The Iban or the Sea Dayaks of Sarawak have probably been the best known of the indigenous peoples of Borneo for well over a century. Much has been written about them, but until the results of Dr Freeman's field research were published by the Government of Sarawak and by Her Majesty's Stationery Office in 1955 there was little information on their methods of agriculture and their social system. The book has become a landmark in the studies of shifting cultivation and of cognatic kinship organization; and the ideas around which it is written have proved over the years to be a continuing and powerful stimulus in the development of kinship theory. The field work on which the account is based was undertaken from 1949 to 1951. Although fundamental changes have taken place in the life of the Iban since the book was first published, it has been decided to republish it substantially unaltered.

The Iban or the Sea Dayaks of Sarawak have probably been the best known of the indigenous peoples of Borneo. There was little information on their methods of agriculture and their social system. This book studies the shifting cultivation and cognatic kinship organization. The field work on which this is based was undertaken from 1949 to 1951.

Orphaned as a young boy in the rainforests of Borneo, Bujang is brought up by a family of orangutans, but his adult future has already been decided for him by Sengalang Burong, the Iban warpath god. On reaching adulthood, Bujang must leave his ape family and serve the warpath god as a warrior and a headhunter. Having survived his first assignment — to kill an ill-tempered demon in the form of a ferocious wild boar — subsequent adventures see Bujang converse with gods, shamans, animal spirits and with the nomadic people of Borneo as he battles evil spirits and demons to preserve the safety of those he holds dear to him. But Bujang’s greatest test is still to come and he must rally a large headhunting expedition to free his captured wife and those of his fellow villagers. In this unique work of fantasy fiction, author Golda Mowe — herself an Iban from Borneo — uses real beliefs, taboos and terminology of the Iban (a longhouse-dwelling indigenous group of people from Borneo who, until very recently, were renowned for practising headhunting) to weave an epic tale of good versus evil.

This edited book is the first major review of what has been achieved in Borneo Studies to date. Chapters in this book situate research on Borneo within the general disciplinary fields of the social sciences, with the weight of attention devoted to anthropological research and related fields such as development studies, gender studies, environmental studies, social policy studies and cultural studies. Some of the chapters in this book are extended versions of presentations at the Borneo Research Council’s international conference hosted by Universiti Brunei Darussalam in June 2012 and a Borneo Studies workshop organised in Brunei in 2012. The volume examines some of the major debates and controversies in Borneo Studies, including those which have served to connect post-war research on Borneo to wider scholarship. It also assesses some of the more recent contributions and interests of locally based researchers in universities and other institutions in Borneo itself. The major strength of the book is the inclusion of a substantial amount of research undertaken by scholars working and teaching within the Southeast Asian region. In particular there is an examination of research materials published in the vernacular, notably the outpouring of work published in Indonesian by the Institut Dayakologi in Pontianak. In doing so, the book also addresses the urgent matters which have not received the attention they deserve, specifically subjects, themes and issues that have already been covered but require further contemplation, elaboration and research, and the scope for disciplinary and multidisciplinary collaboration in Borneo Studies. The book is a valuable resource and reference work for students and researchers interested in social science scholarship on Borneo, and for those with wider interests in Indonesia and Malaysia, and in the Southeast Asian region.

"A welcome addition. They argue that rituals of reproduction in preindustrial societies are essentially political. In these societies, they say, men need to control the reproductive power of women in order to establish political power; where there is no law or central government, ritual is used as a way of gaining control. The type of ritual will vary, they conclude, according to the economic base of the society. . . .for those whoa re interested in the subject, this book is indispensable. Its thesis is challenging and the documentation is excellent. Paige and Paige have mad ean essential contribution to a long debate, and their theory is sure to stir new and lively controversy." --Science Digest This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

This book explores choice behavior as constrained by culture, biology, and psychoanalytic processes in a variety of ethnographic contexts in Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Africa--the arena in which the controversy between Derek Freeman and anthropologist Margaret Mead's ideas of culture first developed. It also examines the interface between a nomothetic anthropology and a hermeneutic, idiographic anthropology, raising the critical question as to how ethnographic "knowledge" of another culture is achieved and transmitted to others. Freeman rejects an exclusive reliance on either culture or biology as key to explaining human behavior, proposing instead an interactionist paradigm. Fundamental to this paradigm is choice behavior, which is intrinsic to our biology and basic to the formation of culture: for cultures are the accumulation of socially sanctioned past choices. However, the greater the freedom to choose, the greater the scope for good or bad, and the greater the need for ethics, rules, and laws for defining prohibited alternatives. Choice and Morality investigates these themes. Its authors examine the emergent nature of social reality as a result of choice behavior and illustrate the complexity of Freeman's theoretical position.