are most often discussed in terms of the symbols and idioms of "reason" and "passion": Men, according to the official line, have more "reason" and less "passion" than women, all of which is consistent—but never in my experience directly linked in local discourse—with the dogma concerning men's stronger "life force" and greater likelihood of possessing ilmu . Such prestige differentials may well have become exaggerated over the course of the past century, but even if they have (as I suspect), this is less a new pattern than a continuation and intensification of trends set in motion many centuries earlier.
The exaggeration of distinctions between men and women seems closely tied to the development of Islam in the region, though the consolidation and centralization of state power, which went hand in hand with the development of Islam, is clearly relevant as well. Interestingly, Portuguese accounts of the sixteenth century reported that Malays were "fond of music and given to love," that "pre-marital sexual relations were regarded indulgently," and that "virginity at marriage was not expected of either party" (Reid 1988:153). Recall, too, that during this time there were female heads of state in various parts of the Malay-Indonesian world. After about 1700, however, "the Islamic model of male kingship seemed finally to prevail," and few women ruled, partly because, as one (male) observer put it, they were held to be lacking "complete intelligence" (Reid 1988:170; see also Andaya and Ishii 1992:556–57). By the nineteenth cen-
tury, moreover, by which time Islam had become much more thoroughly integrated into people's lives, virginity at marriage was clearly expected of both parties, especially women; and women were severely chastised for even the appearance of pre- (or extra-)marital dalliance. Bear in mind also that women had been extremely active in communal rituals throughout much of SoutheastAsia prior to the period 1500–1800, and that this had changed by the latter part of this period due to the development in Southeast Asia of Islam and other Great Religions, which provide no textual basis for women's active participation in the highest rituals of the land. Women's public roles became progressively less apparent during this period (communal worship came to be dominated by males), and, as we saw in chapter 2, they were "increasingly relegated to the domains of shamanism and spirit propitiation. In the process, the status of the shaman, both female and transvestite, declined ..., and women became the principal practitioners of 'village' as opposed to 'court' magic" (Andaya and Ishii 1992:555–56). In these and other ways, the development of Islam, bolstered by state strategies discussed below, had the effect of restructuring important aspects of male-female relations and of reconfiguring representations of gender, and of women in particular.
While prestige differentials cast in terms of "reason" and "passion" are a dominant feature of local understandings and representations of gender, men do not always come out "on top" in the local (conceptual) scheme(s) of things. To appreciate why, we need to bear in mind that men are still very much encapsulated within the system of marriage and affinal relations which bestows esteem, honor, and social value in accordance with the property rights, wealth, and prestige that men create for their wives' households. Put differently, a man's prestige still hinges in large measure on the nature of his relations with his affines, who tend to judge him in his capacity as provider and household entrepreneur. Important changes have occurred insofar as the prestige and other benefits engendered by in-marrying males attach to a much smaller range of their affinal kin than used to be the case, especially since affines' jural control over in-marrying males' labor power and productivity has been weakened considerably. Significantly, however, divorce rates are still quite high (though they have declined in recent decades), and men and women alike identify the central problem in marriage and the major cause of divorce as tension in the relationship between men and their wives' female kin, particularly their wives' mothers and sisters. The specific dynamic cited over and over again is that husbands do not provide well enough for wives and children (and that even when they do, their female in-laws place too many demands on
their labor power and productivity), and are, more broadly, both rather unreliable and unresponsive when it comes to honoring kinship and other social obligations. This perception informs (men's and women's) understandings and representations of masculinity in its entirety and, not surprisingly, helps motivate the practical/counter-hegemonic view that men are neither reasonable nor responsible and, more generally, have less "reason" and more "passion" than women. Some of the structural factors motivating such views are considered in the following section.
Kinship, Marriage, and Gender
Political and religious changes of the sort outlined in the preceding pages are profitably viewed in relation to state policies that promoted the development of rural capitalism. From the outset these strategies included policies that effected a break with tradition insofar as they encouraged men to take up commercially valued land in their own names, independently of their wives, sisters, and other female kin. One reason for these policies was that the British viewed traditional constraints on male proprietorship and inheritance as part of a larger institutional framework deemed primitive, anachronistic, and overly cumbersome as regards the objectives of colonial rule (see NSAR 1889:2; NSGG 1898 III:151–52). At the same time—and this, I think, is the more critical issue—the British clearly viewed as "unnatural" a system in which provisional rights over land devolved upon females to the exclusion of males. In consequence, women appeared to have a great stake in agriculture and to "cultivate their holdings to the fullest extent," whereas men were said to "rarely help the women in looking after" the land owing to their position that "We shall never get it, so why should we help to improve it?"[3] This situation, aside from suggesting an inversion of the system of gender relations in Victorian England, was believed to foster a lack of interest among males in local events and economic development, and to account for the "considerable majority of women" revealed in Rembau's 1891 census (NSGG 1897 II:4). "Unnatural" imbalances of this sort prompted British officials, in the mid-1890s, to induce Rembau males to acquire parcels of land for coffee cultivation; as a result, men were soon "beginning to have a stake in a country in which almost all landed property is vested in women" (NSAR 1896:4).
State strategies geared toward promoting the development of rural capitalism also involved the introduction of highly individualistic forms of proprietorship and inheritance, which undermined many features of the traditional system of inheritance and property relations as well as various
types of collateral ties, including relationships among (natural and classificatory) siblings. Especially noteworthy is that changes in these areas undercut the economic dimensions of brothers' ties with their sisters, and, in the process, helped shift the burden of support for women and children from brothers to husbands. More broadly, responsibilities for the creation of property rights, wealth, and prestige for lineages and clans came to fall increasingly, though not exclusively, on husbands and in-marrying males generally. I will return to this point in a moment.
The new economic opportunities—cash-cropping, expanded trading activities, and a limited number of civil service jobs—that were made available to men and to rural society at large in the late 1800s were in many (but not all) respects socially divisive and profoundly disruptive. So, too, were the effects of other state economic policies that I have discussed elsewhere (Peletz 1987a, 1988b). Suffice it to say that the period since the late 1800s has witnessed increased household dependence on male cash-cropping, and declines not only in the predominantly female domain of subsistence rice production, but also in the viability of traditional reciprocity-based and redistributive economic institutions. The past few decades in particular have also seen heightened demands for modern household conveniences and commodities of various kinds (electricity, piped water, sewing machines, radios, televisions, bicycles, and motorcycles), which are nowadays widely, albeit unevenly, distributed in rural settings. They have, at the same time, seen the development of a rather pronounced degree of class differentiation and stratification based largely on differential access to commercially valued land (most notably land suitable for the small-scale cultivation of rubber).
These and related changes have undermined many of the political and economic functions of clans and lineages, and have likewise helped bring about the partial demise (though certainly not the wholesale destruction) of the system of divided title and various other aspects of property and inheritance relations. As in all other areas of social change, however, what has occurred in the domain of property and inheritance relations is less the "breakdown of the system" than a series of highly selective social transformations informed in large measure by structural precedents that existed in precolonial times. Thus, the fact that sons are in many cases allowed, or at least given the option, to inherit rights over land, especially newly alienated land that is not formally classified as "ancestral," is not so much a breakdown of the system as a recasting of the precolonial practice of "paternal provisioning" by means of which fathers could convey certain categories of (movable) property to their children.[4] Of perhaps
greater significance is that even though sons do at times inherit "acquired" (as opposed to "ancestral") property from their parents, daughters (and women generally) are still strongly favored in property and inheritance relations. In short, as discussed in considerable detail elsewhere (Peletz 1987b, 1988b; Fett 1983; Stivens 1985, 1987, 1991; McAllister 1987; Azizah Kassim 1988), the system of property and inheritance relations has not witnessed a shift toward patriliny or bilaterality, despite the conjectures and predictions of earlier observers such as de Josselin de Jong (1960:165, 190); Lewis (1962:192–93); Swift (1965:172); and A. Wahab Alwee (1967:40–41).
It is important to emphasize here that in recent decades neither the clan system nor the sanctions linked with it have been instrumental in perpetuating traditions which effectively barred males from inheriting houses and land. In point of fact, quite the opposite has occurred. The question arises, then, as to why most of this property still passes to daughters. Issues of this sort assume considerable significance in the light of villagers' strong identification with Islam—the religious laws of which entitle sons to inheritance shares twice the size or value of those allotted to daughters—as well as twentieth-century forces of Islamic nationalism and reform, which have underscored Koranic perspectives on the privileged position of male heirs in relation to females.
Daughters continue to be favored over sons in inheritance, regardless of the gender of the initial owner, and even when houses and land are not classified as "ancestral "—hence exclusively female—property. This occurs owing largely to the reproduction of practical views of gender. Interestingly, even when all children are designated as heirs to their parents' estate, sons and daughters tend to not be included as co-heirs with respect to any particular plot of land, or other item of property. This strategy of heirship reflects the assumption and concern that sons might well run up debts, through gambling or otherwise, and thus find themselves compelled to mortgage or sell land or other property held in common with their sisters. Circumstances such as these would bespeak an inversion of proper brotherly behavior insofar as they could easily jeopardize their sisters' subsistence guarantees and force them into inappropriate employment, such as prostitution, to support themselves and their children.
More generally, women are believed to require greater subsistence guarantees than men partly because they are held to be less flexible, resourceful, and adaptive than men, who can eke out a living wherever they find themselves, be it in the village in which they were born (or into which they married), or a culturally foreign city such as Kuala Lumpur
or Singapore. It is also taken for granted that all women will marry and have children, and that they must have resources to fall back on, especially since they may not always be able to depend on their husbands, who may be involved in temporary out-migration for many months or years at a stretch, or who may simply predecease their wives. There is also the issue of desertion and divorce by husbands, which is a common theme in local society and culture. More to the point, marriage is regarded as a tenuous arrangement, for men's commitments to their wives and children (as well as other kinship and social ties) are seen as provisional, even capricious. In the final analysis, then, women require greater subsistence guarantees than men not only because they are held to be the less flexible, resourceful, and adaptive of the two sexes; but also—and in some ways more relevant—because they must be protected from men, particularly their husbands (but also their brothers and men in other kinship and social roles). In the practical view, men are simply much less reliable and trustworthy than women.
State-sponsored changes fueled the reproduction of practical, largely counter-hegemonic representations of masculinity in a number of ways, two of which merit brief remark. First, because they entailed the highly inequitable distribution of land and other productive resources, these changes are directly implicated in the marked disparities that exist in men's abilities to live up to the expectations and demands of their wives and affines. Relatively wealthy men, who constitute a very small minority of the adult male population, can rather easily meet these expectations and demands, but the overwhelming majority of adult men cannot. The discrepancy between those that can and do on the one hand and those that cannot and do not on the other clearly contributes to the widespread view that most men are "lazy and irresponsible," and typically expect to "eat for free."
A second, less obvious way in which state-sponsored capitalism helped motivate the reproduction of practical representations of masculinity has to do with the colonial-era restructuring of the roles of brother and husband. I noted earlier that since the late 1800s the responsibility for providing for women and children shifted increasingly from brothers to husbands. I need to add here that this shift did not in any way undermine the "elder brother" (abang ) norms that seem always to have informed the husband role (i.e., that husbands should support and protect their wives, and otherwise behave toward them much like elder brothers behave toward younger siblings). On the contrary, elder brother norms appear to have become more central to the definition of the husband role. They
have, at the same time, become increasingly idealized, particularly since many of the moral and material imperatives of brotherhood are no longer put to the test on a daily basis. It warrants emphasis, too, that the everyday behavior of men in their roles as husbands is judged not in terms of standards derived from the actual behavior of elder brothers but, rather, in relation to an increasingly lofty and heavily mythologized set of ideals which comprise the fantasy of the perfect elder brother.
Now, I would argue, married men have—or at least are perceived to have—a very hard time living up to the "elder brother" ideals informing the husband role. This is largely because married men have heavy—and in some ways mutually incompatible—moral and material obligations to their relatives, especially the females among them—that is, their mothers, sisters, and other female matrikin on the one hand, and their wives and female affines on the other. Most relevant here are the appreciable affinal demands on married men's labor power and productivity, which reflect the critically important role of husbands, and of in-marrying males generally, in producing property, wealth, and prestige for their wives' kin groups, but which frequently exceed married men's productive capacity. These demands, along with the expectations to which they are keyed, can make married life very difficult for men (particularly men with little or no productive land), and they often exacerbate tensions in marriage ties and affinal relations. Married men who find that they cannot deal realistically with expectations and pressures from their wives and affines frequently divorce or simply abandon their wives, along with any children they might have. This course of action not only feeds into practical views that husbands and fathers are unreliable and untrustworthy; it also colors practical views of masculinity as a whole. These latter, practical views serve, in turn, to counter and moderate the official view of males, just as they effectively elevate practical views of females.
A somewhat similar restructuring of femininity has also occurred as a result of state-sponsored changes of the sort that effected the realignment of the constituent elements of masculinity. In the case of femininity, the changes have entailed the historical deemphasis of women's roles as daughters as well as (natural and classificatory) sisters, and sisters' daughters, and a foregrounding of their roles as wives and mothers. The factors responsible for such shifts include the economically and politically engendered erosion of a broadly encompassing clanship, and the attendant weakening and contraction of the siblingship undergirding it; the demise of various forms of predominantly female labor exchange associated with the agricultural cycle, which, in former times, drew heavily on women as
sisters; and the resurgence of Islam, the doctrines of which focus on, and are seen locally as focusing on, women's roles as wives and mothers rather than daughters and sisters. In these and other ways Islam highlights women's sexuality, "natural functions," and links with biological reproduction. The involvement of women in factory work in "free trade zones" and elsewhere, has had much the same effect, particularly since images of such women, aside from being exceedingly negative, focus on their sexual promiscuity and dubious morality generally. Ong (1987, 1988) addresses such matters in some detail. Suffice it to say here that many factory women wear Western-style makeup and clothing (blue jeans, t-shirts, etc.) and are for those and other reasons assumed to have the same "loose" dating habits and morals that Malays widely attribute to Western women.
My earlier comment that social change since the late 1800s has involved less a breakdown of the system than a series of highly selective social transformations is especially relevant to sexuality, mate choice, and marriage on the whole. As will be discussed shortly, basic moral tenets concerning "illicit proximity" and the specific classes of individuals who should not be married are still very much intact (i.e., traditional notions of sumbang still carry their moral force), though it is nonetheless true that close cousin marriage, local endogamy, and the practice of arranged marriage are much less frequent now than they were in the nineteenth century (see Peletz 1988b).
Most elements of marriage rituals outlined in chapter 2 are likewise still performed, though such rituals are on many occasions streamlined and temporally compressed—some of their "nonessential" features are dispensed with, much to the dismay of elders—so that they can be held within a single day (or two). There has, moreover, been a radical inflation in marriage payments, and an attendant shift toward greatly discrepant payments (as between rich and poor), though this is less a change in the system than an elaboration of one of its central features.
In addition, the groups of kin linked through marriage and affinal exchange are far more narrowly defined than used to be the case, and are, for all intents and purposes, composed only of the members of the households of bride and groom and their immediate relatives. This pattern is partly a consequence of heightened geographic mobility and declines in the incidence of local endogamy, the flip side of which is the increasing prevalence of marriage with individuals who were born outside of Negeri Sembilan and who are thus unfamiliar with, and in some cases hostile to, adat perpatih traditions. Another contributing factor is the tendency toward neolocal residence on the part of newlyweds. Due to develop-
Figure 10.
Bride
ments such as these, it is no longer the case that the system of marriage and affinal relations centers on a jurally elaborated or recognized exchange of men between groups of women, or otherwise entails the jurally elaborated or recognized political subordination of men to their affinal kin. Even so, the system continues in many respects to be both experienced and
Figure 11.
Bride with sister
Figure 12.
Bride with attendants
Figure 13.
Wedding procession
represented in terms of such exchanges and subordination. This is particularly evident both from the comments of married men (and women) concerning divorce and their marriage experiences generally, and from the ways in which women (and to a lesser extent men) represent maleness or masculinity.
Sexual Impropriety
Continuity and change in the domain of sexual impropriety is perhaps most usefully approached through a discussion of the concept of sumbang , which is of central importance in local culture, and which occurs in one or another form in much of the Malay-Indonesian world. The concept of sumbang covers a range of offenses and improprieties covered by the English term "incest," but it also has a much broader range of meaning (Needham 1971:26–27; Peletz 1988b:53). As Needham notes for the Malay-Indonesian world generally, sumbang refers to improper or repugnant behavior or conditions and, more generally, to phenomena that are deformed, disharmonious, or discordant; for example, a tree (pokok ) that has been grafted and consequently bears blossoms of two different kinds is a pokok sumbang . In social conduct, sumbang refers generally to what is offensive because it is "out of place or unseemly, a subversion of propriety," including even adultery and cheating at cards (26–27).
In Negeri Sembilan, various types of moral offenses are included under
Figure 14.
Musician at wedding
the heading of sumbang . They are elaborated with respect to heterosexuality (rather than homosexuality), and in terms of relations between (real and classificatory) brothers and sisters. I have discussed these types of offenses elsewhere (Peletz 1988b:52–57) and will simply list a few of them here. In the case of an adolescent or adult female, such improprieties in-
clude sitting in a secluded or confined area alongside a man other than one's husband, particularly a man with whom adat forbade marriage (see below); walking side by side or conversing with such a man; engaging in sexual activity with such a man; and being frequently observed in irregular conduct associated with one or another variant of sumbang .
The vast majority of prohibitions pertaining to specifically sexual relationships involve persons interrelated through siblingship. Sexual relations between a brother and sister of the same parent(s) rank as the most reprehensible of all such offenses (comparable to sex involving a parent and child), and are still regarded as a variant of treason (derhaka ), though they are no longer defined as a capital offense. Sexual transgressions of this sort figure prominently in myths and are in fact enshrined in mythic accounts of the origins of much dreaded, vampire-like spirits (pelisit ) whose predilection for sucking the blood of pregnant and postpartum women and newborn children entails serious, indeed potentially fatal, threats to their prey. In one such myth that I have recounted in another context (Peletz 1988b:52–53), a brother and sister engaged in sexual relations that resulted in the sister becoming pregnant. When the sister came to term and delivered, the brother went beneath the floor of the house to lap up the discharge that flowed from the woman's vagina. As a consequence of their transgressions, both the brother and sister were turned into pelisit , whose very survival is inimical to human reproduction in both the social and biological senses of the term. Such relations have long constituted one of the most fundamental and reprehensible inversions of propriety (comparable to cannibalism). More generally, sexual relations with persons of the same lineage are still viewed as a heinous offense, as in many contexts are sexual relations involving persons belonging to different lineages of the same clan.
The elaboration of sexual restrictions in terms of brother-sister impropriety is best viewed in light of norms of siblingship, especially cross-sex siblingship, and the structure of prestige. Men have always been expected to look after, protect, and help safeguard the virginity and overall moral standing of their sisters. This is particularly so since the moral standing and prestige of lineage branch, lineage, and entire (localized) clan hinge in no small measure on the reputation of their female members, positioned to attract in-marrying males who will ideally produce property rights, wealth, and prestige for these groups. A man's failure to look after his sisters is a serious dereliction of duty, one with potentially broad implications for lineage branch, lineage, and (localized) clan. Sexual intimacy or "illicit proximity" with a sister goes far beyond dereliction of duty, how-
ever; it amounts to a wholesale inversion of proper brotherly behavior, the more so since it renders the sister unfit for marriage, taints the broader social groups to which brother and sister belong, and thus threatens social reproduction, particularly since a child born of such a union would be forever heavily stigmatized and thus unable to marry properly.[5]
It merits remark as well that brother-sister impropriety (and sumbang generally), in addition to being a sin in the eyes of and thus punishable by God, is believed to entail the automatic triggering of "supernatural" punishment in the form of skin disorders (rashes, blotching, discoloration, and the like). These disorders affect not only the guilty parties but also their descendants (up to seven generations), and are high on the list of traits that define an individual as an undesirable marriage partner. (Their "last minute" or belated discovery could, in former times, constitute legitimate grounds for backing out of a proposed union or even nullifying an extant one.) As such, the transgressions responsible for their surfacing are all the more reprehensible and threatening to social and biological reproduction. Bear in mind, too, that inappropriate sex of the sort at issue here is believed to result in plagues on chickens and other domesticated animals, and other threats to the natural world (cf. Jordaan and de Josselin de Jong 1985).
The theme of brother-sister impropriety also figures prominently, albeit indirectly, in the way villagers conceptualize and talk about prostitution (pelacuran ). The topic does not come up much in local conversation, though when it does it is often cited as a possible consequence, in a worst-case scenario sort of way, of what might happen to a woman who is not afforded sufficient subsistence guarantees (a house and land) by her parents. The idea here is that if females are not accorded priority over males in inheritance—if, for example, sons are favored over daughters, or even included as co-heirs in the inheritance that might otherwise pass exclusively to daughters—their brothers might run up debts, through gambling or otherwise, and thus force the mortgage or sale of property held in common with them, thereby undermining their subsistence guarantees just enough to force them into prostitution to support themselves and their children. In this scenario, brothers are viewed as rather directly responsible for their sisters' moral decline. More generally, what we see in this scenario is a highly unflattering portrayal of men in their roles as brothers that diverges rather markedly from (indeed inverts) the elder brother ideals that should inform men's behavior toward their sisters. When one considers as well that the scenarios at issue derive much of their moral force from the widely held belief that women are quite likely
to be divorced or simply abandoned by their husbands—who should behave toward them much like elder brothers but more often than not clearly do not—it-becomes even more apparent how inversions of norms cast in idioms of siblingship thoroughly infuse the culturally interlocked domains of kinship, marriage, and sexuality.
As mentioned earlier, the concept of sumbang involves not merely what Westerners would regard as sexual activity, but also various types of "unacceptable closeness" that do not involve physical contact of any sort; for example, a woman sitting (even standing) in a secluded or confined area with a man with whom adat forbids marriage. Nowadays such offenses are usually referred to under the heading of khalwat , an Arabic-origin term that refers both to "illicit proximity" and to a specific category of criminal offense in Islamic religious law (cf. Karim 1990:61 n.2). A colloquial synonym for khalwat is tangkap bassah , literally, a "wet catch," which is somewhat like the American expression "caught with your pants down," though the latter expression implies being caught in flagrante delicto, whereas "a wet catch" does not necessarily carry any such connotation. (Alternatively, one might suggest that the main difference between the two expressions lies in the fact that the concept of in flagrante delicto is more narrowly construed in Western culture than among Malays.)[6]
Individuals believed to be guilty of khalwat are typically forced to marry one another, assuming that they are not prohibited from doing so by considerations of social relatedness or prior marital status. If, for example, the individuals are barred from marrying one another by virtue of common clan membership, or because the woman is already married,[7] the case may be referred to religious authorities, who pursue the matter as a criminal offense.
Young boys and girls are sometimes threatened by elders that they will be arrested and charged with "illicit proximity" if they go into the back of a provision shop, or venture into other secluded or confined areas, with children of the opposite sex. But one is more likely to hear mention of khalwat in connection with stereotypic cautionary tales concerning predatory divorcées' and widows' laying of traps for desirable young men whom they would like to marry. According to such tales, divorcées and widows lure young men to their homes when no one else is present (or to another secluded or confined area), and then hope for the best (or worst): that someone has reason to suspect they are together and will thus notify a local mosque official or some other relatively well positioned villager
who will proceed to burst in on them and charge them with khalwat . In the normal course of things, this results in their forced marriage.
While sumbang , "illicit proximity," "wet catches," and the like, figure prominently in the ways people think about male-female relations and sexuality in general, the theme of rape (rogol ) does not. The sole case of rape involving a resident of Bogang that came to my attention during my fieldwork involved Maimunah's twenty-two-year-old sister, Zaini, who was raped by a Chinese man from Seremban.[8] The man, who was either Zaini's employer or a co-worker, raped her ostensibly to punish her for slighting him (or a fellow Chinese) at her workplace. He waited for her as she got off the bus and began walking back into the village, and proceeded to force himself on her, telling her in the process that he would kill her if she went to the police or otherwise identified him.
There are undoubtedly other cases of rape involving villagers from Bogang of which I have no knowledge. Noteworthy too is that some cases of rape that are brought to the attention of the Islamic courts and the police are not formally classified as rape, but are treated instead as adultery. As in most if not all other societies, the reported incidence of rape among Malays is unquestionably much lower than its actual occurrence. If only for this reason, cross-cultural comparisons of the frequency of rape that are based on official reports of the incidence of the crime must be viewed with extreme caution.[9]
Interestingly, many of the most blatant sexual improprieties and offenses of which one hears in villages like Bogang do not involve Malays at all but, rather, other ethnic groups, most notably Chinese and Indians. Indians, for example, are said to be given to main belakang or "playing in the back/rear," a euphemism for anal sex, which is an illicit form of sexual activity (zina ) in Islam.[10] Chinese are viewed as similarly unrestrained and volatile (recall that Zaini's rapist was Chinese), much like the Japanese, who are remembered for raping and pillaging during their occupation of Malaya during the Second World War. Compounding villagers' extremely negative views of Chinese sexuality (and Chinese culture generally) were the highly sensationalized reports of a Chinese man who had sexually abused and murdered a young (Chinese) girl, which were widely publicized in the press during the second period of fieldwork.
The sexual practices of "white people" (orang putih ) are likewise held in extremely low regard, especially since much of what villagers know of Westerners comes from the television shows piped into their homes by the state-controlled Malaysian media (Charlie's Angels, Baretta, Kojak ,
Six Million Dollar Man, Bionic Woman, Dallas, Dynasty ), which portray Westerners as a rather depraved and wanton lot. A particularly shocking affront to local sensibilities centered around an incident in the late 1970s, widely reported and documented with photographs in the local press, involving Prince Charles and a woman he did not know (indeed had never seen before), who swam up to him and kissed him as he was wading in the sea. On more than one occasion I was called upon to clarify how Westerners could abide such outrageous behavior, which involved among other things a grave affront to the dignity and majesty of royalty. In much the same fashion I was sometimes asked to explain—and justify—the "sexual license" of Catholic priests, who are assumed by some villagers to engage in church-sanctioned sexual activity even though they are prohibited from marrying.
Many other features of sexual impropriety have yet to be considered here, and I have said next to nothing about the other side of the sexual coin—"good sex." Some of these matters are taken up in the following sections of this chapter; others are addressed in chapter 5, which deals with the person and the body and includes discussions of conception, pregnancy, and childbirth, and the various sex-related and other prescriptions and prohibitions associated with these events and processes. Such being the case, I would simply emphasize that press reports, televised serials imported from the West, and other media coverage bearing on non-Malay, especially Western, gender relations and sexuality, have clearly entered into and help shape and animate local discourse on sexual relations and male-female relations generally. This is nowhere more evident than in the recently emergent discourses bearing on the sexuality of female factory workers employed in "free trade zones" and elsewhere, for, as noted earlier, these women frequently wear Western-style makeup and clothing such as jeans and t-shirts, and are, for these and other reasons, widely assumed to be sexually promiscuous and of dubious morality on the whole (see Ong 1987, 1988; Ackerman 1991). Although there are relatively few adolescent or adult women currently residing in Bogang who are engaged in such work, those who do—or have done so in the past—provide excellent negative examples of female sexuality as far as the rest of the village population (male and female alike) is concerned. (This despite the broad recognition that such women often make critically important economic contributions to their parents' households.) In these and other areas we see the importance of viewing local notions of sexuality and morality within the larger context of a rapidly changing political
economy. A similar point emerges from my material on gender crossing, to which I now turn.
Pondan
The term pondan is used in Malay culture to refer to a variety of different types of behavior and individuals. In my experience the term is used exclusively for males whose dress or behavior constitutes a significant departure from stereotypical male gender roles. (Villagers knew of no female pondan , though they suggested that such might be found in Kuala Lumpur.) Thus, it may denote an adolescent or adult male who dresses or otherwise adorns himself like a woman; or it may refer to a male who walks like a woman, behaves sexually like a woman (i.e., has sex with men), or acts like a woman in other ways (e.g., prefers the company of women to men). In keeping with the relative deemphasis of sex and gender in local society and culture, the encompassing nature of the pondan concept works against the elaboration of distinctions—found in English and many other languages—between transvestism, transsexualism, hermaphroditism, homosexuality, and effeminate behavior.[11] I should underscore as well that sexual orientation is not a primary marker of the pondan category, which is, in any event, a mediating rather than supernumerary category.
There is, overall, both considerable tolerance for and acceptance of pondan . The same "relaxed" attitudes toward these phenomena exist among Malays elsewhere in the Peninsula (Raybeck 1986), among Indonesians and Filipinos (Yengoyan 1983), and among Southeast Asians generally (Keyes 1986). As one observer summed up the situation in the 1960s:
Basically, S. E. Asians are far more tolerant of personality deviation, abnormality and disorder than we are. Homosexuals and transvestites are treated with kindness and an amused tolerance; they are seldom considered a menace to society, blamed for being what they are, or made to feel that they must be kept in separate places from other people, ostracized or confined to institutions. Physical imperfection or mental abnormality are [also] regarded as something bestowed by God, as an act of fate (adjal or nasib ), and accepted as such by kinsmen and the community. (Jaspan 1969:22–23)
Villagers in Bogang often invoke the term pondan when discussing people like Razak (age thirty-four) and Kadir (age thirty), both of whom belong to the wealthiest lineage in the community but, like many other
young people, males especially, have long since moved out of the village. The term is typically used to indicate that Razak (who is married and frequently returns to the village on weekends) and Kadir (who has never married and rarely returns home) really enjoy spending time with women, and do in fact spend far more time with women than most "normal" men. People sometimes add that Razak and Kadir are effeminate in gesture, speech, and walk; that they are very good cooks; or simply that they are "like women" (macam perimpuan ). But there is no additional reference to or implication about their sexual orientation; in most contexts this simply does not come up. Sexual orientation, as noted earlier, is not a primary marker of the pondan category.
While many pondan marry and have children, villagers' occasional expressions of (mock?) surprise about pondan who marry suggest that, at some level, the concepts of pondan and marriage are mutually incompatible. It is sometimes said of pondan , especially after someone has commented on how effeminate or otherwise involved in gender crossing they are, "Yes, and can you believe they are married!" Similarly, villagers who heard that a woman who had been married to a village pondan (Razak) for eleven months and was, sadly, still a virgin (anak darah ), were not at all surprised, since, as one woman put it, "He is, after all, a pondan ." (Razak's uncle told me that Razak and his wife had no children because Razak has a sickness or disease [penyakit ], but this was not a biologized interpretation of why he is a pondan .) On the other hand, when Razak's marriage showed signs of breaking up some months later, few of the comments about the problems involved made mention of Razak being a pondan (focusing instead on his poor choice in selecting a wife who couldn't cook, look after a house, etc.). It merits note in any case that when Razak was teased incessantly and directly accused by his mother's sister of being a pondan (or bapo ), he got extremely upset with her, offering in the process, in what was a very unMalay move, to show her that he wasn't (i.e., that he [still?] had a penis and/or testicles).[12]
Kadir's parents seem relatively unconcerned that Kadir is a pondan , but they are clearly very upset that he has no apparent interest in getting married, let alone marrying properly. Both his parents were distraught when they learned that the young woman he was spending time with in Kuala Lumpur was half-Chinese and half-Indian. Making matters worse, she knows nothing of cooking or other domestic tasks, and likes to spend money on restaurants and discos. These were the primary regrets Kadir's father mentioned to me on a number of occasions, though he was also saddened by the fact that Kadir rarely returned home anymore. The rea-
son for this, according to his father, was out of embarrassment for having failed in a business enterprise in Kuala Lumpur, for which he had borrowed M$5,000 from his mother, a sum which he is in no position to repay.
There are no specific occupational niches monopolized or favored by, or closed off to, pondan . Some pondan , however, are bridal attendants, or mak andam (as occurs in the Philippines, and elsewhere in the world as well [Yengoyan 1983]); and, generally speaking, there seems to be a conceptual link between pondan and mak andam . The best known and most skillful mak andam in Negeri Sembilan is in fact a pondan from Bogang named Zainal, whom I interviewed in January 1988.
I first met Zainal in 1979 or 1980, but it was not until my second period of research that I had the opportunity to talk with him at length. I had run into him at a village wedding, in December 1987, and had taken pictures of the bride he helped make up, which I later sent to him along with an invitation to come to the house for lunch. Zainal arrived sporting eyeliner and toting a large imitation-leather bag of the sort made for slide projectors and accessories, and a bag containing three photo albums of his work. The first bag contained various items of women's jewelry—necklaces, chokers, belts, gold pins, etc.—and a ceremonial dagger (keris ), the kain sengkit that grooms wear around their waists, some colored eggs (bungga telor ), and miscellaneous items he uses in his professional capacity as mak andam . The photo albums, for their part, contained pictures of various brides he had made up, photos and clippings of wedding gifts and bridal chambers that he uses to help people decide what they want to have done for their weddings, and some newspaper and magazine clippings featuring stories about his work.
Among the very first things Zainal mentioned to me as he sat down and began unpacking his things was that he was "very gifted," that he had been aware of this from an early age, and that God had given him his special talents. His father, who eventually became a high-ranking member of the Survey Department, had also been very clever at school, and had in fact been raised by a "white person" from the time he was fifteen or so until he was about seventeen.
Although both his parents are from Rembau, Zainal grew up in various areas of the country (but never in a village) and has traveled widely. His mother (still living) resides within the confines of Bogang, he said, but she really doesn't know anything about "village ways" of making a living. In fact, she never planted rice, tapped rubber, or raised animals because "she never had to do any of these things." By way of rounding out the
picture, Zainal added that each and every one of his (six or seven) siblings has high status: One is a lawyer, one has a Ph.D., another is in the army (or married to a high-ranking army officer), and so on.
When Zainal was in school he didn't have to study very hard, and he soon realized that he had a flair for making decorations on special days at school, and for the field of decoration generally. Eventually this led him into the business of mak andam , which he began professionally in about 1969. At first he didn't charge the women who asked him to make themselves up, though sometimes they would give him a few ringgit . Later he began charging for his services, and at the time of the interview he made a fair amount (he did not specify how much) from this line of business, though his full-time job was at the Survey Department. His fee for a village wedding was usually around M$400 (though he sometimes did them for free), but he charged much more for the weddings of urban Malays, particularly since his fees were structured in part around what people could afford and included the cost of materials used to adorn both the bride and the bridal chamber. One of the most expensive weddings he helped arrange was that of the child of a large housing developer in Seremban. The bridal chamber alone cost more than M$30,000, mostly for the price of an imported Italianate bed.
Zainal's work has taken him throughout the Peninsula and to other countries as well. Much of his overseas travel is in connection with his involvement in a Negeri Sembilan cultural organization, which has sponsored his trips to Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, and Turkey. He has also been to Hong Kong, though that may have been a pleasure trip, courtesy of a British friend (an estate manager), who paid his way. The impression I got was that the estate manager was gay and that he and Zainal were lovers for a while (perhaps before Zainal got married), though Zainal never came out and said this.
Zainal mentioned a few times that he was the only male mak andam in all of Negeri Sembilan, and that he was also the best known of all mak andam (women included) in the entire state. As for why other males didn't become mak andam , Zainal said that they might be embarrassed to do this kind of thing because it was regarded as women's work, but he had no other comments on the subject.
In response to one of my questions, Zainal explained that he recited incantations and prayers to enhance the beauty of the bride, to make her more radiant and attractive, and that he also applied special oils that had been passed down to him for this purpose. The incantations and prayers were nothing elaborate, he assured me, but they did make the bride look
better. Such things were not used on janda (widows and divorcées), however, since they were "already old" and "aren't pretty anymore" (tak cantik lagi ).
Zainal also mentioned (this, too, in response to one of my questions on the subject) that people occasionally asked him for advice on sexual matters. These requests for information typically came from those who "haven't mixed much," like village girls who had never worked in factories, for they did not usually receive any advice or information about sex or physical intimacy from their mothers, or from anyone else. As a consequence, they really didn't know how to behave when they were approached for the first time by their husbands, and they were understandably scared, he said, adding "we were scared at first too, right?" (kita pun takut mula-mula juga, bukan? ). But Zainal didn't usually bring up sexual matters, because he didn't think it was his place to do so. And he worried about his reputation: "What would people think of me if I just started talking to them about sexual matters? They would surely think that is very inappropriate."
I was not very successful getting Zainal to elaborate on the symbolism of wedding attire, or various aspects of wedding ceremonies, but he did raise a few interesting points. He used the expression raja sehari (literally, "king [and/or queen] for a day") when talking of the bride and groom on the day of their wedding. The notion that bride and groom are like royalty on their wedding is widespread, but I don't recall anyone using this specific term before (though it appeared in one or more of the clippings Zainal had with him). Zainal mentioned as well that it was inappropriate if the bride laughed or even had her mouth open while she and the groom "sit in state" (bersanding ). Laughing in particular was a clear sign of losing control and indicated cheekiness; that is, it brought her morals into question, as is true elsewhere in Southeast Asia as well (Jaspan 1969).
On the symbolism of the eggs (bungga telor ) that figure prominently at weddings, Zainal said only that eggs were displayed and given to guests since "people like them," and since "they feel especially honored and pleased when they are given them." But he added nothing more. I asked about the possibility of eggs being symbols of fertility and prosperity, and he seemed to think this quite plausible. I also went through the gender interview with Zainal, thinking that he might have a unique perspective. As indicated by the synopsis of the interview (see chapter 6), he did not.
Prompted perhaps by my questions on gender and sexuality, Zainal went into considerable detail about genitalia and related matters. When I asked him about circumcision, for example, he said that this was done
because it was very unbecoming to have a "long penis that just hung down there like that" (he indicated with his finger), adding that it wasn't clean or healthy either, since "all that stuff just collects there." Zainal then related a story about one of his non-Malay friends (the British estate manager), who wasn't circumcised. Zainal chastised him for being uncircumcised, and so he (the friend) ultimately agreed to undergo the surgery while he was back in England. He then proceeded to send Zainal pictures of his newly circumcised penis, one berdiri ("standing up") and one duduk ("sitting" or "lying down"). This was related with much laughter on Zainal's part, though he was watching my reactions closely to see what I thought of his story. The friend in question was apparently the same man who had invited Zainal to Hong Kong (all expenses paid), and who later asked Zainal to come to Los Angeles and stay with him. Zainal was a bachelor at the time and considered the invitation very seriously. But when he told his mother about the possibility of his going to America, she cried and cried; so he decided not to go, especially since his father was quite ill at the time.
Zainal also told me that he has a "gay friend" (his expression), a Christian, as I recall, who lives in Melaka or Port Dickson and hosted the big New Year's Eve party that Zainal attended. Zainal emphasized that he "loved parties," and that he stayed at this one until about 2 A.M. His response to my question about whether he took his wife to the party was "no," to which he added, "there are some things that you just don't talk about with your wife, right?" At about the same time in the conversation, he said that one of his friends (the gay Christian again?) had lots of pornographic magazines and some pornographic videos as well, one of which showed people at various "nude [night] clubs." Zainal mentioned that he had been concerned about where to keep all the magazines, and that it would have been unfortunate if someone had found them, so he gave them away to friends.
It was, I think, during this part of the conversation that Zainal asked about "free sex" (his expression) in America, but, for better or worse, I didn't provide much information on the subject.[13] I should perhaps add that I never asked Zainal if he considered himself (or realized that others regarded him as) a pondan . Nor did I broach any other topics bearing on pondan . The main reason for not addressing any such issues is that, at the time, it seemed impolite and otherwise inappropriate to do so.
As the afternoon wore on, I grew tired. Zainal, however, continued to be very animated, though he may have eventually sensed that my energy was waning. Before leaving, he offered to dress Ellen and me in formal
wedding attire, promising to make us up very elaborately. He would need a bit of advance notice, however, and the evening would be best. He would dress us in our home, thus making sure that the outfits and decorations fit well with the decor and style of our house. Zainal also insisted that we come up to Seremban and spend the night, and that we would have lots of fun cooking, eating, and talking together. He added that he would be very upset if we went back to America without first saying good-bye.
A number of themes emerge from my interview with Zainal, but I will confine my comments to a few of the more basic issues. Among the things that struck me most forcefully during the interview with Zainal was how articulate and cosmopolitan he was, and how proud he was both of his accomplishments as a mak andam , and of his enviable status (both ascribed and achieved) in general. His status concerns were expressed toward the beginning of the interview, when he laid out his genealogy and cultural pedigree, along with his broad travel experiences and the educational attainments and professional accomplishments of his siblings and their spouses. It is significant that Zainal's masculinity and overall status were by no means compromised by the fact that he was a pondan ; indeed, he derived considerable esteem from the role of mak andam , which, especially in the case of male mak andam , is clearly linked to the status of pondan . This situation contrasts rather markedly with what one finds in Western societies, where gender crossing of any variety typically entails a loss of status (stigma).
Gender crossing in Western societies is invariably viewed (particularly in official discourse) in strongly negative terms, as highly "unnatural," an abominable violation of God's will. It does, moreover, elicit ambivalence, hostility, and, on occasion, violent outbursts from non-gender-crossers, especially males. Such is not the case among Malays, or most other Southeast Asians, who, as noted earlier, display a relatively accepting, accommodating, and "relaxed" attitude toward such phenomena. That Malays and other Southeast Asians do not seem very threatened by gender crossing is probably related to the fact that gender is not all that strongly marked in most domains of Southeast Asian society and culture; and that, as such, behavior which blurs the boundaries of gender categories is less problematic and threatening with respect to the basic (relatively ungendered) structure of the universe. The question of markedness aside, gender categories are not arranged in a strongly asymmetric fashion (male and female are viewed in many contexts as complementary, not hierarchical) and do not constitute the foundation of social hierarchy; hence, gender crossing does not pose a serious challenge to the basic social hierarchy,
which is structured in terms of descent, age, birth order, and, in recent times, social class.
Local attitudes toward pondan might well be decidedly less accommodating if the majority of pondan and other gender crossers were female. They might also be far less accommodating if there were gender crossers living full time in Bogang, especially if such crossers were, in addition, engaged in publicly recognized and acknowledged homosexual liaisons.[14] Inquiries along these lines are certainly worth pursuing, but unfortunately they are beyond the scope of the present discussion.
I mentioned earlier that sexual orientation is not a primary marker of the pondan category. I should note, though, that some pondan wear their sexuality on their sleeves. Such was clearly the case with Zainal, whom I (and Ellen) assumed from the outset was homosexual, and in any case, was far more interested in talking about sexuality and (male) genitalia than any Malay I have ever encountered. Some of this may well have been related to his being a pondan . (Bogang's two other pondan are also decidedly "cheeky" by Malay standards.) Also relevant perhaps is that Zainal clearly viewed me as a Westerner and a Christian to boot, someone who was "free," like him, of many sexual and gender constraints, and thus appropriately positioned to discuss sexual matters.
The overall situation I have described here may soon change. For while pondan are certainly tolerated and accepted in village society, the past few years have seen concerted efforts by Islamic reformers and various state governments to crack down on and ultimately eliminate transsexuals, transvestites, and all other types of gender crossers—and thus to "clean up" male sexualities and locally defined masculinities alike. These efforts include legislation as well as scholarly conferences, some of which were held at the University of Malaya while I was in the field in 1987. A spokesman at one such conference went on record as saying that transsexualism (being a mak nyah ) is an act of God, and that transsexuals should be accepted by the Muslim community—" Islam always opens its door to everyone "—particularly since "they don't have any control over their situation."[15]
He added, however, that the Islamic stand on the mak nyah question was very clear since Islam divides humans into two categories: male and female; and that problems necessarily arise when a transsexual tries to behave or dress like a woman, or take hormone pills, all of which is forbidden in Islam. Thus, while "these people require guidance, sympathy and fair treatment from all quarters," "efforts should be made to bring them to the right path" (i.e., "they should be convinced that they are men");
"Islam recognizes them as men and hence they should be treated as men."[16]
In addition to sponsoring scholarly conferences focusing on mak nyah and pondan , the state has introduced legislative measures to help realize its goals in this area. The state of Kelantan recently passed laws making it an offense for Muslim men to dress or act like women in public. The state of Penang was seeking to enact similar laws during the period 1987-88, so as to broaden its ability to act against transvestites. Under existing legislation, authorities in Penang could only act against transvestites caught or suspected of "soliciting." In certain areas of Penang, the Department of Religious Affairs, with the cooperation of the police, conducted one or two raids in the area every month, though this was also an effort to curtail (heterosexual) prostitution.
Legislative changes such as these will probably be introduced in Negeri Sembilan and other states as well. Similarly, it seems reasonable to assume that the next few years will also see an increase in federal regulations aimed at better regulating and perhaps eliminating all types of gender crossing, such as the 1983 ruling that forbade sex-change operations among all Muslims in the country.[17]
Recent legislation and other moves against pondan and mak nyah are profitably viewed alongside contemporary legislative and other initiatives aimed at exercising greater control over the body, and the bodies of women in particular. Ong (1987, 1988, 1990a, 1990b), among others, provides incisive analyses of some of these issues, so I need not elaborate here. I would simply emphasize a point that is more often than not dealt with implicitly rather than explicitly—or otherwise effectively glossed over—in the literature as a whole: Even if we are concerned primarily with women (as opposed to gender), we need to keep squarely within our analytic view the ways in which state policies and discourses affect (and are likely to affect) the bodies and sexualities of both women and men (a theme to which I return in a moment). It is important to bear in mind, too, that the legislative and other recent trends at issue have clear antecedents which date back many centuries. Recall here that while women and transvestites (the majority of whom seem to have been male) were highly regarded as ritual specialists throughout much of Southeast Asia during the early part of the period 1400–1680, they experienced a marked decline in status and prestige during the latter part of this period owing to the development of Islam and other Great Religions. For the most part this decline in status did not entail actual stigma, at least in the case of transvestites and other varieties of gender crossers. It is nonetheless true that
at present the sole ritual activity specifically linked with the once sacred role of gender crosser is that of bridal attendant (mak andam ). Recent legislative and other measures of the sort discussed earlier will probably eliminate this link in the not-too-distant future and thus contribute to a further secularization of the role—one which also involves its redefinition as a contaminating (as opposed to sacred) mediator "perversely muddling and enmiring the [increasingly] polar terms of the classical [gender] system" (Stallybrass and White 1986:110). More generally, it appears likely that such measures will contribute to an increased dichotomization of gender, especially since their central goals clearly include the elimination of all mediating categories such as pondan and mak nyah and the simultaneous cleansing ("defeminization") of locally defined masculinities.
Recall, finally, my earlier point that our analytic gaze needs to be focused on the ways in which state policies and discourses affect (and are likely to affect) the bodies and sexualities of women and men. The more encompassing theme here is two-fold. First, femininity, masculinity, and mediating categories such as pondan and mak nyah are dialectically related elements of a single system, an understanding of which fully requires us to give due attention to each of its major components. And second, that system is most usefully analyzed in relation to the vicissitudes of political economy and historical change, including, in particular, the reproduction and transformation of the criteria and axes entailed in the allocation of prestige and stigma. For further substantiation of these broad contentions we need only consider the case study presented in the following section.
A Shotgun Marriage: The Case Of Rubiah And Nordin
The remainder of this chapter is devoted to a description and interpretation of a social drama which occurred in Bogang in September 1979 and which provides poignant testimony to many of the themes of continuity and transformation in local society and culture that were outlined in the preceding discussion. The precipitating events involved a violation of sexual and moral codes on the part of Rubiah, a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, and Nordin, a twenty-five-year-old man who had grown up in Bogang but was now residing in Singapore. The climax of the social drama was the hastily orchestrated "shotgun wedding" (bidan terjun ),[18] which, it was hoped, would help put a good face on both the principal actors and their respective households and kin. The wedding, as we shall see, was deeply infused with pathos on account of the palpable humiliation and shame
that enveloped the households and relatives of Rubiah and Nordin. More generally, the wedding helps illustrate some of the ways in which prestige and stigma are allocated in a contemporary setting.
Confession and Options
Bogang seemed (deceptively) quiet and calm when we returned after spending a few days in Kuala Lumpur. What we didn't know was that shortly after coming back to the village (on the evening of 12 September 1979), Rubiah, a shapely and otherwise extremely striking fifteen-year-old schoolgirl who was about to sit for her LCE (Lower Certificate Examination), acknowledged that she had had sexual relations with Nordin, the young man who had long lived behind her house but had recently moved to Singapore. This sparked a tremendous crisis and a veritable flurry of activity geared toward finding out what exactly had transpired between Rubiah and Nordin, and what to do next.
Rubiah was forced to acknowledge her transgression as a result of having told her (adoptive) mother,[19] Kakak (R.), that she "didn't want to go to school anymore" and "wanted to get married." Her mother in turn told her own (adoptive) mother-in-law (Rubiah's [adoptive] grandmother), who immediately went over to "shake the whole story out of her." Rubiah confessed to her, adding that the fellow in question was the one who used to live right behind her house. Soon thereafter the grandmother, accompanied by another female elder, went to the young man's house (he happened to be home for the weekend) to see what he had to say. He admitted that he and Rubiah had had sex.
When Rubiah's (adoptive) father, Abang (S.), was informed of all this, he exploded in a rage, enough so to seriously frighten both his wife and (adoptive) mother, among others. He had to be restrained, lest he make good on his threat to "go after Rubiah and kill her," and "do in" the boy as well. His (adoptive) parents tried to calm him down, but their efforts were largely unsuccessful, so they spirited Rubiah away to their house, where she remained for the next day and a half or so. Meanwhile, Abang screamed and fought with his wife, trading accusations with her that Rubiah had not been brought up properly. The intensity of his initial reaction was all the more ominous since Abang had a well-deserved reputation both for being extremely moody and volatile (he was, I think, manic depressive) and for having a taste for liquor,[20] which is widely regarded as inducing uncontrollable behavior. Moreover, everyone knew that Abang's father had killed a man whom he suspected of having sexual relations
with his (the father's) wife, a crime for which he had been hung. People tend to assume that patterns of behavior such as these "run in families." And so they do, at least in some cases, for, as is a matter of public record, Abang had once pummeled a local haji (my landlord) whom he suspected (rightfully so, apparently) of having had an affair with his wife.[21]
There was no universally acceptable solution to the problems posed by Rubiah and Nordin's transgression, particularly since there was very bad blood between Rubiah's parents and Nordin's relatives. There were, however, three courses of action that emerged as possibilities, each of which received backing from different members of the community.
First, lodge a complaint with the police against the young man and have him thrown in jail, presumably on charges of zina (illicit fornication), which is a clearly demarcated and very serious offense both in religious law and in local custom. This was the "harshest" course of action, and the one favored by Abang's (natural) mother, his other (matrilineal) relatives, and apparently Abang as well.
Second, see if Rubiah and Nordin "wanted to get married," and, assuming that they did, make immediate arrangements for a wedding feast sponsored by Rubiah's parents. This was the most "conciliatory" course of action, and the alternative favored by Rubiah's mother, Kakak.
And third, arrange for a simple marriage ceremony at the village mosque and forego the feast. This was a compromise between the first and second options, which would bestow Islamic legitimacy on the union, but would nonetheless render the marriage more or less illegitimate, or at least heavily stigmatized, from the point of view of local custom. This was the alternative favored by Abang's (adoptive) father, Pak Daud, who was also the village headman.
The second option (favored by Rubiah's mother), won out, much to the dismay of Abang, his relatives, and many others. Rubiah and Nordin claimed that they did indeed "want to get married," so preparations began almost immediately for the marriage ceremony and wedding feasts that were to be held on the following day.
I went over to Abang's house to talk with him about what was going on, and found him sitting alone on the verandah, staring off into space and occasionally shaking his head and lighting a cigarette. This was very unlike Abang, who was usually extremely talkative and almost always enjoyed clowning around and playing to a crowd. When I climbed up onto the verandah, Abang greeted me by telling me that he was very distressed, that his body and blood were "hot," and that his head was spinning. His
eyes were red and puffy since he had been crying much of the day, and he continued to complain of being extremely hot and uncomfortable on account of his emotional state. He looked more glum than I had ever seen him; far more so in fact than when his father-in-law had died some six months earlier.
Abang told me that all of his (matrilineal) relatives were furious with the way things were being worked out; they did not think a wedding feast was appropriate, and, as noted earlier, they thought that Abang should have simply lodged a complaint with the police and had the boy thrown in jail. Further compounding Abang's grief was the fact that he was short of money, especially since he had used up all his accumulated resources in connection with the recent celebration of Hari Raya Puasa (Aidilfitri).
Abang was obviously not in a particularly talkative mood, though when his (adoptive) aunt wandered onto the verandah, he began talking quite heatedly, saying that he had raised up Rubiah from the time when she was "no bigger than his forearm," had always provided for her and taken care of her schooling, clothes, and food, and "now she did this " to him. He added that Nordin used to "bother" (kacau ) Rubiah at school, but it was not exactly clear what he meant by this, for he also said that whatever occurred between Rubiah and Nordin had happened on more than one occasion, and with Rubiah's consent.
Abang's aunt tried to soothe Abang and calm him down. She instructed him to recite Koranic passages, and she proceeded to do so herself, with the apparent aim of lending a semblance of tranquillity to the situation. But Abang could not sit still for long, so after a while he excused himself, evidently to get a bottle of liquor, which he walked through the house with a few minutes later.
Abang's frail, largely blind, and nearly deaf mother-in-law, who rarely makes her feelings known, was also visibly angry and distressed by the turn of events. Echoing a refrain I heard on many occasions, she lamented that children nowadays were very difficult to raise. The problems were especially acute in this case, she explained, since she was nearly blind, so much so in fact that when people passed by or came into the house, she didn't know who they were or "whether they are people or ghosts." To this she added, "Once Rubiah and Nordin leave the village they might as well stay away forever; this is what they deserve. However they make a living or fare in general is none of my concern; I am not going to worry about them."[22]
Preparations and Wedding
Shotgun weddings, like funerals, usually involve feasts and expenditures for which little if any advance planning is possible. Thus, women who attend feasts associated with shotgun weddings and funerals typically bring as contributions to help defray expenses not only small containers of uncooked rice (which are standard fare in "regular marriages"), but also gifts of coconuts. Some brought only a few, others many more. Coconuts, which are widely used in curing rituals for their "cooling" properties, would seem a significant item to "cool" the event, though this was not something anyone commented upon.
The women were busy cutting up pineapple, washing and otherwise preparing the meat, vegetables, and other items of food, and talking among themselves about the turn of events. One woman informed me that she had played a major role in seeing that justice was done, although the way she expressed it was more on the order of "I caught them." I also learned that Rubiah was three months pregnant. Though she was not yet "showing," this seemed to be one of the reasons why there was little if any talk of postponing the wedding until after she sat for her LCE.
The feast itself began around 8 P.M. I showed up shortly after 7 P.M., having been instructed by Abang to come over then, only to find that no other men (besides Abang) were there, and only a half dozen or so women. Within an hour's time, a few other men appeared and were invited up onto the verandah to eat. The side dishes accompanying the rice included a fair amount of meat and dishes of anchovies, squash, string beans, pickle, and plain hot water as a beverage. There was enough food to go around, but it was clearly an extremely low-budget affair, and obviously little care had gone into the preparation of the food. Thus, there was no tea, the dishes weren't sufficiently spiced—spiciness of dishes being an index of expenditure and prestige—and there were no desserts or garnishings to speak of. No one commented publicly on such things, however, since to have done so would have been highly inappropriate.
Abang's mother and some of the young girls present served the food and watched to see when the plates needed refilling, but this was done in a perfunctory fashion, with very little talk and no joking or lighthearted conversation whatsoever. More generally, the air was thick with gloom and despair, and the overall atmosphere was even more depressing than it had been at the funeral feast for Abang's father-in-law that I had attended there some months earlier. For that matter, Abang's father left right after he finished eating, thus registering his disgust with the whole affair. So,
too, did many of the other males who showed up later, although a few of them returned toward the end of the evening, when Nordin, accompanied by his friends, relatives, and representatives appeared at Abang's house for the marriage ceremony.
In addition to doing virtually all of the cooking and other food preparation that made the feast possible, the women present helped make sure that the wedding ceremony would go off as well as possible under the circumstances. Thus, some of them brought items considered essential for any wedding (e.g., a ceremonial box used to hold small containers of betel, areca, and lime; a bag full of makeup and related paraphernalia; and "wedding quilts"). Abang's mother showed off the bridal chamber, pointing out to me and others how she had helped fix it up. Her acerbic comment on the hastily prepared yet not unattractive chamber summed up her sentiments on the wedding as a whole: "It's not much, but it's enough."
The older women ate inside, after a few groups of men had eaten, and although they were a bit livelier, overall, than the men, they were also quite subdued. (So, too, were the young girls present; e.g., Rubiah's sisters and other female age-mates.) After the older women finished eating, they chewed betel and smoked cigarettes, and doted on a grandson, who had just learned to walk. This achievement was greeted with much approval, and a great deal of clucking and cooing, particularly since the young boy was from the wealthiest and most prestigious lineage in the entire village.
As time wore on, people began wondering aloud—and expressing palpable anxiety about—where the imam was and whether he had been able to get in touch with Rubiah's elder brother, who lived in Kuala Lumpur and who was to serve as Rubiah's wali ("Islamic guardian") in the marriage ceremony. In most cases, the bride's biological father serves as wali , but Rubiah' s biological father had died some years earlier, thus precluding such a possibility. (Even if Abang had been related by blood to Rubiah, it is not certain that he would have consented to serve as wali .) The imam had been sent off to Kuala Lumpur earlier in the day to locate the brother, but no one had heard from him since he left, so no one knew what was going on, or even if the wedding would actually take place.
Finally at about 10:30, shortly after the bilal (muezzin) had appeared at Abang's house, the imam showed up. He was soaking wet and looking very disheveled and undignified on account of having traveled to and from Kuala Lumpur in heavy rain, but much to everyone's relief he had succeeded in finding Rubiah's brother and obtaining the relevant signature. Had the imam failed to locate Rubiah's brother, or failed to secure his consent to the wedding, it would have been necessary to postpone the
marriage. This, in turn, would have required another feast and additional expenditures, which Abang could ill afford. The elation over the imam's successful mission was short-lived, however, for as soon as he went home to eat, bathe, and prepare himself for the marriage ceremony, an air of gloom and frustration settled over the assembled group.
As for Rubiah, no one had seen her all evening since she had been sequestered at her grandparents' house, where she had spent the past two days. She made a brief appearance at about 10:30, dressed in the same casual clothes she had apparently been wearing earlier that day. It seemed that she had done little if anything to prepare herself for the wedding, which meant that the celebration, such as it was, would go on for another couple of hours at the least.
Finally Rubiah came back and entered the bridal chamber where she was helped into her clothes by a group of women who worked diligently, and as fast as they could, to coif her hair and apply makeup. Despite their best efforts, this was a slow and laborious process, particularly since the electricity had gone out about a half-hour earlier and there were too few kerosene lanterns to go around. Making matters worse, there was no kerosene on hand on account of a local shortage. Due to all of the delays and the poor lighting (many people sat in the dark), at least half of those present had fallen asleep and were lying about on the floor or propped up in one or another corner.
Midnight came and went, and around 12:30 the women present served another round of food. Shortly thereafter there was much noise and commotion owing to the fact that Nordin and his contingent had been sighted coming from the house next door (where they had just eaten). Nordin was dressed in a "Malay shirt" (baju Melayu ) and loose fitting trousers with an apron the same color as Rubiah's dress, but this hastily arranged outfit included none of the ritual paraphernalia usually donned by grooms (e.g., headgear, keris ). He was accompanied by an attendant (male), five or ten women, and about forty boys and young men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, a good number of whom looked rather unkempt.
As Nordin and his friends took their place on the verandah, there was much noise, but the air of excitement and suspense, not to mention joy, that usually accompanies weddings was clearly lacking. Nordin seated himself with the help of his attendant at the far end of the verandah, near the imam and the bilal . Rubiah's father (Abang) was at the other end of the verandah, virtually hidden by the horde of young boys who scrambled up to watch the proceedings. Nordin's representatives had to be given cues at virtually every stage of the ceremony; Nordin, moreover, appeared to
need to have Rubiah's father pointed out to him, as if he might not know whose hand to shake at the beginning of the proceedings.
Shortly after they had taken their positions on the verandah, the groom's representatives brought out three ten-ringgit bills, took them into the inner room, and then came out and gave them to Mak Lang. She counted them and seemed to hand them over to someone. (I do not recall to whom she gave them.) Of this sum, M$20 was the mas kawin ("marriage gold"). Under normal circumstances, the other M$10 would have been given to the adat leader of the village, but in this case there were no adat officials present let alone involved in the ceremony, and I'm not sure what happened to it.
There were no gifts present and there was no talk or display of the larger sums of money (hantaran, belanja hangus ) that are usually (but in this case were not) given to the bride's relatives by the groom's kin. Similarly, no rings were produced or exchanged, as usually happens in the case of a "regular" marriage. Nor, to my knowledge, did representatives of the two sides share any betel, "long the essence of courtesy and hospitality" among Malays and in much of Southeast Asia generally (Reid 1988:44), though there was some suggestion that betel be shared. And, needless to say, there was no music or dancing of any sort.
The akad nikah part of the ceremony involved the groom repeating a formulaic phrase recited by the imam , which must be done in one breath in order to make it valid. The imam also recited some passages in Arabic, and others prayed shortly thereafter, with their palms in an upward position. Many of the groom's friends did not make even the slightest attempt to pretend they were praying, and, as mentioned earlier, they behaved in a most disrespectful manner throughout the entire ceremony.
After the completion of the akad nikah , Rubiah was led out of the bridal chamber by Mak Lang, who had arranged two plain chairs in the interior room for the newlyweds to sit upon. The chairs were of the card table variety and were covered with simple but attractive pieces of batik. Rubiah took her place on the chair, but since the electricity was out both she and her chair were pushed about for roughly ten minutes so that those outside would be able to see her in the light of the pressure lamp that had been borrowed from a neighbor. This commotion was greeted with much nervous and embarrassed laughter.
Finally, after this agonizing delay, Nordin was invited into the room to join Rubiah and take his place at her side. This he did with a great deal of nervousness, looking as if he would burst out crying, or laughing, at any minute. Rubiah and Nordin sat for a few minutes, staring straight
ahead, facing the group of women and children who had assembled in the interior room. They were then led into the bridal chamber, where they spent the night, which was, I would guess, rather tense.
Aftermath
A few days after the wedding, Nordin said good-bye to Rubiah and returned to Singapore, where he held a job as a laborer, with the understanding that Rubiah would join him there as soon as her papers were in order. By the time Nordin left for Singapore, talk of the tragedy had died down somewhat, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that the talk shifted to issues other than those directly involving Rubiah and Nordin and their breach of propriety, such as the newly established besan (in-law) relationship between the parents of the bride and groom. Much of the talk that I heard was cruel, or at least insensitive, and was frequently accompanied by glints of laughter: for example, "Why is Abang always over at Kakak Nab's watching television, when his besan have a TV and live just next door?" Comments such as these were intended to draw attention to the fact that Abang not only had insufficient resources to purchase or rent a television, but also that his relations with his besan were seriously strained. In short, what was once a very hush-hush matter and an incredible source of embarrassment, shame, and frustration, had now become the source of gallows humor and a tragicomic lesson about the perils of raising up your children in a careless, unthinking way.
Talk of Rubiah and Nordin was revived briefly when Rubiah received a letter from Nordin that contained no money. This was a source of great disappointment and shame, for support of Rubiah is clearly her husband's responsibility at this point, and not Abang's or anyone else's.
In January 1980 Rubiah gave birth to a healthy girl at the local hospital. Her parents had long since effectively disowned her, but there was apparently a large ruckus at the hospital because Rubiah's mother wanted to "take the baby" even though she wanted nothing to do with Rubiah. This was viewed as very bad form by everyone who heard of it. Rubiah's grandmother in particular thought it quite offensive and embarrassing that there had been such a scene.
We visited Rubiah and her baby once or twice before leaving the field (May 1980); the formal reason for one such visit was so that Ellen could give Rubiah the receiving blanket she had knit for her and her new daughter.
Seven Years Later (1987)
The next time we saw Rubiah was in September 1987. We were awakened by the caretaker of the mosque shortly after 5 A.M., as he began summoning people to prayer. Sometimes his calls to prayer were highly sonorous, rather short, and "to the point"; on other occasions, however, they were anything but melodic and went on and on, seemingly forever. This was one of the latter mornings, and the incredibly raspy voice, off-tune "singing," and erratic stops and starts were really irritating, the more so since all of this went on for about fifteen to twenty minutes, more or less nonstop, at a very loud volume. I thought that in the future it might be better to get up with these calls rather than to try unsuccessfully to sleep through them, all the while getting mad at Zachary for not going back to sleep, being irritated with the mosque official (a warm and charming man who we liked very much), and cursing the mosque's loudspeaker.
I decided that I wanted to spend a bit more time with Zachary than had been possible in the past week or so, so I postponed my trip to the Islamic court, which didn't seem all that worthwhile anyway since there were no cases on the docket and since (being Friday) the entire office closed at midday. Having made this decision, I looked forward to a relatively unstructured day.
I suggested to Ellen that we go visit Rubiah out in the New Hamlet (Kampung Baru), since we hadn't seen her yet and wanted to know how she was doing. So shortly after 9 A.M. I changed from sarong into pants, found my umbrella and a few ringgit , and we headed out to Rubiah's.
I carried Zachary through much of the village because I didn't want to dawdle in the heat. There were no shade trees along the road leading from the Old Hamlet to the New Hamlet, so even by 9 A.M. it was extremely hot and the sun bounced off the asphalted road, making the heat all the more unbearable. As always, however, the view from the back road was spectacular, even though the water buffalo that usually roamed around in the (by then largely abandoned) padi fields were not readily visible. From that vantage point, the village looked much as it did before (1978–80), and one did not see any evidence of the recent changes that had taken place. On the other side, looking toward Mt. Rembau, the hills rose up out of the morning mist, thick with foliage and forest, seemingly resistant to all that occurred below.
We reached the turn-off to the New Hamlet after the short walk along the asphalted road, and noticed that the old kedai that had been on the left, on the near side of the turn-off, was no longer there. In its place was
a much larger and seemingly new house that looked like no one lived in it yet. As we came to a house on the left side of the road, I asked the young woman there where Rubiah's house was. At first, she didn't seem to know who I was talking about, probably because Rubiah is most commonly known either by her nickname or her birth-order name. I explained that I was referring to Kakak R.'s daughter, and she said, "Oh yes, up there a bit. Take the lane off to the left, before you get to the brightly colored gate." We headed down the lane, wondering if we had it right, and came to an open area that contained a small house which was set off from the ones in front and back, and which had a primitive run-down bathing area in the foreground, along with three cows tethered to stakes and a few goats in a pen. We noticed a young woman bathing and I whispered to Ellen, "Is that Rubiah?" I thought it might be her because she was rather tall and slender by local standards, and because she looked as I remembered her from before. There was a little girl bathing with her, and Rubiah (or whoever it was) appeared to be naked although I couldn't see clearly. Actually I could see into the bathing area pretty well, all things considered, and I thought back to the day long ago when Ellen and I had been walking past Rubiah's mother's house and had seen the mother bathing in the nude, albeit within the confines of her poorly built bathing area. This had startled us since we had never seen that much bare skin in the village. In both cases, the circumstances of these women's poverty precluded their having more substantial bathing areas, and did, as a consequence, expose them to the gazes of passers-by.
The young woman turned around as we said "Is that Rubiah?" Before she answered, we knew it was her, for she displayed the same beautiful features we had remembered. At the same time we were struck, indeed appalled, because the warm smile greeting us revealed that Rubiah, now aged twenty-three, had already lost four of her (upper) front teeth. Our strong reactions undoubtedly reflected our own standards of beauty but also our pity for the circumstances of her present living conditions.
Rubiah was very pleased to see us, but she also seemed embarrassed, perhaps because it was after 9 A.M. and she and her daughter were just now beginning to bathe and start the day. She apologized profusely for being in the middle of her bath and for rising late, and shouted instructions to the children in the house to wake up their father. He wasn't working today, Rubiah told us, and had slept in.
Rubiah and Nordin's house is, by local standards, both small and exceedingly cramped, and adorned with only the barest essentials. There is no electricity or kerosene stove, there are no tables or chairs, and many
of the conveniences found in other village houses are altogether absent. The house also rests on the ground, rather than on stilts, and the foundation is built of ill-fitting cinder blocks that look rather hastily slapped together. Nordin may have built the house himself, for he has some experience in construction. In any event, the contrast between Rubiah's home and living standards and those of the wealthiest segment of the community struck us with considerable force as we approached.
Nordin got up as we entered the house and apologized for rising so late, adding that he wasn't working today and that he had been at the prayer house until late the previous evening. He went out to relieve himself and came back and sat down. We talked for a bit and then Rubiah came into the house, wearing a sarong , an old t-shirt, and a pair of very stylish glasses that reminded us of her more carefree days as a schoolgirl.
We talked about the seven years that had passed since we had last seen each other, and about their four children (two girls, two boys). The eldest, born shortly before we left the field in 1980, was now seven; the youngest, about two, was born with a hole in his heart and was rather small, frail, and feeble for his age. He had just learned to walk, they told us, and "can't yet run." Nordin bragged that the five-year-old boy was a "hero" (he used the English word), by which he meant "a tough guy"; the daughters, he added proudly, were "heroine" (his word), by which he seems to have meant strong and rugged.
Rubiah's comments about her children were decidedly less upbeat than Nordin's. She mentioned, for example, that one of her daughters (it wasn't clear to us which one she meant) is subject to spirit possession (kena hantu ) (see chap. 4). Ellen and I were quite taken aback by this, for we had never heard of anyone that young being afflicted by spirits. The daughter's condition was noted in connection with why Rubiah and Nordin had moved from Jelebu after living there for a few months; apparently her (spiritual) health required it.
Rubiah also informed us rather matter-of-factly that she didn't go out of the house much. "Four children are an awful lot of work, and only one of them is in school," which meant that Rubiah was at home with three of them all of the time. Rubiah, who, it will be recalled, dropped out of school when she was fifteen, underscored that she was very upset with the poor quality of English teaching at the local school, and that she really hoped her children would learn English. She also mentioned having bought them a small Malay-English dictionary to help them in their studies.
Nordin, for his part, spent much of his time working as a laborer,
though he also tapped rubber. I had seen him riding through the village on his motorcycle, with an imposing chainsaw slung across his legs, and I knew that he felled trees for people who wanted their houseplots cleared of old growth (e.g., coconut trees that were no longer healthy or productive). He also dug trenches and graves, and engaged in the seasonal harvesting of petai (a type of large, green bean), which he sold. His earnings from these sources, which constituted the household's total income, came to about M$300 a month.
The receiving blanket that Ellen knitted for Rubiah shortly before the birth of her first child also came up in conversation. Rubiah and Nordin mentioned that they still had it, so we asked to see it and they brought it out. They had obviously taken very good care of it, for it was in excellent shape (save for a small hole). It could well have been one of their prize possessions, along with their imitation-silver tea service, Nordin's motorcycle, and the chainsaw that he either owned or rented.
Our conversation with Rubiah and Nordin was rendered rather difficult because Zachary was not all that enthusiastic about staying indoors, as he made clear to us by his whining. I took him out to play with the other children and tried to distract him with the cows and the goats that were lolling about the yard. Unfortunately, however, the cows frightened him, and he frightened the goats, who ran away from him as he approached. Zachary finally agreed to stay outdoors with the other children, but after about ten minutes of running about, he appeared at the front door whimpering, with a look of horror on his face, and fresh green cowshit covering the entire front of his body. He had slipped on and literally fallen into one of the large puddles of cowshit that dotted the garden area in front of the house, and was thoroughly disgusted and traumatized by the malodorous green goo sticking to his entire front side. As Ellen rushed him off to the well to clean him up, we tried not to think of tetanus and such, or about the effects that this incident might have on someone in an intense phase of toilet training. While Zachary was soon clean enough, he was humiliated, and completely soaked from the buckets of well water that Ellen had used to help wash him off.
It was about this time that Nordin instructed Rubiah to make us some tea. Once I realized she was starting to build a fire to boil water, I emphasized that "it wasn't necessary, that we hadn't come to drink tea." Refusals of reciprocity couched in these terms are acceptable if they come from fellow Malays, so I had started using them whenever they seemed appropriate. I really didn't want to stay for another hour anyway, which is what we would have been expected to do if we had accepted the offer to drink
tea. Nordin also asked Rubiah to find out about some cakes (kueh bulat ) they had, but I insisted that it wasn't necessary, and that the fruit they had shared with us was more than sufficient (and much appreciated).
As we prepared to leave, we impressed upon Rubiah and Nordin that we hoped they would come visit us. Though they promised to do so, I later realized that they most likely never would, for our home was located deep in the heart of "enemy territory" as far as Nordin was concerned. Indeed, it was centrally located in the area of the village associated with the lineage (perut darat ) which had been feuding with Nordin's lineage (perut tengah ) since the mid-1960s (see Peletz 1988b, chap. 9). (It was young Nordin's theft of sugar cane from a fellow clansman associated with the darat lineage, and the excessive retaliation that followed, that sparked the crisis in the first place.) Nordin's lineage, moreover, was strongly associated with the opposition party (PAS), whereas most members of the darat lineage were UMNO stalwarts. Included in the latter category was the former village headman (my adoptive father) who lived right next door. He also happened to be Rubiah's grandfather, and it was his wife, recall, who had shaken the story out of Rubiah in the first place. If only on this account, a visit to this part of the village would undoubtedly revive painful memories for Nordin and Rubiah alike.
Walking back to our house was rather tiring since it had grown very hot and since Zachary needed to be carried most of the way. As we made our way home, we were forcefully struck by the sharp socioeconomic contrasts in the village, which were sometimes easy for us to forget both because they were often muted if not altogether denied by villagers of all socioeconomic backgrounds, and because we lived and spent much of our time in the wealthiest and most prestigious part of the community. In some ways even more striking than such contrasts, however, was the fact that Rubiah and Nordin were still together after seven years of marriage. Divorce is exceedingly common in communities such as Bogang (more than two-thirds of all marriages in the village end in divorce), and it is especially pronounced among the poorer segments of the community. Most unions that end in divorce do so within the first seven years of marriage; yet Rubiah and Nordin had endured this difficult period, despite the tragic circumstances of their wedding and the attendant stresses and tensions associated with them.
I cannot offer a definitive statement as to why Rubiah and Nordin managed to remain married, and thus beat the odds, though their residence in the New Hamlet, far from the potential meddling of Rubiah's in-laws (who lived in the Old Hamlet) certainly helped. All was not rosy,
however, for five or six months after our visit to their house I came across documents at the Islamic magistrate's office which indicated that Nordin had repudiated Rubiah, who was by this time eight months pregnant, by pronouncing the standardized divorce formula ("I divorce you with one talak " [repudiation]). The written statement provided by Nordin, no doubt with the help of clerks at the magistrate's office, reads as follows:
I married Rubiah on September 17, 1979. We have four children; the eldest is nine, the youngest is three; and at present my wife is eight months pregnant. On January 13, 1988, after digging a grave, I returned home and took a bath. My wife's sister came over and said that I had slandered her. Because of this we had a misunderstanding, and in a state of anger I repudiated my wife with one talak . After doing this, my wife and I still stayed in the same house. We decided to reconcile and register the divorce [and the reconciliation] at the kadi's quickly, but for reasons relating to work we were late. This wasn't intentional.
Like many such accounts, this is undoubtedly an extremely sanitized version of the problems Rubiah and Nordin experienced in their marriage. The local grapevine had it that Nordin and Rubiah fought more than occasionally, and that in the course of these arguments Nordin sometimes struck Rubiah. A day or two before we left the field, moreover, Rubiah's father (Abang) came to the house, ostensibly to say good-bye, and spent most of his time telling me that he and Nordin had just had yet another argument, and that in the heat of the moment, Nordin had unsheathed and brandished his parang in a most threatening way. Though Abang had refrained from unsheathing his own parang in response, he told me in no uncertain terms that he would not tolerate this type of thing in the future. This was the last conversation I had with Abang, and the last I heard of Rubiah and Nordin.
Commentary
The social drama sparked by Rubiah's confession that she had had sex with Nordin raises a number of issues that warrant detailed analysis, but I will confine my comments here to a few of the more salient themes in this drama and the light they shed on patterns of continuity and change. My main concerns are to explain why the transgression engendered such a crisis, why Rubiah's parents in particular were so distressed by the whole affair, and why Rubiah's father, Abang, was especially stigmatized by the events surrounding the wedding. Before turning to such matters, I
provide a brief discussion of the roles played by women in arranging the marriage and overseeing the actual wedding and attendant feast.
The Centrality of Women
Women (especially Rubiah's mother) played a central role both in arranging the marriage in the first place, and in managing the organization of the actual feast and the appropriate ritual activities. Recall that in terms of the initial alternatives that villagers envisioned as "solutions" to the problems created by Rubiah and Nordin (e.g., lodge a complaint against Nordin and have him thrown in jail; arrange for a simple ceremony at the mosque and forego the feast), the one that was settled upon was favored by Rubiah's mother, but was nonetheless opposed both by Rubiah's father and the latter's father, who was not only the village headman and the head of various secular councils which nowadays constitute the principal organs of community government, but also the most respected healer (dukun ) and repository of ilmu in the village. (I have no information concerning the preferences of Nordin's kin, the locally resident members of whom were mostly female, but I suspect they were in favor of the conciliatory solution favored by Rubiah's mother, since the alternatives would have brought them and their son even more shame.) This indicates considerable continuity with times past, as does the fact that women played the decisive role in actually arranging and overseeing the details of the wedding ceremony and feast.
Noteworthy as well, while women assumed the majority of the practical tasks associated with the wedding and feast, they also took over some (but not all) of the official functions at the wedding, such as the handling of the marriage payment. Such payments are almost invariably handled by men (clan leaders), but since clan leaders were so incensed about the turn of events and were, in addition, embroiled in factional feuding discussed elsewhere (Peletz 1988b, chap. 9). they effectively boycotted the marriage and left such matters to women. Significantly, women had no difficulty assuming these tasks and raised no eyebrows in this regard, though their handling of the marriage payment may well have detracted from the legitimacy of an already dubiously legitimate marriage in the eyes of some villagers. These were exceptional circumstances, however, and like all other exceptions, they "prove(d) the rule" that with respect to marriage and affinal relations the implicit gendered division of labor between official and practical tasks that was documented for the nineteenth
century (see chap. 2) still exists and continues to be a central feature of the ritual division of labor. In this respect, contemporary weddings, including shotgun weddings, are highly congruent with weddings of the past.
In the latter connection it is significant that the imam 's trip to Kuala Lumpur to obtain Rubiah's brother's formal approval for Rubiah's marriage was in many respects a key concern and a focal point of tension and anxiety throughout the evening of the wedding. There was palpable relief when the imam returned to the village and made it known that he had been successful both in locating Rubiah's brother and in securing his consent to the union. As with other aspects of the division of labor between official and practical tasks, the primacy accorded to the imam 's role served to highlight the centrality of male specialists as leading actors in marriage ceremonies and affinal relations generally, thus denying or at least eclipsing the roles of women and the male majority in marriage, affinal relations, and social reproduction on the whole. Here, too, we see considerable continuity with times past.
Why Did Rubiah and Nordin's Transgression(s) Engender Such a Crisis?
There are a number of reasons why Rubiah's parents (and others) were so upset that Rubiah had sex with the boy next door. I will mention five of them.
First, Rubiah violated fundamental sexual and moral codes. To appreciate the gravity of Rubiah's transgression one needs to bear in mind that premarital and extramarital sex of all varieties are both morally reprehensible and severely sanctioned. So, too, as we have seen, are all forms of "illicit proximity" (khalwat ). Significantly, those believed guilty of "illicit proximity" are not necessarily assumed to have engaged in any form of physical contact; for, as Durkheim made clear, mere appearance of the violation of a norm is as reprehensible as the actual violation of the norm. The same is true with respect to tangkap bassah (literally, "a wet catch," or "being caught wet"), the latter being the term which is often used synonymously with "illicit proximity." Such acts, recall, are so morally offensive that individuals assumed to have engaged in them are generally expected and forced to marry one another, unless they are prohibited from doing so by considerations of social relatedness or prior marital status. Perhaps more to the point, Rubiah and Nordin's untoward behavior (engaging in sexual intercourse) clearly went far beyond "illicit proximity."
Second, Rubiah "ruined her life" by getting pregnant and proceeding
to quit school just a few weeks before an important exam (the LCE). Students must pass this exam if they want to go on to the next grade; more importantly, successful completion of the exam is a prerequisite for most types of urban employment, including factory work. Failing the exam (or not sitting for it, which amounts to the same thing) thus precludes meaningful employment outside the village. This means, among other things, that Rubiah was destined to spend much of the rest of her life in the village (or in another rural setting; e.g., Jelebu), rather than in an urban environment.[23]
Third, Rubiah's actions rendered impossible a proper, let alone a lavish, wedding, and thus prevented her parents from realizing what could well have been one of the most socially significant and joyous occasions of their lives. Recall, too, that Rubiah was Abang and Kakak's only daughter (Kakak had another daughter, but this was by a former marriage), which meant that Rubiah "ruined" what was literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Abang and Kakak. Most weddings are planned many months, and in some cases years, in advance and are finely orchestrated affairs calculated to bring the maximum status and prestige to the sponsors of the event and their relatives and supporters. The advance planning is necessary both to accumulate the capital to finance the wedding and to ensure that everything "goes off well." Ideally, this involves extensive advice and other assistance from a gifted and esteemed mak andam like Zainal and also includes: the staining of the bride's and groom's hands and feet with henna in the ritually prescribed fashion; making sure that the bride and groom are attired in dazzling finery (and that the bride is adorned with an elaborate headdress of gold and silver); and seeing to it that the Indic-origin "sitting in state" (bersanding ) of the bride and groom and their circumambulation of their respective households in sedan chairs carried by raucous young men bearing royal regalia—all of which symbolizes their ascension to royalty—is carried out with maximum attention to detail, decorum, and dramatic flair. Sadly, however, most such ritual elements were absent from Rubiah and Nordin's wedding, which was clearly a rather "amateur" production, with no mak andam to oversee it. Absent, too, were the troupes that provide gong and drum music during various phases of wedding ceremonies, the stylized dancing performed for the bride and groom, and the Islamic chanting (dikir ) that sometimes occurs during the beginning of wedding ceremonies. Missing as well were all of the modern additions to weddings which are nowadays commonplace, including, most notably, the teen rock bands that are often hired to attract and entertain guests and to impress upon them the sponsors' facility with
things "modern" (Western). As noted earlier, Rubiah and Nordin's wedding was a decidedly bare-bones affair.
Moreover, while sponsoring a lavish wedding feast provides an opportunity to advance one's claims to status and prestige, it simultaneously enables villagers to reciprocate the generosity of numerous friends and relatives, whose feasts they have attended in the past. Failure to sponsor an appropriate feast, or an appropriately large and lavish feast, which amounts to much the same thing, thus precludes the fulfillment of reciprocal obligations on the part of sponsors.
Rubiah's marriage was not merely a failure with respect to building up her parents' prestige and social capital; it actually had the opposite effect, of depleting their social capital and incurring stigma. One reason for this is that her parents had to borrow a relatively large sum of money from Abang's parents to sponsor the feast. This put a serious strain on the relationship between Abang and his parents, especially since they had laid out a fair amount of money to help finance the funeral of Abang's father-in-law roughly six months earlier. I don't know whether they ever intended to pay back this money, but having to borrow money is a situation that villagers seek to avoid, if only because it is an obvious sign of a lack of wealth and prestige.
Fourth, both the circumstances leading up to the wedding and the wedding itself brought shame and disgrace to relatives and neighbors alike. This was all the more upsetting since Kakak's other daughter (by a previous marriage) had gotten married in distressingly similar circumstances, such that there has yet to be (and never will be) an acceptable marriage within Kakak's household. To make matters worse, Kakak herself had had a brief liaison with Nordin's mother's brother (she was unmarried at the time, he was married) which, when discovered, necessitated a shotgun marriage much like Rubiah's. This was followed by the mother's brother fleeing with his first wife to Singapore, from whence he has never returned.
And fifth, Nordin was a highly undesirable marriage partner for Rubiah, at least—or especially—as far as her parents were concerned. This was so not only because of the bad blood between the two households and the fact that Rubiah's "choice" of marriage partners threw in sharp relief the indiscretions of her mother. It also had to do with the fact that Nordin, though a member of a gentry clan, came from a low status (because poor) household, and was, in addition, "merely a laborer." That he was of such a lowly and ill-paying occupation meant Rubiah's parents could not expect to attain much, if any, status or prestige from his future earnings, and
certainly could not expect to see their own meager house or holdings of land improved or expanded by his labor power or the fruits therefrom. In this respect he differed very little from Rubiah's father, Abang, who was not only a landless laborer, but had also added very little over the years to his wife's holdings. It is thus quite possible that Rubiah's "choice" of marriage partners drove home some of her father's inadequacies as provider and head of household generally.
Abang's Stigma
I have already cited most (but not all) of the factors that contributed to the loss of status and prestige that Abang experienced, and to the stigma he acquired, as a consequence of this sordid affair. The problem for Abang was not simply that he had failed to provide his daughter with a proper upbringing, proper sleeping quarters, proper supervision, and a proper wedding. (All such failures were laid at Kakak's feet as well.) In some ways most embarrassing and stigmatizing was the way he handled himself throughout the whole affair, especially his indulgence of "passion" (nafsu ) which was manifested in his loss of inner restraint and control. Recall that when Abang first heard of his daughter's transgressions he threatened to kill her and Nordin alike (for having disgraced him, sullied his name as a father and a guardian of his daughter's virginity and virtue, etc.), and that he had to be forcibly restrained (and Rubiah spirited away) lest he make good on his threats. Bear in mind, too, that Abang spent much of the wedding day crying and, apparently, drinking as well; and that he was, more generally, widely regarded as being an extremely unpredictable and volatile character who invariably gave in to his angin , or 'winds," and whose moods "wax and wane with the cycles of the moon," as his mother sometimes put it. Behavior and temperamental dispositions of this sort are the antithesis of refinement and virtue for men and women alike, but they are extremely inappropriate on the part of men since men are expected to have more "reason" and less "passion" than women. Abang's behavior thus seriously compromised his standing both as a person of moral virtue and as a virtuous adult male in particular.
Interestingly, shortly after Rubiah's wedding Abang pummeled a man who had been "bothering" his adult sister (a divorcée in her forties who lived in Melaka) and was, as a result, temporarily detained by the police. The circumstances surrounding this beating are not altogether clear, but apparently Abang had been told by his sister or another reliable source that a young man had been panhandling in the vicinity of his sister's
restaurant, and had threatened or otherwise "hassled" the sister for not responding favorably to his requests for money. Abang's violent reaction may well have involved compensation, displacement, or some such (or have been otherwise "overdetermined"), but it is broadly consistent with the value placed on men serving as protectors and guardians of their female kin, especially their sisters and daughters. It was, at the same time, an excessive (amok -like) display of force and an unfortunate example of loss of control, and, as a result, further stigmatized Abang as someone whose actions were guided by "passion" rather than "reason."
Abang's overall temperament and behavioral style are partly responsible for the fact that he has few, if any, allies on whom he can count for support, other than his father (the village headman). He is, more generally, the antithesis of a "big man" (orang besar ) in the sense that he lacks the oratorical skills and refinement that "big men" display and utilize to "get things done" and draw supporters. As such, but also because he is landless and poor, has been largely unsuccessful in guarding both his daughter's and his wife's virtue (recall that during their marriage his wife had an affair with a local haji ), and is apparently impotent as well (none of his marriages produced any natural children), he has few if any symbols to draw upon to help validate his sense of maleness either in his own eyes or in the eyes of the community at large. Indeed, the only symbols that are readily available for this purpose are the large, dangerous snakes to which he makes incessant reference whenever he finds himself with a captive audience. His frequently repeated stories of fighting with and hacking up deadly snakes with his ever ready parang are legendary, as are his accounts of his bravery in the forest. That women and children, who are usually the audience to whom these tales are directed, are far more fearful of snakes (and the forest as a whole) than adult men adds to the effect of such narratives, even though they are often seen, especially by women, as highly exaggerated if not altogether mendacious.
Rubiah and Nordin at Present
Finally, a brief note on Rubiah and Nordin's marital status and current living situation. They are, as noted earlier, living in that section of the village which is known as the New Hamlet, and which is composed primarily of households whose adult female members live at some distance from their natal households (i.e., such women are residing neolocally, not uxorilocally). While this is the major area in Bogang where there is land available for new houses and houseplots, living there has the added advan-
tage, especially in men's eyes, of enabling residents to go about their daily lives without the everyday intrusions and meddlings of women's natal kin. Even so, the affidavit Nordin filed with the local Islamic magistrate cites as the main reason for his repudiation of Rubiah that he was "slandered by her sister," who lives on the other side of the Old Hamlet. Whether or not this accurately sums up the difficulties he and Rubiah experienced in their marriage, it resonates deeply with the culturally elaborated theme that the primary reason for divorce is tension between men and their wives' female kin. It merits note as well that the tensions men feel in their relations with their in-laws are felt most heavily by poor men such as Nordin, for the simple reason that such men are, by virtue of their meager resources and earning power, the least likely to be able to live up to affinal demands on their labor power and productivity.
In these facts we also see considerable continuity with times past. This despite two important historical shifts. First, Rubiah and Nordin's living situation (residing neolocally) differs both from that of previous generations of villagers and from most contemporary residents of Bogang, who reside in one or another of the Old Hamlet's matrilineally defined compounds. And second, Rubiah finds herself in the unenviable and unusual position (relative to most locally resident women) of having no residential or agricultural acreage to call her own, and little if any likelihood of inheriting land from her (poor, largely landless) parents. As such, her dependence on her husband, economically and otherwise, is quite pronounced, much more so than what one finds among most other adult women. This may well be one of the reasons she has stayed with Nordin for the past seven years, even though staying with him has entailed (at least according to the local grapevine) some degree of verbal and physical abuse.
The case of Rubiah and Nordin, along with the other material presented in this chapter, underscores some broader historical themes, the most fundamental of which is that the nineteenth-century system of prestige outlined in chapter 2 remains very much intact. This is true despite the fact that it has lost some of its moral force due to the emergence of new and cross-cutting criteria that accord prestige to wealth, modern education, and the like, rather than descent. Spiritual potency, for example, is still highly valued; and it continues to be one of the main symbols in terms of which prestige differentials between males and females are both conceptualized and rationalized. Thus, men are still believed (by men and women alike) to have stronger "life force," or semangat , and to be more likely to possess mystical knowledge/power (ilmu ). It is also true, however, that gender differences such as these are increasingly cast in the
symbols and idioms of "reason" and "passion" (and "shame"), and are more firmly and asymmetrically entrenched in local society and culture than at any point in times past.
Many of the historical developments discussed here are taken up in greater detail in later chapters. Chapter 5, for example, elaborates on various features of contemporary sexuality and also examines selected aspects of conception and pregnancy in the context of a discussion focusing on the person and the body and the symbols and meanings of "reason," "passion," and "shame." Chapter 6, for its part, is devoted to an analysis of contrasting representations of gender, especially the highly variable ways in which villagers invoke the concepts of "reason," "passion," and "shame" in their representations of masculinity and femininity. Before addressing these topics, however, it will be useful to return to the theme of ilmu which was touched upon briefly in the first section of this chapter. The main concerns of chapter 4 are the gendered dimensions of ilmu and personal misfortune, along with recent historical shifts in the sources, symbols, and meanings of marginality, uncertainty, and danger, especially as they bear upon gender.