In the Realm of the Diamond Queen

IN THE REALM OF THE DIAMOND QUEEN IN THE REALM OF THE DIAMOND QUEEN Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton, New Jersey Copyright© r993 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 4 l William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08 540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, . Chichester, West Sussex All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. In the realm of the diamond queen: marginality in an out-of-the-way place I Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-03335-8 cl. ISBN 0-691-ooop-4 pa. I. Dayaks (Indonesian people)-Government relations. 2.. Dayaks (Indonesian people)-Social conditions. 3. Sex role-Indonesia-Meratus Mountains Region. I. Title. DS646.32.09r75 r993 323.1'r8922-dc20 93-10521 CIP This book has been composed in Adobe Sabon Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America IO 9 8 http://pup.princeton.edu In memory of Yang He Tsing and Bessie Cronbach Lowenhaupt, women of storied courage CONTENTS Preface lX OPENING IN THE REALM OF THE 3 DIAMOND QUEEN PART ONE POLITICS OF THE PERIPHERY 39 l Marginal Fictions 5 l 2 Government Headhunters 72 3 Family Planning 104 PART TWO A SCIENCE OF TRAVEL 121 4 Leadership Landscapes l 27 5 Conditions of Living l 5 4 6 On the Boundary of the Skin 178 PART THREE RIDING THE HORSE OF GAPS 207 7 Alien Romance 213 8 Riding, Writing 230 9 The History of the World 2 5 3 REPRISE 285 Notes 303 References Cited 321 Index 335 PREFACE n 1971 media around the world picked up on the discovery of a Stone I Age tribe in the southern Philippines. The Tasaday, it was said, were everything an urban audience wanted to hear about the good kind of primitives. They swung playfully around on vines, wore nothing but or chid leaves, and had no word for war. They were innocent and eager for protection from the international media and the Philippine state, in the person of Manuel Elizade, the director of the president's special commis sion on minorities. The Tasaday called Elizade a god. In 1974, Elizade closed their territory to visitors, to protect them from loggers and other exploiters from the modern world. Perhaps it is not surprising that in the 1980s, after both Elizade and his patron President Marcos had fled the country in disgrace (Elizade was later to return), journalists arrived back in Tasaday country to expose the "hoax" of the Tasaday. The most radical claims argued that the Tasaday were paid actors who had been told to play at being primitives. Indeed, these claims forced a debate in which either the Tasaday were an archaic community that had been entirely isolated for thousands of years or they were cynical members of a rural proletariat forced to portray a contrived communal existence. Less remarked upon was the evidence that there might be a real Tasaday community but one not quite as pristine as Eli zade and his media agents claimed; either the Tasaday were completely separate from the imagined "us" of modernity or else they weren't inter esting enough to talk about. 1 By 1990, media attention had turned to another rainforest people of Southeast Asia: the Penan hunter-gatherers of the forests of Sarawak, East Malaysia, the northern part of the island of Borneo. Media attention x Preface was sparked by Penan protests against logging; this time, the media fought state policy rather than being directed by it. From the start, local activists, from the village to the national level, were involved. The logging protests were at least loosely coordinated by the work of Sahabat Alam Malaysia, the Malaysian Friends of the Earth. Yet the news the media carried looked much like the original Tasaday story: The Penan were gentle innocents of the forest; until logging began, they lived encapsulated in their own timeless, archaic world. Ignoring the sophistication of Penan and other Sarawak activists, films and articles focused on the story of Bruno Mansur, a Swiss adventurer who had gone back to nature with the Penan. In two feature-length films, Mansur was depicted as the only con duit for outside knowledge about the isolated and shy Penan. Mansur, like Elizade, would be the champion of the tribes. 2 The story of the Penan-like that of the Tasaday before them-was carefully orchestrated to offer urban audiences something they could un derstand. Media writers and ecology activists alike figured that only by invoking the abyss between the primitive and the modern would they have a story to tell. Since primitives, as a dying breed, are no longer thought to be dangerous, the story has provoked sympathy, curiosity, and romance. If the Penan were depicted as "modern" people living in an out-of-the-way place, urban audiences would suspect that Penan were merely shabbier, less educated and privileged versions of themselves. One could feel sympathetic, but there would be nothing interesting to learn from the Penan and thus no reason to single them out for special atten tion. Perhaps a few activists worry about the Tasaday parallel: If the Penan were "exposed" as more cosmopolitan than some of their portray als imply, would they lose international support and thus all possibility of a Penan forest biosphere reserve? But no alternatives have emerged. Thus, those who, with all good intentions, represent the Penan to the world ignore the dangers of the Tasaday precedent and, with some awkward ness, construct a threatened Eden in the rainforest. What these stories of the Tasaday and the Penan suggest to me is the poverty of an urban imagination which systematically has denied the pos sibilities of difference within the modern world and thus looked to rela tively isolated people to represent its only adversary, its dying Other. The point of this book is to develop a different set of conceptual tools for thinking about out-of-the-way places-and, in particular, about South east Asian rainforest dwellers. Like the Tasaday and the Penan, the Mera tus Dayaks of southeast Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) are neither my nor anybody's "contemporary ancestors." They share with anyone who Preface xi might read this book a world of expanding capitalisms, ever-militarizing nation-states, and contested cultural politics. They also speak from per spectives that are distinctive from those of urban Indonesians, or non Indonesians, but these are distinctions forged in dialogue, not in archaic isolation. I use the concept of marginality to begin discussion of such distinctive and unequal subject positions within common fields of power and knowledge. To describe Meratus Dayaks as an embryo-like Other across an abyss of time and civilization would be to ignore their current political and cultural dilemmas. Yet it is difficultto speak harshly of the romance of the primitive, because it is a discourse of hope for many Europeans and North Americans, as well as a growing number of urban Indonesians concerned about deteriorating social and natural environments. Many people that I care about and respect know the primitive as the dream space of possibility against the numbing monotony of regulated life and the advancing terrors of ecological destruction, corporate insatiability, and military annihilation. Perhaps it seems hard-hearted on my part to work so hard to disturb these fragile dreams. I can only argue that there is also possibility and promise in the directions I suggest in this book. My sense of promise derives from attention to the cultural richness of the cosmopolitan world-and to the possibilities for play and parody as dif ference is continually constructed and deconstructed. This attention de rives from an alertness I acquired in working with the Meratus Dayak woman I call Uma Adang; our encounters frame this book. Nor is this attention just another detached, ironic deconstruction of the play of cate gories. There is also curiosity here-a refusal to be numbed by terror in a terrifying world. The book is a self-conscious exploration of the possibil ities of living with curiosity amidst ongoing violence. I firsttravelled to the Meratus Mountains of South Kalimantan, Indone sia, in September 1979 and stayed through August l98r. I visited the same people and places again over several months in 1986. Much of the mountain area offers a densely forested and rough terrain occasionally dotted with fields and houses and crisscrossed with trails whose paths may change after a night of rain. This is a difficult, confusing terrain for administrators and tourists, and its maps continue to present conflicting detail concerning vegetation, settlement, and district borders. In this book I argue that the imagined constraints of travelling over this terrain, to gether with the necessity and pervasiveness of travel, form a technology of regional integration that holds in place a set of discussions constituting xii Preface Area of Meratus settlement 0 20 30km Southeast Kalimantan Preface xiii Meratus "marginality. " This is an area which, so far, has eluded the clar ity and visibility required for model development schemes. I see no reason to intervene here. I have thus changed the names of all the places I men tion in the Meratus Mountains. I have also changed the names of all the people whose lives I discuss. Although I aim for accurate portraits, my hope is that the people not be so recognizable that the stories I tell in this book could be used to harass them.

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