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Islam, Other Factors and Malay Backwardness: Comments on an Argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

William Wilder
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Extract

An anthropologist has recently remarked on an ‘orthodoxy’ of economic development that has grown up among some economists. The same writer continues with the observation that

there is also, among some economists, an orthodoxy of the relevant background factors in development. When the tools of economic analysis appear inadequate fully to deal with specific instances of economic change or economic stagnation, the psychology and attitudes of the people concerned are invoked, as is the inertia of indigenous institutions.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , March 1968 , pp. 155 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

1 Lorraine, Barić, ‘Some Aspects of Credit, Saving and Investment in a “Non-Monetary” Economy (Rossel Island)’ in Firth, Raymond and Yamey, B. S. (Eds.), Capital Saving and Credit in Peasant Societies, London, 1964, p. 35.Google Scholar

2 Ibid.

3 Parkinson, B. K., ‘Non-Economic Factors in the Economic Retardation of the Rural Malays’, Modern Asian Studies, I, 1, 1967, pp. 31–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 My comments will be made partly in the light of a recent study of social structure which, as a social anthropologist, I carried out in Pahang, Malaya. Fieldwork (1964–66) was supported by the London-Cornell Project for East and South-East Asian Studies (the Project is supported jointly by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and by the Nuffield Foundation) to which I am deeply grateful.

5 Parkinson, op. cit., p. 33. Citations from this article will henceforth be made by page only.

6 E.g. Abdul, Abdullah binMunshi, Kadir, Kisah Pelayaran Abdullah, Kuala Lumpur, 1960, pp. 31–32. Abdullah's voyage to east-coast Malaya was probably made about 1837.Google Scholar

7 P. 33.

8 Pp. 33–4.

9 P. 34.

10 Parkinson's main evidence here seems to be historical. He states in another place that ‘the force exerted on everyday life by the hantu, or spirits, although growing less, is still marked and is the result of refusing to give up the beliefs of pre-Muslim ancestors’ (p. 37). It is true that, historically, many Malay practices and beliefs contain ‘Hindu and/or animistic’ elements, and Malays do have certain beliefs about hantu. But to represent spirits as having a ‘force on everyday life’ is to attribute to Malay villagers a belief which they do not have. In the village where I lived, hantu were thought to be, by and large, completely harmless. Far from entering into everyday life, they were only thought to have influence in extraordinary situations, of crisis, of illness, or misfortune generally, and even then in only very restricted and uncertain ways. They Malay is not conscious of ‘refusing to give up’ pre-Muslim beliefs. Parkinson's constant recourse to ‘refusal’ and ‘resistance’ confounds the practical, rational way in which Malay villagers conduct their everyday life, and the large historical movements and economic changes which are conclusions of the author and are independent of the individual consciousness.

11 P. 35.

12 In this context, Parkinson also mentions ‘the traditional gotong royong practice’ (pp. 34–5). It should be pointed out that gotong royong (often translated as collective ‘self-help’) is not ‘traditional’, but is, like the co-operatives it is supposed to resist, a conscious attempt on the part of the administration to introduce a means of development at ground level. Gotong royong is an ideology more than an established system. In a perfunctory manner, intelligent Malays will sometimes assert that it is traditional Malay custom. According to administrators, gotong royong is regarded by the villagers as another way of squeezing money out of the government through its aid to the temporary groups formed under the gotong royong banner.

13 P. 38, n. 27.

14 It is also erroneous to refer, as Parkinson does in another place, to adat perpateh as ‘matriarchal customs’ (p. 37). The Negri Sembilan adat refers to the matrilineal emphasis in the system of kinship and in the traditional political system. Adat temenggong, moreover, is not ‘patriarchal’ or even predominantly patrillineal, but refers to the bilateral (or cognatic) kinship reckoning of the other peninsular Malays.

15 P. 40.

16 P. 42.

17 Ibid.

18 Bailey, F. G., ‘Decisions by Concensus in Councils and Committees, with Special Reference to Village and Local Government in India’, in Political Systems and the Distribution of Power, ASA Monographs, 2, London, 1965, pp. 1–20, esp. pp. 8–13.Google Scholar

19 P. 42, n. 42.

20 P. 42.

21 P. 39.

22 Ibid.

23 P. 37.

24 P. 38.

25 E.g. The Malay Magician, being Shaman, Saiva and Sufi, rev. ed. London, 1951.Google Scholar

26 Op. cit., p. 35.

27 Wilder, W., Magic in Malaya (Unpublished M.A. thesis, University of London, 1963). Parkinson refers to Malay magicians (bomoh and pawang) as ‘shamans’. This is incorrect. Only a small proportion of magicians use trance techniques and so would qualify as shamans.Google Scholar See Notes and Queries on Anthropology, Sixth edition, London, 1951, p. 181.Google Scholar

28 P. 40. It is not entirely clear what is meant by ‘fatalism’ in social terms. At another place, however, Parkinson cites Hagen, and writes that the agricultural peasant generally, and the Malay peasant in particular, ‘merely takes for granted that the phenomena of the world around him are arbitrary and not amenable to analysis, and that they control him …’ (p. 38). Applied to Malay villagers, this is utterly false. The notion, which Parkinson accepts, derives from Frazerian theories, and is now discredited. It is certainly a surprising statement from one who has had experience of Malay peasants.

29 This is not to say that the history of Malay Islam cannot be treated sociologically (see, e.g., A.Kahar Bador, ‘Réformisme Islamique et Politique en Malaisie, Un cas historique’, Archives de Sociologie des Religions, No. 17, 1964, or that history is an unimportant consideration in the study of Malay society. The point here is that Parkinson confounds the two levels. See also note 10 supra.

30 Even if it were thought necessary, historical causation needs more cautious use. One such important study is C.Geertz, Peddlers and Princes. Social Change and Economic Modernization in Two Indonesian Towns, Chicago, 1963, summarized by Geertz in Hagen, op. cit., Ch. 16.

31 The foundation of such views as Parkinson's which caricature Malays has been deftly exposed in a recent popular account: ‘The Malays were, and most still are, basically simple peasants and fishermen, still centuries behind but living in what was their country dominated politically and commercially by two extremely sagacious people who were joined by a third and equally materialistic trading race, the Indians. And so developed the story that the Malay was a charming, happy, lazy, no-good, useless playboy… It is not entirely a myth, but you cannot in fairness occupy much of a man's land, buy his produce at your price, sell the goods he needs in your shops, control the labor market in your own interest, develop his country's resources, bully him economically, and dominate him politically, and then accuse him of being a lazy good-for-nothing who won't work. This is precisely what has happened to the Malays …’, McKie, R., Malaysia in Focus, London, 1963, p. 68.Google Scholar

32 P. 36.

33 P. 46.

34 P. 44.

35 Geertz, C., The Social History of an Indonesian Town, New York, 1965, p. 41, n. 8.Google Scholar Geertz here refers to his study of Javanese entrepreneurs in an article ‘Religious Belief and Economic Behaviour in a Central Javanese Town: Some Preliminary Considerations’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 4, 2, 1956, pp. 134–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar