The dichotomy in the colonial education policy meant that the élite were distanced from participation in the on-going production of Malay literature. Literature came to be centred in the Malay-educated, who were largely teachers and journalists. A study of modern Malay literature has to take cognizance of this fact. Modern Malay literature was the product of the non-élite who were predominantly of rural background and whose education upheld the rural bias with its intention of strengthening the tie between the land and the village world. This close link between literature and the peasantry was to have a far-reaching effect on modern Malay literature as a whole.

Prior to the appearance of the Penulis Guru, as the teacher-writers were known, and the Penulis Wartawan (journalist-writers), the Malay literary scene already bore the imprint of the efforts of a group called Penulis Agama (religion-writers). These were Middle-Eastern educated Malays who, influenced by the Islamic reformism of Turkey and Egypt, took home with them a new understanding of an insight into Islam. Their ideas were vigorously expressed and debated in the newspapers and magazines, foremost amongst which were Al-Imam (1906-09, terminal date is unclear) and later Al-Ikhwan (1926-31) and Saudara (1928-41). The old ulama or authorities on religion, who were closely allied to the traditional élite as advisors on matters of religion, did not accept the new ideas, and the disagreement culminated in the famous Kaum Tua - Kaum Muda clash (Roff 1967). Syed Sheikh Al-hadi, a prolific campaigner of the new understanding, carried his ideas into the realm of fiction in the first Malay novel, Hikayat Setia Asyik kepada Maksyuknya atau Syafik Afandi dengan Faridah Hanum [The story of a lover's faithfulness to his beloved or Syafik Afandi and Faridah Hanum], which was well received. Finding fiction writing a lucrative enterprise, he produced a series of romantic stories, mainly adaptations from Egyptian and Turkish literature, under the title, Angan-Angan Kehidupan [Life's fantasies], and also a series of detective stories entitled, Cerita Rokambul [The story of Rokambul], all of which were published by his own Jelutong press.

Since the national appropriation of large sea areas has become more and more usual, and since the U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea has revealed that the fixation of straight baselines, the enlargement of the territorial sea to a distance of 12 nautical miles, the establishment of EEZs with a maximum breadth of 200 nautical miles, and the association of the continental shelf, in some cases even beyond this, may become international law, all the coastal states, as to be expected, have pursued an extreme seaward expansionist policy. Every state can convincingly point to its urgent need for maritime resources. This especially applies to the 23 island states and island territories in the South Pacific, which, apart from a few exceptions, do not have any other natural resources of economic significance. The exceptions are Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia and Nauru, and to a lesser extent Fiji and the Solomon Islands, where mineral resources are being exploited. Vanuatu certainly also possesses undeveloped deposits. Hawaii, as part of the United States, has had a totally different economic development, and therefore the adjacent sea areas must be regarded as being of less importance to the country. All the remaining islands, however, are suitable for only limited agricultural utilization. The sea, on the other hand, contains fish as a reproductive resource for the world market. Up to 95 per cent of these fish are caught, manufactured and sold by foreign long-distance fishing fleets (in 1983, approximately 1,200 ships, almost entirely from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the USSR, and the United States) (cf. Buchholz 1983). The instruments of the newly established Law of the Sea Convention can be effectively applied in order to increase the economic potential of these small insular countries.

The South Pacific insular states began only recently to place their adjacent sea areas under their sovereignty. In contrast to the East and Southeast Asian sea areas at the periphery of the oceans, the maritime law declarations by the island countries related to the column of water, rather than to the continental shelf.

The study of agrarian transformation, which could well sum up the theme of this book, has been dominated by two opposing paradigms: one associated with the name of Lenin, the other with Chayanov. Both concurred methodologically in employing the household as the basic unit of analysis (defined as the unit of production and consumption) while differing in their analytical focus: for Lenin, relations of production, which were open to the influence of external factors, structured relations between households; for Chayanov, relations of reproduction, which were generated by internal, demographic factors, structured relations within rather than between households.

In keeping with the first model, the process of change in a peasant economy is usually envisaged in terms of the confrontation between a “traditional society” embedded in a “subsistence economy” and the capitalist market economy, represented, for most Third World countries, by the so-called “Green Revolution”. This integration of the peasantry into the market economy or commercialization of agriculture “generally sets in motion a tendency towards the concentration of land in fewer hands” via the dispossession of the smaller and marginalized peasants. A process of social differentiation begins resulting in the constitution of large capitalist farms on the one hand, and landless agricultural labourers on the other. The elimination of the peasantry is its historical product. This model has also been applied to studies of the Malaysian peasantry.

The second model locates the peasant in a toiler or family labour farm which is embedded in supportive kinship or village structures and whose productive activities are directed towards subsistence rather than profit. Such a farm would be impervious to capitalist encroachment and thus resistant to its otherwise transformative effects in the direction of polarization and elimination. Echoes of this position also rebound in the Malaysian literature.

This study of a Muda village which was subject to the tremendous forces of change unleashed by the “Green Revolution” comes to the same conclusion as that of another Malaysian scholar, namely, the possibility of alternative trajectories of change.

Corporate Responses to Industrial Restructuring at Home and Abroad

All business corporations, in order to survive and expand in competitive markets, have to adjust their strategies and policies constantly to changes, both internal and external to themselves. Among the major internal factors changing perceptibly in recent years in Japanese corporations are the composition, mentality, attitude, and work ethics of the work-force; labour-management relations; and the composition and business concerns/priorities of major shareholders. Concrete examples of these are found in the ageing and an increasing female participation, particularly married women, in the labour force; a weakening in the bargaining power; and an increasingly defensive posture of labour unions vis-à-vis corporate management. There has also been a growing dominance of institutional and corporate ownership of equity shares that has had a significant impact on the priorities of top management in running corporations.

Among the major external factors that have confronted Japanese business corporations with conspicuous changes in recent years are the level, diversity, and cost of new technologies available; the level of per capita income and the patterns of income distribution; the consumer preferences and spending patterns; the intensity of factor and product market competition at home and abroad; the range and direction of foreign exchange rate fluctuations; and government economic policies affecting the domestic and overseas markets.

Since nearly all the internal changes can be managed within the guidelines of corporate policies on personnel management, industrial relations, and financing, it is those changes due to major external factors to which business corporations would have to respond most effectively, in order to survive and expand in competitive markets. Particularly relevant among such external factors arc product market competition and governmental competition policies, since these determine the rates of economic growth, technological innovation, and productivity improvement as well as income distribution, which in turn affect most significantly the process of industrial restructuring.

This chapter gives some details on ten popular stories from boria sketches. They illustrate the shows considered suitable for various occasions and for the range of stories employed. Essentially they are foundation plots used by many troupes; within the basic framework each troupe will vary the story to suit the particular audience and to bring out the skill of its performers. The dialogue is extempore. It is for these reasons that generalized stories are presented; transcribing and translating entire stories apart from increasing the bulk of the text, would tend to conceal the features common without giving the reader any clearer idea of the content of the sketches. I have also noted some of the audience reaction beyond the normal amusement encouraged by the actors in certain roles.

Examples of Stories

A. Kisah Kenduri Kahuwin [Wedding story]

The scene opens with a middle-aged couple discussing the impending marriage of their daughter. The focus of the argument is on the type of wedding they are going to have. The bride's mother wants a big wedding. She argues that her daughter will be feted but once in her lifetime, and that is on her first wedding. As a mother she does not want to suffer the shame of a small wedding feast. She must be better than her neighbours, and if they can have big wedding feasts for their daughters, she must have a better one for hers. The father is all for a small kenduri selamat (thanksgiving) in view of the fact that a big ceremony is beyond their means and would involve going into debt.

This disagreement leads them into repartee. This word battle is the important comic element in the sketch at one level, complemented by their clothes, countenance and gestures at another. The type of argument most popular with both actors and audience alike seems to run in a thrust and parry dialogue, as demonstrated in the example below:

The Philippines is a collection of about 7,100 islands with a total land area of 3D million hectares. The two largest islands – Luzon and Mindanao – are roughly equal in size; together they make up two-thirds of the land area of the Philippines. The Philippine islands would fall entirely within the TMF biome. The characteristic vegetation is a rich and highly diverse rainforest with some 3,000 species of trees, the majority of which belong to the Dipterocarpaceae (lauan) family. Most of the commercially valuable species are members of this family. The volume of timber in dense timber stands in such forests varies from 100 to 200 cu. m./ha. This forest type is best developed in areas (up to 800m. altitude) with heavy rainfall uniformly distributed throughout the year.

A second forest type is that which develops on that part of the Philippines – the western strip – which experiences a distinct dry season. Here the vegetation is characteristically more open. The commercially valuable species are molave (Vitae parviflora), narra (Pterocarpus indicus), tindalo (Pahudia rhomboidea), ipi1 (Instsia bijuga), and dangula (Teijsmanniodendron ahernianum). The dominant member of this group is molave, after which this forest type is named. Timbers from these species are highly prized for their beauty and durability. They make fine furniture woods, in contrast to wood from the dipterocarp family which provides good construction timbers. The volume of timber in a stand averages only 30 cu. m./ha.

The other vegetation types include pine and montane forests, mangrove forests, and beach forests. Timber from these forests enters the local but not the export markets (Salita 1974; Virticio & Torres 1977). In addition to the main product of timber, the forests are a source of a wide range of minor products: woodfuels; barks for tanning, dyeing, and flavouring; resins and oils from barks, sapwood and nuts; wild rubber and gutta-percha; rattan; construction materials from bamboo and other palms; and medicinal and pharmaceutical products.

Until a few years ago, cloves, like other agricultural produce, were sold by small traders or by the peasants themselves in the local market-place. Today, however, the trade in cloves is subject to government regulations and bypasses the market-place. In summer 1983, for example, the peasants received a guaranteed price of Rp7,500 for 1 kg. of cloves. According to regulations, the KUD (Koperasi Unit Desa, or local agricultural co-operative), of which almost all peasants are members, collects the entire harvest and ships it to PUSKUD (Pusat KUD, the central office of the local KUDs in the district) in Manado, which finally sells it at an auction. However, there is hardly any competition among bidders. Usually, the bulk of the harvest is purchased by PAP (Pedagang Antar Pulau, inter-island traders), an almost exclusively Chinese-owned corporation connected with the kretek cigarette industry in Java. In case the auction price slips below the floor price of Rp7,500 per kg., a government institution (Penyangga) is to step in and purchase the amount of cloves affected.

The actual marketing of cloves, however, deviates quite considerably from the above regulations. Recently, the village KUD of Kakas ran out of money, mainly because, in addition to a case of embezzlement that was said to have occurred among the administrative staff of the co-operative, many peasants failed to repay their loans, with the consequence that the banks refused to provide further money which was badly needed for purchasing the local clove harvest. At the same time, for some reason the government institution that was to guarantee the floor price suffered a serious shortage of money, so that the whole marketing system for cloves has de facto been modified in a way that conflicts with the regulations. This applies particularly to the PAP activities. Now, since the local KUD is unable to buy the clove harvest, PAP contacts the peasants directly, bypassing the KUD. For this purpose PAP employs one or two agents per subdistrict who closely co-operate with approximately ten local traders who approach the peasants directly.

THE SPREAD OF THE MARKET PRINCIPLE

Undoubtedly, the village of Kakas by now shows all characteristics of one “in which the market principle is dominant” (Bohannan and Dalton 1968, p. 16): agricultural production is primarily for sale, with subsistence production only as a dependent emergency appendix to market production; factor resources, that is, labour, land, and capital, are subject to market forces; trading in circumstances of landlessness and land shortage, has become an important occupation; and money as the basic medium of exchange makes labour, material inputs, and products commensurable commodities and renders market values comparable (Bohannan and Dalton 1968, p. 11). The spread of commerce has to be considered part of the process of integration into the national and world economy along with its “external” demand for cash crops, the establishment and improvement of the commercially relevant infrastructure for communication, capital, and administration, and the prodigious increase in the amount of imported goods entering the stores and market-places as a result of new tastes and consumption patterns.

Certainly, traders play a key role in the spread of the market principle including the whole system of values which are characteristic of market rationality and which, by no means, is restricted to the market but permeates various other aspects of daily life. This is mainly because money is in some way or other involved in determining social relations. It is not only that trading by now is a commonly respected economic activity, as is indicated by today's unification of external trade and local (food) trade in one market-place as the major economic institution. In former times the exchange of goods was normally carried out within a well-defined system of social relations on a reciprocal basis and commercialized exchange was tolerable only as a “last resort” and then only with external partners to whom there were no social obligations (Bohannan and Dalton 1968, p. 6; Polanyi 1979, pp. 55 f.).

A study of boria and its symbolism in this book has, of necessity, involved both literary and anthropological treatment in an attempt to synthesize its many facets. The method becomes unavoidable when portraying and analysing the show as a symbol of social action in an attempt to relate it to the ongoing process within its society. Within this framework boria becomes a symbol of interaction, communication and mediation that through frequent performances helps to ease and arbitrate social processes.

The Development of Boria

In sketching the development of boria as a performing art in Penang, it has been found that its popularity has since its origin been motivated by the social groups participating in it at the time. Its ancient origin was basically ritual and when the Muslim Indians brought it into Penang the form was still very much ritualistic in nature, even though Wynne viewed it as “degenerated”. Wynne's view supposed a change in its function from that of a ritual enactment of the heroism of the first Shi'ite Muslims to something more like an entertainment among the Indian soldiery in Penang. Yet the essence of the ritual was as a reminder of the schism in Islam and the original breaking up of Muslims into Shi'a and Sunni. Known then as the Muharram festival, it was a ritual of ta'ziyah meant to keep alive among Shi'ite their rivalry with the Sunni. In this the Penang version was certainly successful for Vaughan tells us that the rite was abhorred as sacrilegious by the Sunni Malays of the time.

The acculturation and assimilation of the minority Indian group by Malays through intermarriage and constant contact led to the almost inevitable change in boria. The offspring from these marriages, the Jawi Pekan, began to be involved with the Malay way of life. Yet at this point of their acculturation and assimilation they were a marginal category free to discard, adapt or adopt their parents' ways.

Introduction

Song and dance have been a necessary element in communal type traditional and popular drama performances (Brandon 1967, p. 125; Awashti 1974, pp. 180-4). In boria they are certainly an integral part of the show. The song and dance element complements the sketch and completes the symbolic action of the whole. Since the introduction of the form into Penang, boria has always involved singing and dancing. In the early days of boria, however, the song and dance were highly individualized and each performer was allowed his own version. According to veteran of the art, Pak Nyak, the individual dancers were ascribed their own medley of steps in accordance with their role. Thus, for example, one would find a performer in Arab attire doing an Arabian dance step, a soldier imitating drill and a Chinese towkay (proprietor) mimicking real persons of the time. Since World War II the sequence has taken on a whole new form of ordered rythmic movement of body and arms with measured and repetitive dance steps by the “sailors”.

Today the tukang karang leads the sequence with his com- position on the sketch's main theme or themes. He sings the verse and the “sailors” provide the chorus at the end of each stanza. The chorus here is the first verse of the song, which states in essence the aim of the song sequence, for example, the first verse and chorus of Kisah Nombor Ekor [Gambling on Numbers] is:

The song and the dance keep time with the rhythm of the musical accompaniment. The regularity of the song pattern (four-line stanza) with about fourteen to twenty stanzas and the liveliness of the synchronized dance steps give the sequence a high regularity of movement. The three elements of music, song and dance work together to create a simultaneous unity to this part of the show.

In studying the form of pre-war Malay literature, it is important to note that the writers' Malay education precluded them from any significant contact with Western literary tradition. The efforts of the Malay Translation Bureau, which saw to the translation of works such as Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and the like, did not acquaint readers with Western literary tradition. Interest in these novels went little beyond that of the story itself. The finer points of Western literary conventions remained quite inaccessible to the majority of the Malay readers.

However, while pre-war writers might not have had access to the Western literary tradition, they had available to them a rich oral heritage. It was this tradition of story-telling that Malay writers brought to bear upon their modern literary material. Analysing pre-war short stories, Hashim Awang finds that these early literary efforts bore structural characteristics similar to those of oral narratives. He attributes this close affinity to familiarity with and availability of oral narratives and the marginal influence of other literary traditions. He thus suggests that pre-war short stories were largely an evolution from the old literary tradition, and that they formed a bridge to the modern (Hashim Awang 1975). The close tie with oral narratives indicates, on the one hand, the link with the rural areas where such stories flourished. On the other, it demonstrates how writers adapted literary conventions at their disposal to suit the needs of a changing socio-cultural environment. In appreciating modern Malay literature of the period, a point to be borne in mind is the underlying motivation which prompted literary writings in the first place. In the light of this factor, the question of genres was irrelevant to the writers, a point borne out by the disregard for length, a criterion often used to distinguish between short stories and novels. The short stories of the period ranged between 160 to 48,000 words.

INTRODUCTION

The empirical point of departure for this study is the process of change at the village level in the wake of technological and social innovations induced by the so-called “Green Revolution”. Seen in broader terms, the theme is that of the transformation of agrarian structures, here as elsewhere, as a result of the penetration of capitalism into agriculture. This problematique has been a central concern in development sociology in its effort to understand the phenomenon of underdevelopment; its theoretical underpining however has been enriched by the discovery of the “peasant” by various other disciplines in the last decade — in particular anthropologists, rural sociologists and historians. In this chapter, an attempt shall be made to outline the various theoretical issues involved and to make explicit the analytical concepts and theoretical framework which have guided the interpretation of the empirical material presented in the following chapters.

THE CLASSICAL BATTLE LINE: LENIN VS. CHAYANOV

The terms of the debate were set by the differing analyses offered by Lenin and Chayanov of the “state of the Russian peasantry” (in response to the expanding capitalist market) at the turn of the century. In brief, Lenin's position was that

For Chayanov on the other hand, the peasant economy is characterized by the existence of a unit of production and consumption (the “Family Labour Farm”) which has the capacity to survive, even in the face of the expansion of commodity production. Changes in the size of farm units, which Lenin attributed to the process of concentration and social differentiation, were explained by Chayanov in terms of demographic differentiation.

The Concept of a Malaysian Culture

Malaysia was created as a political entity on 16 September 1963 from fourteen states: the nine hereditary Malay sultanates Qohore, Kedah, Kelantan, Negeri Sembilan, Pahang, Perak, Perlis, Selangor and Trengganu), the three former members of the British Straits Settlements (Malacca, Penang and Singapore) and the two British crown colonies of Sabah (formerly British North Borneo) and Sarawak. (Singapore seceded in 1965.) The term “Malaysian” is used here, regardless of ethnic designation, to refer to all citizens of Malaysia.

For the government, the creation of Malaysia was under- stood to mean not only a political unification of the diverse territories, but the beginning of a new cultural unity. From their viewpoint, Malaysia was a product of evolution from a common heritage. Malaysians are seen as having “had a common back- ground from the earliest historical times and having been subjected to common cultural influences” (Ministry of Culture, n.d.). However, Malaysians are considered as comprising two main categories of citizens: indigenous and immigrant.

The implication of this statement is that two distinct groups of Malaysians — indigenous and immigrant — actually exist, and that the indigenous peoples are the more deep-rooted in Malaysia. However, between the two categories one is not seen as culturally “pure” or “isolated” from the other; rather they are considered as having transformed cross-culturally by the assimilation of cultural elements in a multi-ethnic society.