A Remote Bidayuh Area in Sarawak and Schooling: a Theoretical Exploration of Socio -Cultural Transmissions,With Reference to Change,Conflict and Contradiction

A REMOTE BIDAYUH AREA IN SARAWAK AND SCHOOLING: A THEORETICAL EXPLORATION OF SOCIO -CULTURAL TRANSMISSIONS,WITH REFERENCE TO CHANGE,CONFLICT AND CONTRADICTION by ROYSTON AUBREY BRUTON (M.A. B.Sc. Soc.) THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON. APRIL, 1981. INSTITUTE OF IDUCATION 2 A REMOTE BIDAYUH AREA IN SARAWAK AND SCHOOLING: A THEORETICAL EXPLORATION OF SOCIO-CULTURAL TRANSMISSIONS, WITH REFERENCE TO CHANGE,CONFLICT AND CONTRADICTION Royston Aubrey Bruton ABSTRACT The theoretical exploration attempts to explain the structure, and changes in the structure, of socio-cultural transmissions between a socially unstratified cognatic social structure and different levels of schooling. Using models based on Bernstein's concepts of classification and framing, it is argued that the village communities have integrated codes of socio-cultural transmissions and production. Between the two categories of transmission and production a simple systemic relationship exists. Egalitarian relations are shown to typify Bidayuh society and to constitute the dominant socio-cultural category reproduced by the transmission code. Schooling as an intrusive social institution is relatively autonomous of production. It is shown that the socio-cultural transmissions of schooling are based on a collection code, which reproduces inegalitarian relations. This reproduction was initially a refraction of alien British society and culture; but latterly became a reflection of local communal ethnicity as socio-historical formations and Malaysia's national ideology (Rukunegara). These reflections are affected by development capitalism, Chinese economic power, Malay political power and Melanau political leadership. The school's collection code is in conflict with and contradictory to the integrated codes of the Bidayuh village communities, and whilst inhibiting successful schooling,it also precipitates social de-regulation of the person. Additionally, the relative autonomy of schooling and its extended systemic relationship with modes of production in Sarawak are potential social de-regulators of the person for the majority in a complex social structure with few common values. A general conclusion is that schooling will remain a serious threat to social order and that the policy of promoting national unity and a national culture through schooling is not likely to succeed. 3 CONTENTS Abstract Acknowledgments 5 INTRODUCTION 6 CHAPTER ONE - SEARCHING FOR THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES The Historical Perspective 12 The Anthropological Perspective 19 New Conceptualizations: Classification and Framing Socio-cultural Transmissions 25 Production and Transmissions 36 CHAPTER TWO - ENGAGING THE FIELD Sensitization and Preliminaries 50 Methodology and Problems 53 Making Sense of the Data 57 CHAPTER THREE - ASPECTS OF SARAWAK'S CHANGING SOCIAL STRUCTURE Introduction 61 Political 64 Demographic 70 Economic 80 Educational 89 CHAPTER FOUR - Ilih RESEARCH AREA Introduction: Physical Features 102 The People and their Kampongs 105 The Economy 121 Schooling 128 4 CHAPTER FIVE - COMMUNITY: INTEGRATED CODE TRANSMISSIONS AND PRODUCTION Introduction 143 Code and Codings of Transmissions 147 Aspects of Infancy and Early Childhood 154 Invisible Pedagogy - Space, Time and Control (-C-F) 163 Codes of Production and Socio-cultural Transmissions 172 CHAPTER SIX - PRIMARY SCHOOL: COLLECTION CODE TRANSMISSIONS Code, Codings and Visible Pedagogy (+C+F) 179 Aspects of the Social Context 181 Space 193 Time 201 Control 212 CHAPTER SEVEN - SECONDARY SCHOOL: COLLECTION CODE TRANSMISSIONS Code and Codings 220 Aspects of the Social Context 224 Positional Structure and Transmission Field 233 Curriculum (++C) 238 Pedagogy (++F) 242 Evaluation (++C++F) 247 CONCLUSION Change, Conflict and Contradiction 258 APPENDIX A - General Rules for Students 277 APPENDIX B - Pupil Record Card 281 APPENDIX C - School and Community Research Project 285 APPENDIX D - Integrated Codes and Social Order 288 APPENDIX E - The Padawan Development Scheme (1957-1963) 296 REYERENCES AND NOTES • ■••■■••••■■••••■■•■•■■•■■■ 304 BIBLIOGRAPHY 316 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I gratefully acknowledge the advice and encouragement given to me over several years by my supervisor, Dr. P.C.C. Evans. The development of my ownsociological imagination owes much to Professor Basil Bernstein, as the thesis clearly reveals. The Sarawak State Government's permission to carry out the research is most gratefully appreciated. Its operationalization owes much to the help and friendship of a great many people in Sarawak, which were of inestimable value. 6 INTRODUCTION The problems and problematics of tropical rural areas and schooling have a long history.1 It is a history concerned with the encounter of Western and non-Western societies and cultures in predominantly colonial and post-colonial contexts, which in recent times has assumed new modes of economic and political organization adopted for national development. The development of a national system of schools has been one of the priorities of the new nations, and in the past decade or so a rapidly rising proportion of those attending primary and secondary schools has been drawn from remote areas, in which social structures differ significantly from the modern urban areas. These pupils are now an important feature of the school scene in Sarawak, a former British colonial territory which became a state within the Federation of Malaysia in 1963. Located in the northern part of the island of Borneo, Sarawak and its sister state Sabah are geographically separate from peninsular or West Malaysia (Malaya) and therefore sometimes are referred to as East Malaysia. During the 1970s, school provision and enrolments at the secondary level have shown a very rapid increase. This can be seen as a reflection of Malaysia's attempt to move from a political legitimacy based on tradition and hierarchy to one based on participation and egalitarianism within a framework of development capitalism. Colonial officialdom tended to view schooling purely as a social service, something good and desirable but offering few direct economic 2 returns. In the 1960s this view was overshadowed by econometrics and its manifestation in manpower planning.3 The new view received explicit expression in the First Malaysia Plan (1966-70): 'the traditional system of education is (now) being reoriented to achieve not only the objectives of nation-building and universal literacy but 7 Map redacted due to third party rights or other legal issues POLITICAL MAP SOUTHEAST ASIA 8 also the economic goals of the country'.4 In essence, this was an early 'articulation of simplistic utilitarian faith (not uncharacteristic of the Malay leaderships' political style in the 1950s and 1960s) in what some sociologists of education later referred to as the 'correspondence principle'. Here schooling is regarded as creating and changing psychological dispositions which are appropriate to changes in the organization of production, a view that is most clearly expressed in the writings of Bowles and Gintis.5 Although the 1970s in Malaysia have seen a definite move towards the rationalization of levels and types of post-primary schooling in terms of the manpower requirements of the economy, an equal and perhaps more vital concern has been given to the promotion of the national ideology (Rukunegara) or political socialization. This involves fostering national unity and a national culture, for which making Bahasa Malaysia the truly 6 national language is seen as a pre-requisite. A specific manifestation of Rukunegara has been the New Economic Policy which seeks to eradicate poverty and reduce the significance of ethnicity in relation to economic function. The 1970s in Sarawak have been most noted for a more strenuous reassertion of Malay norms of statehood, with Melanau political leadership, over a social structure fractured by ethnic pluralism and with few common values. In Sarawak's social structure, in particular, ethnic pluralism is much more marked than in peninsular Malaysia, and because the Malays constitute only about twenty per cent of the population, the assertion of their norms has been rendered more difficult. In this situation schooling may be regarded as in an Althusserian type of analysis, which takes schooling as a crucial means of ideological control, transmission and reproduction,7 or, as Bourdieu would put it, a distributor and legimator of cultural capital.8 However, a much more perceptive aspect of Bourdieu's analysis is his concern with the relatively 'autonomous' relationship between schooling and a material base, which was accepted also by colonial officialdom, albeit in a non- theoretical manner. Bernstein points out that Bowles and Gintis, Althusser, and Bourdieu do not give much space in their theorizing to change, conflict and contradiction. 9In his most recent writing, Bernstein has considered the relationships between education and production (school and work), with the intention of making a theoretical exploration of change, 9 conflict and contradiction, and he cautions that theorization must be validated at every step by empirical exploration. In arriving at a theoretical model which made sense of the data collected for this thesis, the guideline has been that an anthropological approach cannot be justified theoretically or methodologically without an understanding of what is happening in the wider social structure. Asad has argued recently that self-consciousness about ideology and about meaning by social or

Load more