Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Kinship and Semelai Residential Arrangements: Belonging to Village and the Resilience of Communal Land Tenure in Tasek Bera, Malaysia

Kinship and Semelai Residential Arrangements: Belonging to Village and the Resilience of Communal... By examining two villages in Pos Iskandar, Tasek Bera, the article shows that Semelai have a sense of grouping based on consanguinity, where parents, married children and siblings live in proximity, which traditionally formed a kampong (village). This contributes to the resilience of the communal land tenure system. Today, however, land is seen as property and this has led to its informal inclusion in the Semelai concept of pesakak manah (inheritance). While Semelai try to maintain their living arrangements, individual and inherited property rights in land are emerging. Land remains deeply embedded in kin-based relationships, but the legitimacy of land rights is predominantly grounded in law and legislation rather than in the customary norms of kinship and communal land tenure that is based on relationality. The moral underpinnings of land rights should, therefore, be anchored in a relational perspective that draws from kinship and the communal land tenure system. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology Taylor & Francis

Kinship and Semelai Residential Arrangements: Belonging to Village and the Resilience of Communal Land Tenure in Tasek Bera, Malaysia

Download PDF

Kinship and Semelai Residential Arrangements: Belonging to Village and the Resilience of Communal Land Tenure in Tasek Bera, Malaysia

Abstract

By examining two villages in Pos Iskandar, Tasek Bera, the article shows that Semelai have a sense of grouping based on consanguinity, where parents, married children and siblings live in proximity, which traditionally formed a kampong (village). This contributes to the resilience of the communal land tenure system. Today, however, land is seen as property and this has led to its informal inclusion in the Semelai concept of pesakak manah (inheritance). While Semelai try to maintain their...
Loading next page...
 
/lp/taylor-francis/kinship-and-semelai-residential-arrangements-belonging-to-village-and-ENpn0GNsw0
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2020 The Australian National University
ISSN
1740-9314
eISSN
1444-2213
DOI
10.1080/14442213.2020.1795239
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

By examining two villages in Pos Iskandar, Tasek Bera, the article shows that Semelai have a sense of grouping based on consanguinity, where parents, married children and siblings live in proximity, which traditionally formed a kampong (village). This contributes to the resilience of the communal land tenure system. Today, however, land is seen as property and this has led to its informal inclusion in the Semelai concept of pesakak manah (inheritance). While Semelai try to maintain their living arrangements, individual and inherited property rights in land are emerging. Land remains deeply embedded in kin-based relationships, but the legitimacy of land rights is predominantly grounded in law and legislation rather than in the customary norms of kinship and communal land tenure that is based on relationality. The moral underpinnings of land rights should, therefore, be anchored in a relational perspective that draws from kinship and the communal land tenure system.

Journal

The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology – Taylor & Francis

Published: Aug 7, 2020

Keywords: Kinship; Residential Arrangement; Village; Communal Land; Inheritance; Semelai; Land Rights; Relational Perspective

References

  • ‘The Resettlement of the Orang Asli From a Historical Perspective' in 'The Ethnography of the Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia, Papers Presented at the Seminar of the Malaysian Society for Asian Studies Held in Kuala Lumpur on 1st and 2nd October 1977'
  • Austroasiatic
  • Traditional Alliances: Contact Between the Semais and the Malay State in Pre-Modern Perak
  • Semelai Agricultural Patterns: Toward an Understanding of Variation among Indigenous Cultures in Southern Peninsular Malaysia
  • An Ethnographical Investigation of the Semelai of Malaysia
  • Building, Dwelling, Living: How Animals and People Make Themselves at Home in the World
  • Home is Where you Draw Strength and Rest: the Meanings of Home for Houseless Young People
  • The Role of Rattan in the Economy of Orang Asli Communities
  • I Still Call Australia Home: Indigenous Belonging and Place in a White Postcolonising Society
  • Negotiating Indigenous Identity in Postcolonial Malaysia: Beyond Being ‘Not Quite/Not Malay’