Ethnic Diversity and the Control of Natural Resources in Southeast Asia

Front matter

Ethnic Diversity and the Control of Natural Resources in

Southeast Asia

A. Terry Rambo, Kathleen Gillogly, and Karl L. Hutterer, Editors

Contents

. Why are the Semang? Ecology and Ethnogenesis of Aboriginal Groups in Peninsular Malaysia A. Terry Rambo .... cece ccc cee hehehe 19

. Hunter-Gatherer/Farmer Exchange in the Philippines: Some Implications for Ethnic Identity and Adaptive Well-being James E. Eder u. wed eee dian afin uL E eni aer ve re 37

. A Comparison of Batak and Ata Subsistence Styles in Two Different Social and Physical Environments Rowe. V. Cadelina: us sri b m LI EE three 59

Preface

In August 1984, a three-day conference on ethnic diversity and the control of natural resources was held at the University of Michigan. Jointly sponsored by the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies of the University of Michigan and the Environment and Policy Institute (EAPI) of the East-West Center in Honolulu, the conference was attended by fifteen scholars from six Asian and Pacific countries including the United States (see list of participants in the Appendix). This conference was the second in a series of conferences dealing with key issues in the human ecology of Southeast Asia jointly sponsored by the East-West Center and the University of Michigan. The proceedings of the first conference, held in Honolulu in 1983, have been published in Cultural Values and Human Ecology in Southeast Asia as Number 27 in the series Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia.

Like the first conference, which focused on the relationship between cultural values and tropical ecology, this meeting was planned to bring together Asian scholars working in member projects of the Southeast Asian Universities Agroecosystem Network (SUAN) with scholars in Western institutions who share their concern with developing human ecology research in the region. The purpose of the conference was to explore the ecological ramifications of ethnicity in Southeast Asia. This topic was chosen under the assumption that the high degree of ethnic diversity historically evident in the region and its continuing importance under contemporary conditions is related to both the nature of tropical Asian environments on the one hand, and the nature of Southeast Asian political systems and the ways in which they manipulate natural resources on the other. Although the emphasis of the conference series is on developing improved theoretical understandings of human-environment interactions, it should be evident that the topics selected for discussion also have great practical significance.

Scholars representing a broad range of theoretical perspectives and working with an even wider range of ethnic groups and environments were invited. This diversity is reflected in the resulting papers although, unfortunately, the range is narrower than it was in the conference itself. This reflects the fact that a xi

Preface number of participants, for a variety of reasons outside the control of the editors, elected not to submit their papers for publication in this volume.

All the chapters have been significantly revised following the conference, in many cases taking alternative perspectives presented by other participants into account in the process. The editors have sought to impose a common format while trying to preserve as much as possible the unique qualities of the individual papers.

Funding for the conference was provided by the East-West Center and the University of Michigan. Karen Ashitomi and Regina Gregory, EAPI Human Ecology Program secretaries, typed multiple drafts of the manuscripts. Helen Takeuchi was responsible for copyediting.

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Introduction

A. Terry Rambo Karl L. Hutterer Kathleen Gillogly

Its vast human diversity—racial, linguistic, and cultural—has made Southeast Asia simultaneously the ethnographer’s heaven and the ethnologist’s purgatory. Simply describing the multitude of different peoples inhabiting the region has kept several generations of field workers gainfully employed, with results that threaten to swamp all but the largest library collections. As a consequence of this activity, it is fair to say that Southeast Asia is now at least as well known ethnographically as any world region with the exception of Native North America.

Unfortunately, ethnologists have not enjoyed great success in imposing classificatory order on the diversity revealed by the work of the ethnographers. The culture-area approach, still the standard framework for ordering New World ethnology, was not a conspicuous success when applied to Southeast Asia (Bacon 1946; Kroeber 1947; Narroll 1950). To dichotomize the multitudinous groups in the area into upland swidden farming tribesmen and lowland wet rice farming peasants (Burling 1965) radically oversimplifies reality. Attempts to retain complexity, as in the ethnolinguistic classification employed by LeBar, Hickey, and Musgrave (1964), lack any systematic basis for differentiating between groups. As Yengoyan points out in his chapter in this volume, ethnographers have tended to “divide and subdivide groups into finer categories whose existence is highly suspect.”

The ad hoc character of ethnic classifications in Southeast Asia reflects, in our view, the continuing theoretical underdevelopment of area studies. Rather than evolving out of a vigorous confrontation between ethnographic observations and general anthropological theory, as was the case in New World ethnological classifications, the schemes employed in Southeast Asia have usually been imported ones. Unlike the American culture-area classification schemes, which are based upon a complex set of theoretical explanations for ethnic differentiation (adaptation to common environmental factors within each area plus diffusion across area boundaries), most of the schemes employed in Southeast Asia have assumed that diversity is explainable in terms of a single cause. For a long time, migration and diffusion were invoked as the key explanatory factor; more recently, equally simplistic evolutionary models have begun to displace the culture-historical approach.

Waves of Migration

In the *migratory waves" model, existing cultural groups in Southeast Asia were assumed to be the residues of a series of discrete migrations into the region. Each successive wave of culturally more advanced people was supposed to have pushed the more backward earlier arrivals deeper into mountain and forest refuges where they had maintained their culture in pristine condition awaiting the coming of European ethnologists. Thus the scattered nomadic forest foraging groups such as the Aeta (Agta, Ata) of the Philippines and the Semang of Peninsular Malaysia were assumed, because of cultural “primitiveness,” to be survivors of the earliest migratory wave. The numerous different tribal groups practicing swidden agriculture (e.g., the Ilongots of Luzon and the Senoi Semai of Peninsular Malaysia) represented a subsequent set of waves often referred to collectively as “Proto-Indonesians,” while the dominant national lowland populations such as the Khmer, Thai, and Malay were seen as representing more recent migrations into the region.

Fay-Cooper Cole's The Peoples of Malaysia (1945), for two decades the standard English language ethnology for insular Southeast Asia, exemplifies the migratory wave model With minor modifications the same conceptual framework is employed in several recent regional ethnologies (Burling 1965; Carey 1976; Wallace 1971). This is quite surprising when it is remembered this model relies on a view of culture history that was formulated early in the twentieth century in Germany by Graebner (1905, 1911) and Schmidt (1906a, 1911) and the followers of the Kulturkreislehre and specifically adapted to Southeast Asian culture history, first on the basis of linguistic arguments by Schmidt (1906b, 1926), and only shortly later on the basis of archaeological and ethnographic arguments by Heine-Geldern (1923, 1932, 1937, 1946), Beyer (1932, 1948), and Schebesta (e.g., 1927, 1952-57). A slightly different and even more extreme version was proposed by the physical anthropologist von Eickstedt (1944). The model is based upon the assumption that racial, linguistic, and cultural traits comprise stable packages that persist unchanged for millennia.

The transition from the Palaeolithic to the incipient Neolithic of Tongkin and the Malay Peninsula occurred gradually and probably did not involve major modifications of the cultures in question. This changes with the beginning of the full Neolithic. New peoples and cultures pour in in force from the north and northeast. With this, the foundations are laid, clearly discernible today, for all subsequent historical developments and for the present distribution of races, peoples, languages, and cultures. (Heine-Geldern 1932: 556—translation by

K.L. Hutterer)

The durability of this model is all the more surprising given the fact that Boas and other American ethnologists had already shown by the early 1920s that its underlying assumptions are contrary to the empirical evidence. The persistence of such a theoretically dubious model for such an extended period, despite its general rejection elsewhere in the world, raises troubling questions about the state of ethnological research in Southeast Asia. One must wonder why new anthropological concepts have taken so long to penetrate into the thinking of “area study" specialists and why the serious problems they encountered in fitting empirical data into the traditional framework did not lead much sooner than it did to the search for new theories.

Evolutionary Models of Ethnic Diversification in Southeast Asia

In the late 1960s and early 1970s a new conceptual framework for Southeast Asian culture history challenged the long dominant migratory waves model. Primarily the product of Wilhelm Solheim and his graduate students (e.g., Chester Gorman, Donn Bayard) at the University of Hawaii, the new model shifted emphasis from migration and diffusion to evolution in place. Claims, unfortunately poorly supported by hard evidence, were made that agriculture, pottery making, and metallurgy had all originated in Southeast Asia centuries and even millennia before their *discovery" in China and the Middle East (e.g., Bayard 1970, 1979, 1980; Gorman 1969, 1977; Solheim 1969, 1970, 1975, 1979). Southeast Asia was suddenly transformed from the trash can of history to the primal source of civilization. If any waves were perceived by advocates of the new model, they were seen as flowing outward to the rest of the world, bearing on their crest the seeds of future progress.

The new evolutionary framework gained rapid acceptance among both Western scholars and educated elites in the Southeast Asian countries. In the latter case one may speculate that the new model was compatible with the heightened sense of nationalism that accompanied the liberation of most of the region from colonial rule. The Vietnamese, for example, freed from using French history texts that declaimed about “our ancestors the Gauls” were hardly eager to have to recite about “our ancestors the Chinese” instead. It was far more satisfying to accept Gorman’s thesis that agriculture had originated among the Hoabinhian people of northern Indochina and had spread northward from them to the Chinese. The last had indeed become first.

As might be expected, the situation among professional scholars was somewhat more complex. Certainly, the academically marginal status of Southeast Asian studies in contrast to South and particularly East Asian studies was a sore spot with many. There is no denying the sense of satisfaction that many of us felt when we first heard the new claims for Southeast Asia as an evolutionary hearth for world civilization. At the same time, the ground had already been prepared for such a “paradigm shift” by the increasing discordance between empirical research findings on ethnic groups in the region and the theoretical assumptions underlying the migratory waves model (cf. Bronson 1977). Many anthropologists had read and been disquieted by Leach’s Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954). If Kachin could transmute themselves into Shan, what did that do to the assumption of ethnic constancy that was required by the migratory waves model? An evolutionary explanation of the origins of ethnic diversity seemed to offer one viable alternative. Curiously, two quite different evolutionary models were proposed almost simultaneously: one reflecting concern with ecological adaptation and the other reflecting concern with interethnic structural relations.

Ecological Adaptation

Attempts to explain ethnic diversity as the result of ecological adaptation reflected the growing recognition in the 1950s that cultural traits, just as much as racial characteristics, were subject to natural selection. The acceptability of this approach was increased by the vogue adaptionist explanations then enjoyed in general anthropological theory. In physical anthropology, many assumed markers of racial relationship (e.g., body stature, skin color, even abnormal hemoglobins) were shown to be subject to natural selection. Proponents of cultural ecology advanced similar claims regarding many cultural traits that had previously been considered markers of ethnic phylogeny. From this evolutionary perspective, ethnic diversity is explained in terms of adaptive radiation in which cultural differentiation arises as groups confront distinctive, locally specific environmental selection pressures. For example, Rambo (1973) has shown how Southern Vietnamese peasant society became differentiated from its ancestral

Northern form in the course of becoming adapted to the distinctive new environment of the Mekong Delta.

Although earlier studies tended to emphasize the adaptation of culture to the natural environment, it has been increasingly recognized that groups must also adapt to the social field in which they are located. Lehman (1963), for example, has suggested that the structure of Chin society in highland Burma reflects an adaptation to the lowland Burmese state as much or more as it does the influence of the natural environment. Similarly, Hutterer (1974) has proposed that Philippine lowland societies evolved as a social adaptation to the demands and opportunities of maritime trade with societies on the Asian mainland.

The adaptionist stance is well represented in this volume. Rambo’s chapter on Malayan aboriginal ethnogenesis offers an admittedly “just so story” hypothetical reconstruction of how racially and culturally distinct Semang hunters and gatherers and Senoi swidden agriculturalists could have evolved in place out of a common ancestral population as the result of adaptation to different selective pressures associated with the distinct niches filled by these two groups. Eder, Gomes, Pei, and Winzeler also describe cases in which ethnic differentiation reflects ecological adaptation, but place much greater emphasis on the importance of selective pressures exercised by the larger social environment. Gomes and Winzeler stress the role of political forces associated with modern nation-states in the formation and maintenance of ethnic groups. Pei and Eder emphasize adaptation to the economic environment created by the existence of intergroup trade. In focusing on the adaptation of ethnic groups to their social environment, these studies converge on the central concern of the structural approach to an evolutionary interpretation of ethnic diversity—the model of intergroup interactions.

Intergroup Interactions

An alternative evolutionary model for explaining ethnic diversity is the transactional approach associated with Fredrik Barth. Barth sees differentiation as emerging from interactions between neighboring groups competing for limited resources. The stronger the potential competition, the more pronounced the degree of differentiation. To use ecological terminology, the alternative to competitive exclusion is character displacement, with each group coming to occupy a unique niche that provides it with exclusive access to the resources necessary for its survival. Individuals choose to manifest the appropriate cultural markers for a particular group in order to claim the resources assigned to its niche (see Foster, this volume). In this way, the ethnic groups partition their environment and increase their degree of specialization in resource exploitation, thereby increasing each group’s energetic efficiency. Differences of emphasis are possible within this approach. Abruzzi (1982) has moved this approach in the direction of the adaptionist stance by arguing that speciation and ethnic differentiation can be explained in terms of the same ecological process. Benjamin (1985), on the other hand, has stressed the importance of deliberately maintained symbolic traditions.

The growing popularity among anthropologists of ways of thinking about culture in terms of the-structural properties of relations between social groups rather than in terms of “shared culture” (see Foster, this volume) contributed to the acceptance of the intergroup interaction model. Cultural traits were seen as essentially epiphenomenal indicators of underlying structural relationships between social formations, subject to rapid change as these relationships shifted over time. In the most extreme formulations, ethnic diversity was seen as the product of the expansion of capitalism into the peripheral regions of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Eric Wolf, the leading proponent of this view among anthropologists, asserts that anthropologists look for pristine replicas of the precapitalist, preindustrial past in the sinks and margins of the capitalist, industrial world. But Europeans and Americans would never have encountered these supposed bearers of a pristine past if they had not encountered one another, in bloody fact, as Europe reached out to seize the resources and populations of the other continents. Thus, it has been rightly said that anthropology is an offspring of imperialism. Without imperialism there would be no anthropologists, but there would also be no Dene, Baluba, or Malay fishermen to be studied. (Wolf 1982:18)

Wolfs claim is clearly hyperbole. The Malay fishermen to which he refers had established a distinct ethnic identity (although not, perhaps, the one that Raymond Firth encountered when he did his fieldwork in Kelantan in the 1940s) in their interactions with the Chinese, Thai, and the aboriginal groups of the interior forests long before the Portugese, Dutch, and English arrived on the scene. One need not, however, lay total blame on European capitalism to accept the view that cultures evolve as much in the context of a political, economic, and social environment as they do a biophysical one and that, consequently, structural relations between groups are a significant factor in the generation of ethnic diversity.

Many of the chapters in this volume are written from such an intergroup-interaction perspective. They are written within the tradition of Barth but go beyond his formulations. Leach (1954) is cited nearly as often as Barth and, in the case of Yengoyan’s analysis of Mandaya ethnicity, is a central part of the. argument. Eder and Winzeler, while working out of a basically adaptationist framework, also pay attention to the influence of external economic and political power on local ethnic relations. The hegemony that immigrant lowlanders exercise over tribal groups is considered by both Eder and Yengoyan: Eder emphasizes economic hegemony and Yengoyan stresses political and symbolic hegemony, as does Wee from a quite different perspective.

Rosaldo, Wee, and Yengoyan consider how various expressions of ethnicity relate to concepts of hierarchy and the social structural positions assumed when thinking of ethnic identifications. Besides the pervading theme of the relationship between status stratification and ethnicity, there is a concomitant theme of interior/exterior divisions (Yengoyan), or a “circle of belonging” (Wee) ‘associated with egalitarianism and cohesiveness of those who belong inside. Rosaldo suggests that ethnicity among the Ilongots is simultaneously a strategic presentation of their identity in contrast to neighboring groups and a fundamental aspect of their sense of cultural existence. They are “Ilongot” on the boundaries of their territory because they are in confrontation with members of different groups but they are “Ilongot” in the interior of their territory because they are participants in the ongoing cultural traditions of their society.

Cultural History and Evolution as Complementary Explanations of Ethnic Diversity in Southeast Asia

Proponents of the various theoretical approaches for explaining ethnic diversity have usually presented their respective models as if they were mutually exclusive explanations. If one approach was correct, then others were necessarily invalid. The chapters in this volume, however, suggest that no single process can satisfactorily account for the ethnic diversity observed in Southeast Asia. Instead, multiple processes have been involved.

Those readers who, like the editors, had largely rejected the migratory waves model in favor of an evolutionary explanation are likely to be surprised by the strength of the evidence presented in the chapters in this volume for the importance of migration as a source of ethnic diversity in the region. In some cases, such as the movement of Cebuanos into the territory formerly occupied by the Ata and Batak described by Cadelifia and Eder, and that of the Han Chinese into the Dai areas of Xishuangbanna described by Pei, these migrations are still in process. In other cases, such as the Bugis migration into the Riau Islands described by Wee and the settlement of the Thai and Chinese in Kelantan described by Winzeler, the process was completed before the imposition of European colonial rule.

Clearly, these case studies confront us with strong evidence that migration has contributed in a major way to the human diversity of the region. The role of migration as a source of ethnic diversity is compatible with the emphasis on geographical isolation in current theories of speciation in evolutionary biology. Although the possibility of sympatric speciation under special conditions is still contested, it is generally accepted that allopatric speciation is by far the more common path to biological diversity (Mayr 1970).

Also significant is that, in many of the cases described in this volume, populations associated with more complex chiefdom or state level social formations have intruded into the territories of simpler foraging and swidden farming groups, a finding that is also in accord with the migratory wave model. Presumably, these more complex societies have greater military strength and more efficient organizational and administrative institutions, which give them the capability to take over territory belonging to weaker bands and tribes.

The pattern of migration reported in these chapters differs from that postulated by the traditional migratory waves model, however, in that in each specific locality we are dealing with different “advanced” groups—Cebuanos in the case of the Ata and Batak, Bugis in the case of the Orang Laut, Malays and Chinese in the case of the Semai—rather than a single unitary wave sweeping over the entire region. Thus, migration has contributed to the observed ethnic diversity of Southeast Asia, but not in the simple layer-cake manner envisioned in the grand culture-historical schemes of Heine-Geldern and Beyer.

Migration is responsible for the presence within the same area of initially distinctive groups having different potentials to control and exploit resources, but the subsequent interaction between these groups shapes their respective ethnic identities. As Eder suggests, there is a profound difference between the character of hunting and gathering societies living in pristine subsistence situations and those, such as the Agta, who live by exchanging meat for grain with agricultural groups. In the latter case the necessity of maintaining trading relationships seems to determine the value orientations of the Agta (e.g., reluctance to engage in agriculture), which other observers have seen as survivals of their traditional culture. In this regard, then, the interactionist model appears to be valid. Ethnic identity, rather than reflecting the persistence of historical cultural traditions, is the constantly changing product of contemporary relationships between social groups.

One important limitation on the malleability of ethnic identity markers, which is ignored in most of the literature employing the intergroup-interaction model, is referred to in several of the chapters, however. That is, the existence of directly observable, genetically controlled “racial” characteristics (e.g., skin color, stature, hair form), unlike cultural or linguistic markers, cannot be changed at individual volition. The Ata and Batak described by Cadelifia and Eder cannot simply choose to become Cebuano in the same way that the Kachin can become Shan, or the Mon described by Foster can become Thai. In such cases, which are far from unusual in Southeast Asia, ethnic distinctiveness may persist in situations that would result in merging of groups in the absence of physical differences. Thus, in the Ata case described by Cadelifia, even the adoption of a mode of subsistence essentially identical to that of their Cebuano neighbors has not resulted in the disappearance of the Negritos as a distinct ethnic group.

Yengoyan describes a somewhat different case of physical characteristics preventing a switch in ethnic identity: individual Mandaya cannot successfully become lowland Filipinos because they are unable to conceal their tattoos. In this case, the maintenance of a cultural practice resulting in distinctive physical characteristics acts to preserve ethnic distinctiveness and identity. Abandoning this practice by the group as a whole would not only make acculturation possible but would, in itself, signal loss or abandonment of a cultural tradition that is part and parcel of the group’s identity. This theme of deculturation rather than acculturation as the outcome of interactions with other ethnic groups is also considered in Rosaldo’s chapter.

Another important constraint on the extent to which ethnic identity is determined by intergroup interactions—particularly assimilation of subordinate groups into groups associated with dominant “national” cultures—is the growing power of states to jurally regulate ethnic group membership. As Winzeler shows in his chapter, even if the Chinese and Thai minorities in Kelantan should want to “become” Malay—a change in ethnicity that would greatly enhance their access to land and other resources—they are effectively barred from doing so by Malaysia’s national legal code. Although according to local custom non-Malays can “become” Malay by changing their religion to Islam and their language to Bahasa Melayu, and by displaying appropriate cultural behavior in public, only individuals born to Malay parents are legally allowed to purchase land within the Malay Reserve areas, which comprise the bulk of the arable land in the state. The marking of ethnic group membership on national identity cards, as is done in Malaysia and several other modern Southeast Asian nations, may be far more effective than racial features or tattoos in freezing the current ethnic diversity of the region within its present set of categories.

Both the ecological adaptation and the intergroup interaction models emphasize the importance of differential access to natural resources in generating and maintaining ethnic diversity. This emphasis on control of resources is well supported by several chapters in this volume. In particular, the expansion of groups specializing in full-time market-oriented agricultural production into tropical forest areas seems to create a niche for groups specializing in collection of forest products to trade with the agriculturalists. The Semang in Malaysia described by Rambo and the Agta and Batak in the Philippines described by Eder are examples of this creation of what Richard Fox (1969) labeled “professional primitives.” The knowledge, skills, and value orientations required to exploit forest resources on the one hand and manage intensive agricultural production on the other are so different that they require mutually exclusive economic specializations. In relatively large and complex agricultural societies, it may be possible to maintain forest specialists within the same cultural system. More commonly, however, the demand for forest products provides an opportunity for economic specialization along ethnic lines. As long as agriculture does not expand to the point where it destroys all the forest, a secure niche remains for the “hunters and gatherers.” In fact, as Eder suggests, their conversion to agriculturalists, despite abundant opportunities for knowledge of farming to diffuse to them, is inhibited by their ecological specialization as forest collectors as well as by lowlander hegemony.

The significance of differential control of natural resources is more problematic in cases where all the groups in an area are involved in agriculture. Ecological specialization may still play a role in ethnic survival as in the case of the Kelantan Chinese described by Winzeler. Inhabiting sandy, well-drained river banks that are unsuited for rice farming practiced by the Malays, these Chinese have specialized in vegetable production. Rather than being competitive, the productive activities of the two groups are complementary. In many other cases, however, expansion of commercial agriculture by one ethnic group results in the competitive exclusion of subsistence agriculturalists belonging to other ethnic groups. This appears to be the usual fate of swidden farming “tribes” on the margins of capitalist agricultural expansion, such as the Mandaya described by Yengoyan. Such groups must either retreat into remote refuge areas unsuitable for intensive agricultural development or they gradually lose their ethnic distinctiveness as they are absorbed into the wage labor proletariat employed on the plantations.

In an ecologically homogeneous agricultural area, however, cultural factors -that influence the ability of different groups to exploit resources can, under some circumstances, provide in themselves a basis for maintenance of ethnic diversity. Thus, the Thai in Kelantan described by Winzeler raise pigs in their villages and hunt wild pigs that invade their farms from the forest. The latter activity benefits their Malay neighbors who as devout Muslims are forbidden to come into close contact with pigs. In effect, culture creates the differentiation in access to natural resources necessary for the survival of Thai and Malay farmers as separate ethnic groups. It is probably more often the case, at least in contemporary Southeast Asia, that cultural difference is itself the resource that justifies maintenance of distinctive ethnic groups. Foster describes this kind of situation about the Mon in modern Thailand.

According to Foster, Mon migrants from Burma established numerous rice farming villages in Central Thailand in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Over the past century acculturation has been rapid, and most of the descendants of these migrants have been assimilated into the numerically and politically dominant rural Thai population. Today, the only persons who still assert Mon ethnic identity are those few individuals engaging in commerce, especially the trade in household pottery. Foster explains the persistence of Mon identity among the latter group in terms of its serving to differentiate them from the Thai peasants with whom they trade. By making them “outsiders” in the village society, having Mon identity frees the traders from “the traditional expectations of generosity and fair dealing which are so contrary to the viable pursuit of trade.”

The Mon traders gain this economic advantage at the cost of retaining an ethnic identity held in low esteem by their Thai neighbors. Thus relations between groups in the “symbolic economy” may be an inversion of their relationships in the material economy. The rich “outsider” merchant is considered socially inferior to the poor “insider” farmer. Such inversions, as Vivienne Wee’s elegant analysis of the material and symbolic aspects of ethnic diversity in the Riau Islands suggests, may be a common characteristic of ethnically complex state societies in the region. According to Wee, the groups that are most tightly integrated into the national Indonesian economy and are thus the most dependent upon powerful external forces, which they are too weak to control, are at the top of the ethnic status hierarchy in the Riaus. The subsistence-oriented Orang Laut, on the other hand, who are in material terms the most independent group, are symbolically classed in the lowest and most dependent category. The symbolic aspects of ethnicity serve to conceal the harsh realities of class dependency within the political economy of Indonesia. (The Orang Laut, however, hold to an alternative symbolic economy that portrays them as the true “indigenes” while the aristocrats of the dominant system are seen as “foreigners.” The Orang Laut therefore acknowledge an inclusive/exclusive social division rather than accept a status hierarchy that denigrates them. Both formulations serve to obscure political and economic realities.)