M

ANUSIA DAN
ASYARAKAT
MAN AND SOCIETY

Siri Baru Jilid 24

New Series Volume 24

2013

Preface
Malini Ratnasingam
Emplaced, Embodied, Multi-Sited, Collaborative Ethnography In Peninsular
Malaysia
Diana Riboli & Ivan Tacey
The Perils of Fieldwork
Philip Fountain
Exclusivity of Asian Women Conducting Fieldwork in South Korea
Noor Sulastry Yurni Ahmad
Ethnography Among the Orang Asli: A Reflexive Account
Mehrdad Arabestani
Triangulation or Mixed Methods: Methods or Research Design
Malini Ratnasingam
Discourse Analysis: A Review in Sociological Fieldwork
Rosila Bee Mohd Hussain
Transposing Western Psychological Measures: The Methods and Problems of
Translating Scales from One Language and Culture to Another
Haslina Muhamad
Using The Key Informants Interviews (Kiis) Technique: A Social Sciences Study
with Malaysian and Pakistani Respondents
Mumtaz Ali, Maya Khemlani David & Lai Lee Ching
BOOK REVIEW: Cumming, G (2012). Understanding the new statictics: Effect
sizes, confidence intervals and meta-analysis
Malini Ratnasingam

Jabatan Antropologi dan Sosiologi

Fakulti Sastera dan Sains Sosial
Universiti Malaya

Man and Society (24) 2013

Ethnography among the Orang Asli: A Reflexive Account

Mehrdad Arabestani1
University Malaya

Abstract
This reflexive article tries to position the ethnographer, as a non-Malaysian researcher
with specific interests and background, conducting an anthropological study among
the Orang Asli of Malaysia. Personal reasons for selecting a topic among the Orang
Asli comprise the first part of the account. The next part, deals with the fieldwork
and all the contradictory feelings the ethnographer experienced in the field. The
ethnographer needed to adopt a language strategy for both communicating with
the people and collecting the data. The main part of the strategy was working
with informants who had good English language skills. Social change and the
plural response of the Orang Asli to forces of change were the general analytical
concerns of the study which were partly informed by the ethnographers sensitivity
to change processes in developing countries. Instead of looking at the Orang Asli
as a homogeneous community resisting cultural changes, the ethnographer tried to
tell a story that involved the divergent views of the Orang Asli and included diverse
responses, conscious and subconscious, from resistance to compliance.
Key words: Position, language, culture shock, change, plurality

INTRODUCTION

n 2006, when I was applying to University of Malaya for a doctoral programme of

study in anthropology, I had few options to propose as my research proposal. As
an Iranian, Iran-related topics were the most convenient ones. I had already carried
out fieldwork in Iran and had no difficulty entering Iranian field sites. I had done an
ethnographic study on Sufism among the Kurds, which resulted in my Masters thesis;
and religiosity of the Mandaean, a Gnostic ethno-religious group in the south-west
of Iran, which resulted in a book and few articles (Arabestani, 2008, 2010, 2012).
Therefore, I did not need to start from scratch. One of my options was to propose
developing any of these studies in a way that would suit a doctorate research. I
was totally familiar with the field sites and the literature; thus, I was able to jump
into the field and finish this compulsory research in the shortest time. Since there
was not a vast expertise on the anthropology of Iran in Malaysia, defending such a
1

PhD Graduate, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

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Ethnography among the Orang Asli: A Reflexive Account

research would also have been unproblematic. However, this very reason, that is
the lack of expertise, could lead to the rejection of my proposal. Another option was
to propose a research in Malaysia. This option was more challenging and difficult
to accomplish; though, considering the opportunities for developing academic
skills, it was more rewarding. Defining an ethnographic study in Malaysia was a
chance to experience a new fieldwork setting and to learn what I had not known
before. Working in another country, with a different language and with dissimilar
social and political background could have been an explorative experience with all
its risks and excitements. Therefore, I decided to develop a proposal based upon a
study among the Orang Asli; after all, was it not the most classical available field
of anthropological study in Malaysia? It was challenging because the field was
completely unfamiliar to me, and I was the first Middle Easterner who was going
to study the Orang Asli in Malaysia. The authority of white western researchers
had already been established in the country. Moreover, Orang Asli studies have
been part of almost all Malaysian anthropologists career and there were reputable
internationally acknowledged scholars among Malaysians. On the other hand, it
was rewarding because it was an opportunity to work in a field full of exploration
and genuine ethnographic experiences.
Considering my previous experiences and interests, I proposed to study the
interaction between religious missions and the Orang Asli. I wanted to look at the
Orang Aslis responses to Christian and Muslim missions and the socio-political and
psychological meaning of their response to them.
Undoubtedly, my background intervened in the process of the research, the
findings and explanatory approach of the study. The researcher occupies a position
and observes with a particular angle of vision that both enables and inhibits particular
insights (Rosaldo, 2000). All ethnographies are partial because any ethnographer
is positioned. Exploring the position of the researcher can at least help the reader
to read the ethnography as the product of a positioned ethnographer with a specific
perspective. Here I would like to reflect on my position and its contribution and
influence in shaping my research among the Orang Asli and consequent research
findings. Particularly, I will focus on the process of fieldwork and the theoretical
framework that I brought to the field.

FIELD EXPERIENCE: FINDING A WAY IN AN UNFAMILIAR LAND

I had read what was available about the Orang Asli in Iran. In these works the Orang
Asli were portrayed as an indigenous people with a simple livelihood of hunting
and gathering, far away from mainstream society and under the threat of cultural
extinction and ethnocide (e.g. Endicott & Dentan, 2004). My first visit to an Orang
Asli village happened about one month after my arrival in Malaysia. My supervisor,
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Man and Society (24) 2013

Dr. Juli Edo, planned a student group visit and short stay at Ulu Geruntom, a Semai
village in Kinta district, Perak, on the occasion of a wedding ceremony. At the
briefing session, Dr. Juli talked about the ceremony and what the students needed
to know in their interactions with the Orang Asli. The only question that occurred
to me was about the accommodation in the village. Influenced by my mental image
of the Orang Asli settlements in the deep jungle, I asked him Do we need to bring
our sleeping bags? He smiled and said, No! You do not need a sleeping bag. In
fact, Ulu Geruntom was a relatively big village, with a three-story boarding school,
a soccer ground, a chapel and a community hall. We settled in the boarding school;
so, certainly we did not need sleeping bags. Ulu Geruntom people were mostly
Christians. The bride was a Christian Semai from Ulu Geruntom and the bridegroom
a Temuan from Selangor. During the ceremony, friends and relatives of the couple
joined the party from nearby villages to far towns such as Penang. Therefore, the
guests were very diverse, Semais, Temuans, Chinese Christian workers, Malay
students, and an Iranian. During the ceremony that took about three days and two
nights, especially the second day which was the main day of the ceremony, a large
number of guests were entertained with generous food buffets and soft drinks, live
music performances and choreographed dances that lasted until after midnight. It
was like a festival. Later, I attended some other wedding ceremonies in Malaysia,
but none were as big as this Semai wedding. This first visit modified my image of
the Orang Asli as an isolated people with a subsistence economy. However, later
I realized that these elaborate wedding ceremonies were common among west
Semai rather than east Semai2. By finding people who could speak English, I
tried to communicate with the people. Here, I met Bah Rahu, a Semai Christian
Elder, who had a good command of English, and as an ordained clergy had a deep
knowledge both of Semai culture and Christian missionaries and who later became
one of my main mentors3.
Dr. Julis help in introducing me to some other Orang Asli villages and
the official authorities was crucial in selecting my field sites, entering the field,
establishing connection with the people and eventually becoming independent.
For the first time, I seriously faced the problem of communication when I
entered the Temiar settlements of Cedak and Makmur, in the Kinta district, Perak.
There was a young Temiar man in Cedak who could partially speak English. When
he was not around, my social relationships would reduce to just nodding and smiling
interchanges with the villagers. Communication with the people was inextricably
linked to my research and because of the failure in communication, data collection
West Semais are more acculturated to Malays than east Semai; furthermore, despite the similarity of
the kinship system, there are some differences between their kinship definitions (Arabestani, 2013, p.
140).
3
Bah Rahu passed away in January 2011, just a few days after I left his home at Ulu Geruntom. Tham
Leong (2012) has written a biographical account of Bah Rahus missionary work (the book is still
unpublished).
2

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Ethnography among the Orang Asli: A Reflexive Account

was very slow, and I had to lie down in my corner at the village mosque, reading
a book or just try to pass the time until my informant and interpreter came back. I
gradually felt depressed, lonely and incompetent in furthering my research. This
combination of emotions which is called culture shock was not unexpected and
many anthropologists reported such feelings in their fieldwork, including famous
Aslianist Robert Knox Dentan (1970). The diary of the giant figure in the history
of anthropology, Bronislaw Manlinowski, is especially well-known for its harsh and
revealing statements about his emotional experience and his feelings toward Trobriand
islanders (Malinowski, 1989, see: Diaries of 20 September 1914, 14 December 1917,
11 February 1918). Despite the culture shock, on these trips I succeeded in having
some useful interviews and participated in gatherings and community activities
such as ritual dance (sewing) and religious gatherings. Considering the time I spent
in the field; however, the amount of information collected was not satisfactory. I
thought I should learn the language, and I actually began asking about the meaning
of words and short sentences. In fact, the procedure of learning the Orang Asli
language was even more disappointing than data collection. Since there were not
many resources, such as books, for practicing the language I had to completely rely
on communication with the people and that needed long and continuous stay in the
community. During my research, my family and I were living in a condominium
in one of Kuala Lumpurs suburbs. My wife was a post graduate student and my
daughter a primary school student. I could handle regular short stays in the field,
but I could not afford to leave my family alone for a long time and stay in the field.
I also could not financially afford long stays in the field.
I knew the ideal of fieldwork is a Malinowski type of learning the language
and living with the people for years. Typical western researchers show the same
tendencies in their research. Most notable is Dentans research on the Semai people
that is based on months of stay among east and west Semais (see: Dentan,1970).
However, except implicit statements about speaking the language (Dentan, 1970:
88), one cannot see a clear report about his practical level of mastery of the native
language. What level of language skill would suffice to do fieldwork? In fact, doing
intense interviews and getting complicated, sometimes abstract, information needs
a high level of proficiency in the native language, which is hard to obtain.
Considering my limitations, I needed to adopt a language strategy that suited
my situation. Since achieving a high level of mastery of the native language was
not quite feasible, relying only on native language for communication was not a
good strategy. However, I continually asked about the native terms and statements.
In particular, I paid special attention to the language used in beliefs, rituals and
their implications (Arabestani, 2013). Almost all the Orang Asli spoke the Malay
language and one could use Malay as the medium of communication. This is the
main language strategy of Malaysian researchers. I had a much better command of
English than Malay and I preferred to work with through the informants who could
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Man and Society (24) 2013

speak English. Meanwhile, I started taking Malay lessons and tried to improve my
Malay.
I was lucky to meet some English-speaking Orang Asli from the beginning.
At first glance, it might seem that one can hardly find an Orang Asli who knows
English. English is a recognized language in Malaysia. According to the National
Language Act 1967, English is permitted for official purposes, in parliament and
legislative assemblies, and authoritative texts. As a country that was once a colony
of Britain, English is widely spoken as a second language in Malaysia at the level
of mesolect (Asmah Haji Omar, 2001). I do not deny that the number of Englishspeaking Orang Asli is less than the whole society. Nonetheless, there are college
graduates, clergies, workers in tourist facilities, local guides, and employees of
government sectors and entrepreneur Orang Asli who know English in a continuum
from basilect to mesolect, and even acrolect levels. Indeed, the strangeness of the
English Speaking Orang Asli picture comes from dominant depiction of them as an
indigenous people with a self-contained livelihood, living in remote parts of Jungle,
which is not a realistic picture of the Orang Asli. To sum up, my language strategy
was intense work with English-speaking informants or assistants, using English and
partly Malay for communication, and to focus on Semai terms and phrases when they
carried particular cultural meanings. Moreover, in a few cases, I also asked some
non- Orang Asli Malay speakers to assist me. The Orang Asli informants at the same
time were my mentors and assistants. They would introduce me to their contacts and
with their help I could gain access to a network of different types of people. They
also were my translators when we meet other people. Life history, memories and
experiences of my Semai mentors were priceless sources of information. In fact,
when the boundaries between interview and friendly chat became blurred, I had
the opportunity to see the inner reaches of the peoples lives inaccessible through
formal interviews.
The topic of my research required that I consider other involved parties
besides the Orang Asli. In particular, missionaries, Muslim and Christian, were
to be included in the study. Approaching missionaries was not that problematic.
Muslims generally considered me as a fellow Muslim, someone on their side, and
had a friendly attitude. Christians, on the other hand, were welcoming to anybody
who asked about their religion and their activities. I think the inherent missionary
tendency in Christianity contributed to their welcoming attitude towards outsiders.
Therefore, I did not have any problem with joining religious activities and attending
religious gatherings, whether Christian or Islamic ones. In comparing these two
parties, Muslim missionaries usually had less command over English than Christians.
Sometimes, they could hardly express themselves in English. Certainly, Islamic
education, with its emphasis on Arabic, played a role in their lower English skills. On
the contrary, Christian missionaries spoke English well and in Christian missionary
schools, English was an important subject. Despite the welcoming attitude of
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Ethnography among the Orang Asli: A Reflexive Account

Christian missionaries, when it came to topics of conversion and missionary work

among the Orang Asli, some church authorities were discreet in opening up. In fact,
because Islam is part of the government ideology, inter-religious relations are charged
with political considerations. Nonetheless, Christian workers and missionaries in
the field did not show such a cautious attitude.
I regularly visited my field sites in Perak and Pahang. During these visits, I
stayed in different places, from a corner in the village hall or mosque to peoples
houses, guestrooms, and budget hotels. I usually brought with me some gifts, such
as rice, oil, canned foods, cookies and books, for the people and my informants to
reciprocate their help and hospitality. In some other cases, I paid the informants to
accompany me in my trips and arranged some visits to other villages and meetings
with key persons. Culture shock did not persist to the end of my research; however,
feelings of depression and incompetence, with a lower frequency and lesser intensity,
never completely ceased occurring. Especially, when the flow of the research was
slow, and I could not find satisfactory answers to my questions.

PERSPECTIVE: THE LOGIC OF CHANGE

It is an undeniable fact that the Orang Asli are left behind in mainstream societys
development. The Orang Asli have an under-developed and under-privileged situation
in a rather developed country. For me, this situation was reminiscent of the situation
of Middle Eastern and developing countries in relation to developed countries4. The
people of developing (undeveloped?) countries show contradictory feelings about
their situation. They want the change and development, and they want to preserve
what they have at the same time. They complain about the enforcing uniformity
of globalization, but they want to be global. This leads to an ambivalent attitude
toward change. That is why we see different responses to the forces of change,
from resistance against any change to embracing the changes. These responses,
though, are complicated by historical experiences, politics, ideologies and political
economy. Many studies (e.g. Dentan, Endicott, Gomes, & Hooker, 1997; Endicott,
1979; Hasan, 1989, 1992; Hood & Hasan, 1984; Juli, 1998; Lai, 2008; Lim & Gomes,
1990; Nicholas, 2000; Nowak, 1985; Yong, 2006) have critically dealt with the
social, political and environmental impact of development on the Orang Asli. These
studies are valuable for policy makers and can be used for monitoring the impact
of current policies. Undoubtedly, the Orang Asli have suffered from environmental
destruction, and sometimes cultural dislocations, caused by developmental programs.
But they have also welcomed many changes that enhanced their quality of life, such
as new roads that have been made since the 1980s (Lye, 2005). These roads have
dramatically increased the mobility of the Orang Asli, and have enhanced medical
Developed and undeveloped are relative terms. A given society that is developed in relation to a
society might be undeveloped in comparison to another society.

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and educational services. Some researchers now address questions of citizenship and
human right (Nah, 2003, 2006, 2008), configuration of the relationship between the
state and the Orang Asli in the legal arena (Idrus, 2008); and criticize the assimilation
programs, bumiputera and Islamization policies from the perspectives of equality
and social justice (Dentan et al., 1997; Nicholas, 2003). The debates about the Orang
Asli and the changes that have been imposed on them by outsiders reflect a longlasting debate about the relationship between indigenous people and their dominant
neighbors. These debates are well exemplified in Stephen Corry and Lucy Mairs
exchanges in the Royal Anthropological Institute News (RAIN) (Corry, 1975a,1975b,
2002; Mair, 1975a, 1975b).5 Corry and Mair represent two different approaches
to development among indigenous people. One approach criticizes and condemns
governmental and the dominant cultures manipulation as ethnocid; because their
actions annihilate these groups and perpetrate forms of education, which degrade
and eventually destroy the indigenous culture (Corry, 1975a). Another approach
criticizes the idea of ethnocide and locates the indigenous people problem in the
paradigm of progress and cultural change; an approach that Lucy Mair (Mair, 1975a)
holds. Corry describes ethnocide as destruction of an ethnic group by a dominant
ethnic group by means other than deliberate killing(Corry, 1975a). Mair (1975a),
on the other hand, says:
Some people speak of ethnocide when what they mean is the abandonment
of their previous way of life by populations which have continued to live
and to reproduce themselves through the generations and indeed the
centuries; this in fact is the history of the vast majority of the present
inhabitants of the world. We were all food-gatherers once.
(Mair, 1975a: 4)

Therefore, for Mair, cultural changes, in any form, are the inevitable fate of human
societies. Corry responded to Mairs argument by saying that ethnocide is the
destruction of the group, and not the cultural change which are occurring because
the group wants them to happen. However, he immediately added, what any group
wants or does not want when it comes to interaction with a different society is,
of course, a very complex question (Corry, 1975b: 15).
No Orang Asli study can be carried out without consideration of the subject
of change among them. Undoubtedly, the Orang Asli are not just the victims of
development. They have also benefitted from the changes. Social and cultural
changes are a given in human societies and within a people there is always resistance
and compliance towards these changes. To balance the study of change, we need
to consider both resistance and compliance among the various parties of a society,
and try to understand the underlying causes of each reaction. However, it is always
necessary to deal with injustice and ill planned development programs that an under Corry and Mairs articles and letters were reprinted in an edited book by Jonathan Benthall (2002).

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Ethnography among the Orang Asli: A Reflexive Account

privileged ethnic group, such as the Orang Asli, face from the stand point of social
justice and humanitarianism.
Perhaps we can imagine a time in the past when societies developed according
to their intrinsic logic. Nowadays, however, extrinsic development is inevitable. We
are always exposed to other societies, and thus we have to define our relation to them.
The Orang Asli, like other people, have responded to forces of change, whether by
resistance or acceptance and making new hybrids. Missionary work by Christians
and Muslims among the Orang Asli is an extrinsic factor that suggests a significant
cultural change. I decided to study how the Orang Asli reacted to this factor.
Here, I am not going through the details of my analysis. Instead, I will try to
depict the general theoretical view that shaped my particular viewpoint. Orang Asli
communities are not static communities living in secluded areas and in total harmony
with the environment. Exoticism lies at the bottom of most ethnographic accounts,
but when it reaches the point when it distorts the portrayal of a people, it would
then be counterproductive. The Orang Asli are not only victims of development and
subjects of governmental irresponsible policies, but also they enjoy the comforts of
development. They are agents who in one way or another contribute to the situation.
I intended to view the Orang Asli community as a plural community with people
having different views, who consciously or subconsciously responded to external
forces of change and participated in shaping their reality.
Many Orang Asli have resisted missionary work and did not convert to
Christianity and Islam. This is, however, only a partial reality. About 40% of Orang
Asli in Perak and 18% in Pahang have converted to Islam and Christianity. Even if
we deem that these numbers are not valid indicators, the presence of a considerable
number of converts among the Orang Asli is undeniable. The converts, the changed
people, are as much Orang Asli as the non-converts; thus, the researcher should
include consideration of their reality. In the same way as developing countries
respond to forces of change; resistance is not necessarily a sign of loyalty to the
respected culture, neither does embracing the change unavoidably indicate surrender
or betrayal. Both are the responses of different people who are equal in their ethnic
or national affiliation; and are entitled to have their choice. Who can really say
which option is the best for them? Investigating the mechanisms of their responses
to change, however, may only reduce the effects of adverse consequences.

CONCLUSION
All knowledge is relative. The position of the researcher and his/her perspectives
and experiences has a crucial effect on the findings. The reader cannot ever be sure
if a reflexive self-report is uncontaminated by the ideal presentation of self, or

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Man and Society (24) 2013

whether it is a creative manipulation of image. Even if the writer does not deliberately
try to deceive the reader, the subconscious motives may distort the report. Indeed,
realistic self-awareness or honest self-disclosure is a pre-Freudian idea based on
the availability of all personal parameters to the consciousness (Salzman, 2002).
Therefore, a reflective report can only claim minimum disclosure to the extent of
what the writer, consciously or unconsciously, can reveal. A reflexive account at its
best can help the reader to see the writer behind the text.
Fieldwork in a foreign country and among totally stranger people was
accompanied by a culture shock that I had not experienced in my previous
fieldwork among people of my country. Despite the difference between the ethnic,
religious and language background of those Iranian people and mine, I never had
felt the despair, incompetence and depression that I felt in my fieldwork among the
Orang Asli. Mainly it was because of the lack of a common language for everyday
communication. Later, with finding English-speaking informants and by using my
broken Malay I tried to overcome the problem. Even though this language strategy
led me to experience some joyful moments with my Orang Asli friends and mentors,
it inevitably prolonged the research process.
Change is a given fact in any society. Having the experience of being brought
up in a country where for several decades the governments propaganda had insisted
on evil outsiders who interfered in society and tried to spoil our culture and prevented
us from progressing, had taught me a lesson. Getting stuck in this victim-view,
outsider-blaming discourse perpetuates the problems of change through denial of the
contribution of the internal agents and their diverse interests. If we accept change
as a given fact in every society, we need to find a way out of the victim based,
outsider blaming discourse through acknowledging the peoples plural contributions
to the status quo.
In the case of the Orang Asli, I preferred to view the Orang Asli community as
being in the process of change. They are not living museum objects or a national, or
world, cultural heritage to be preserved. Rather, they are a people who are changing
exactly the same as other people in history. And like other people, they responded
to the forces of change which comprised both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. The
Orang Aslis response to these factors was not unanimous and encompassed reactions
from resistance to compliance according to each groups conscious interests or
subconscious motives. This view is different from the portrayal of the Orang Asli
that ignores the differing responses of the people and sees them as a homogeneous
and conservative people. Studying these divergent views, their underlying rationale
and their consequences was the main goal of my research.

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Ethnography among the Orang Asli: A Reflexive Account

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