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.

INTRODUCTION

Quite in contrast to the view that “in a traditional Malay rice-producing village the role of capital and credit in the agricultural economy is very limited”, the close relationship between indebtedness and marketing was already established in the early stage of commercialization of the padi economy. As noted by Sharom Ahmat, the farming out of tax revenues by the Kedah sultanate to Chinese revenue farmers at the turn of the century was the first step in this direction.

By the mid-fifties, four-fifths of all the padi farmers in the Kedah region were reported to have handed over part of their crop to the buyer, who had provided them with credit under the padi kunca arrangement. The padi buyer was usually the village shopkeeper or a shopkeeper in the nearest town, from whom groceries and other consumer items were also obtained on credit. Each shopkeeper would be associated with a miller, from whom he acquired credit to finance the padi kunca deals and similarly, each mill would be financed by one of the large Chinese banks. Thomson mentioned that in one year, one bank alone lent out more than $12 million to mills in the Kedah area. Thomson also estimated that through the system of padi kunca, farmers lost out on half the value of the crop. The pervasive and pernicious character of rural indebtedness, with its interlocking into the marketing system, has become almost legendary.

What were however the characteristics of the peasant economy which made this an endemic feature of peasant life?

Indonesia has a strong commitment to the automotive industry complementation as indicated by the activities of the Association of Automobile Sole Agents and Assemblers (GAAKINDO). The latter convened the ASEAN Automotive Federation (AAF) in 1976. GAAKINDO was subsequently renamed the Automotive Federation of Indonesia or Federasi Otomotif. Members of this federation have explored other problems to upgrade the viability of ASEAN automotive industries, such as through “software complementation” and “strategic planning”. The Indonesian Government has also assisted the private sector in promoting co-operation in the automotive industry in ASEAN and to identify the problems that have emerged and their possible solutions. Although i t is recognized that each country would like to produce its own vehicle, Indonesia has agreed to make use of the components now available in the ASEAN countries instead of importing from the principals in other countries. While Indonesian's aim is to have a national vehicle by 1987 it will still export parts for the complementation and purchase parts from ASEAN members for the other vehicles that are produced in the country.

This section tries to show how decisions have been made in Indonesia for the automotive industry complementation in ASEAN and how its industry has been affected by the decisions.

In Indonesia, the government and the private automotive associations have been the two sectors which make decisons for the automotive complementation. From the start of the complementation project, the government has been the leading sector because of its pervasive role in the Indonesian economy. The government has laid out general policies for the various economic sectors to follow, and in particular, as far as the automotive industry is concerned, the official policy is to start producing the automotive engine in 1983 and to finally produce all the parts for the whole vehicle by 1987. However, it is the automotive parts producers who must attend to the problem of how to phase their business to fit in with the objectives of the government.

The Stage

A live show is generally played on an impromptu stage, usually a wooden platform two and a half to three feet above the ground. The person hiring the show is expected to have this platform ready for the troupe. An assembled stage would consist of a floor of wooden planks held together by nails and ropes, placed on empty oil drums or tree trunks at its four corners. Attached to the front corners of the stage are usually long strong poles for fixing electrical wires for the stage lighting and power for the band, if used. Without walls, the stage becomes an arena only for the musicians and players acting out a scene. Those on cue or due to exit make use of a rough ladder from the ground to the rear end of the stage. In most cases a simple shelter is built behind the stage with canvas or corrugated iron roofing and a few chairs are provided for the actors or performers to use when resting or changing. Stage lighting is basic and serves only to light the stage. Sometimes gas lighting is used instead of the more common electric lighting. The stage has no sets, the only props used being hand props. Audiences usually have to imagine, for example, the shape of doors and chairs which the actors refer to in the comic sketch. The rear of the stage is usually occupied by the troupe's band of musicians comprising a rhythm guitarist, lead guitarist, a drummer, an accordian player or a tambourine player. The front half would be the actors and performers' area during the show.

On state and national occasions and in competitions a proper stage in a hall is used, such as the Dewan Sri Pinang (City Hall) of Georgetown or the Dewan Pelbagai Guna (All- Purpose Hall) at Batu Uban. Even then there are no stage settings or props. On radio and television the genre is slightly altered to conform to certain technical needs.