Derek Freedman - Report on the Iban

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REPORT ON THE IBAN

LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS MONOGRAPHS ON SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Managing Editor: Charles Stafford

The Monographs on Social Anthropology were established in 1940 and aim to publish results of modern anthropological research of primary interest to specialists.

The continuation of the series was made possible by a grant in aid from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and more recently by a further grant from the Governors of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Income from sales is returned to a revolving fund to assist further publications.

The Monographs are under the direction of an Editorial Board associated with the Department of Anthropology of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

REPORT ON THE IBAN

DEREKFREEMAN

LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS MONOGRAPHS ON SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 41

First published 2004 by Berg Publishers

Published 2020 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Derek Freeman 2004

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

ISBN 13: 978-1-8452-0301-6 (hbk)

PREFACE

This is a new edition of my Report on the Iban of Sarawak, first published in Kuching in 1955 by the Government of Sarawak. It had been submitted, in typescript, to the Government of Sarawak early in 1953 in fulfilment of my contract as a research officer of the Colonial Social Science Research Council.

The Report s publication in Kuching was at the initiative of the Government of Sarawak. I did not see the proofs, nor, indeed, did I know that my Report was to be issued in Sarawak in printed form until, in 1955, a copy was sent to me in Canberra. Meanwhile, I had, in consultation with the Secretary of the Colonial Social Science Council, been preparing for publication in the United Kingdom a version of the same report in which the sections on social organization were much abridged and prominence was given to an analysis of the shifting cultivation of hill rice. This version of the same report was also published in 1955 under the title of Iban Agriculture (Her Majesty's Stationery Office; Colonial Research Studies No. 18).

I have now been persuaded, by Professor Raymond Firth and Mr Anthony Forge, to agree to the republication of the Kuching version. They tell me that copies of the original edition are much sought after, and this I can believe, for my own copy disappeared from my shelves some years ago.

My approach to the observation and analysis of ethnographical facts has changed a good deal in recent years; for example, in the interpretation of kinship behaviour I would now give much more attention to its ambivalent emotional basis. Again, my analysis, in I95I-3. of Iban political leadership was, 1 now discern, couched too much in structural terms, and gives insufficient attention to the processes of dominance behaviour as such, which, at that period, were but little understood by anthropologists.

It has been decided, however, to republish the text of my Report substantially unchanged. Some emendations have been made but these are mainly terminological and, in general, are the kinds of alterations which I would have made had the proofs of the Kuching edition of 1955 been sent to me for correction.

Part VII of the original report, which took the form of a series of policy recommendations for dealing with the problems of shifting cultivation as they existed in 1951, has been omitted.

For the information of those wishing to read more of the Iban I list a selection of the papers which I have published since 1955. In those published from i960 onwards, I have drawn on observations made during a second sojourn among the Iban in 1957-8.

'The Family System of the Iban of Borneo', in Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology, No. 1, The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups, edited by Jack Goody, pp. 15-52, figs. 1-2, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1957.

'Iban Pottery', Sarawak Museum Journal, 8: 151-76, 1957.

'The Iban of Western Borneo', in Social Structure in Southeast Asia, edited by G. P. Murdock, pp. 65-87, Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology No. 29, Chicago, 1960.

'Iban Augury', in The Birds of Borneo, by Bertram E. Smythies, pp. 73-98, Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, i960 (also published in Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 117: 141-67, 1961).

'A Note on the Gawai Kenyahng, or Hornbill Ritual of the Iban of Sarawak', in The Birds of Borneo, by Bertram E. Smythies, pp. 99-102, Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, i960.

On the Concept of the Kindred', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, : 192-220, 1961.

'Shaman and Incubus, in The Psychoanalytic Study of Society,IV: 315343, New York, International Universities Press, 1967.

For some years now my energies have been devoted to the formulation of an integrated approach to anthropological problems, giving due regard to phylogenetically determined variables, and latterly (in Samoa from 1965 to 1968), I have been concerned with the development of ethological and allied approaches to the study of human social behaviour. It is still, however, my intention to return as time and opportunity permit, to the observation and analysis of Iban behaviour and to present papers on a range of topics that will further supplement the account given in this report.

D. F.

Institute of Advanced Studies,
Australian National University
June, 1968

CONTENTS

1. i
2. ii
3. v
4. vi

Guide

Plates

Plates 1-4 between pages 72-3

Plates 5-8 between pages 184-5

1. An Iban augur performs an offering to his gods

Figures

Maps

In September 1948, I was appointed to undertake anthropological research in Sarawak under the auspices of the Colonial Social Science Research Council, The Secretary of the Colonial Social Science Research Council laid down as follows the nature of my research work: 'a study of a traditionally based, stable, Iban community based on shifting dry rice cultivation and not subject to undue land shortage...as described in "A Report on the Possibilities of a Social Economic Survey of Sarawak", by Dr E. R. Leach,'

I arrived in Sarawak in January 1949, and remained in the Colony until June 1951. For most of this period I was working among the Iban of the Baleh region of the Kapit District of the Third Division. Our base camp was at Rumah Nyala in the Sungai Sut, but field research was carried on in many other parts of the Baleh regionparticularly in the headwaters of the Sungai Mujong. Visits were also made to Iban communities of the lower, middle and upper Rejang, the Katibas and Ngemahin the Third Division, and of the Saribas and Ulu Batang Aiin the Second Division.

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