OverwhelmingTerrorDSRPBK.qxd 10/13/08 1:04 PM Page 1 Anthropology • Asia DENTAN War and Peace Library Series Editor: Mark Selden “Overwhelming Terror, the product of four decades of research among Semai, demonstrates that Semai ways of life are not something rare and strange, but a continuation LOVE, FEAR, PEACE, AND VIOLENCE AMONG SEMAI OF MALAYSIA TERROR OVERWHELMING of the ways of successful ancient egalitarian societies. Cultural anthropology should be the study in depth of human beings and the application of that knowledge to a deeper understanding of one’s own beliefs and practices. Robert Knox Dentan, applying lessons learned among Semai to contemporary American problems, succeeds admirably in a way that makes one proud to be an anthropologist. Overwhelming Terror was written by a man of perceptive mind and OVERWHELMING TERROR loving heart.” —Carol Laderman, City College–CUNY This powerful ethnography of a people believed to be the least violent in the world LOVE, FEAR, PEACE, AND VIOLENCE explores how they maintain peaceful relations even under the most dire circum- AMONG SEMAI OF MALAYSIA stances. Robert Knox Dentan, the world’s foremost scholar of Semai, brings its mem- bers vividly to life. His book includes translations of their poetry, dramatized accounts of particular events, and narratives in their own words. Throughout, the author highlights the mechanisms and costs of peace, underscoring their relevance to everyday life in all societies. Students and scholars of peace studies, conflict res- olution, ethnography, and Southeast Asia will find this unique work an invaluable and compelling study. Robert Knox Dentan is professor emeritus of anthropology at State University of New York at Buffalo. For orders and information please contact the publisher Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-5330-9 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 ISBN-10: 0-7425-5330-2 Lanham, Maryland 20706 1-800-462-6420 www.rowmanlittlefield.com Cover photo courtesy of the author: A demon/human “meeting place” of the sort Semai make as part LITTLEFIELD ROWMAN & of the ritual bathing and seance for people who are jah¸ i.e., have become spiritually “insipid” as a result of overtaxing their spiritual skills. Consequently, the demons who had fallen in love with them have become jaded and will no longer help them in spiritually challenging enterprises like midwifery, hunt- ing, or healing the sick. By creating beauty, fragrance, and supernatural coolness, the people can lure their demons and transmute them from repellent predatory aliens back into protective lovers. This sort of ROBERT KNOX DENTAN mutation is a central metaphor of this book. Overwhelming Terror War and Peace Library Series Editor: Mark Selden Protesting Power: War, Resistance, and Law By France A. Boyle Overwhelming Terror: Love, Fear, Peace, and Violence among Semai of Malaysia By Robert Knox Dentan Gender, Conflict, and Peacekeeping Edited by Dyan Mazurana, Angela Raven-Roberts, and Jane Parpart Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina By Peter Dale Scott War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century Edited by Mark Selden and Alvin Y. So Bitter Flowers, Sweet Flowers: East Timor, Indonesia, and the World Community Edited by Richard Tanter, Mark Selden, and Stephen R. Shalom Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices Edited by John Torpey Biological Warfare and Disarmament: New Problems/New Perspectives Edited by Susan Wright Zen at War, Second Edition By Brian Daizen Victoria Overwhelming Terror Love, Fear, Peace, and Violence among Semai of Malaysia Robert Knox Dentan ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowmanlittlefield.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2008 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dentan, Robert Knox, 1936– Overwhelming terror : love, fear, peace, and violence among Semai of Malaysia / Robert Knox Dentan. p. cm. — (War and peace library) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-5329-3 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7425-5329-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-5330-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7425-5330-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) eISBN-13: 978-0-7425-5728-4 eISBN-10: 0-7425-5728-6 [etc.] 1. Senoi (Southeast Asian people)—Psychology. 2. Senoi (Southeast Asian people)—Wars. 3. Senoi (Southeast Asian people)—Social conditions. I. Title. DS595.2.S3D45 2008 305.895'93—dc22 2008030714 Printed in the United States of America ϱ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Contents Preface vii Thanks xi Introduction: Writing Someone Else’s Life 1 1 Spotted Doves at War: The Praak Sangkiil 13 2 Regrettable Undertakings: A Dirty Joke, a War, a Vacancy 37 3 Responding to Terror: Intellectually, Emotionally, Spiritually 65 4 Transforming Demons by Love and Surrender 87 5 Ceremonies of Innocence and “Positive” Peace 113 6 Freedom: Just Say “No” 141 7 For Fear of Finding Something Worse: Raising Kids 177 8 Juni Gone Astray 201 9 Inconclusion 231 Glossary 253 Bibliography 259 Index 271 About the Author 277 v Preface In the nineteenth century there was a tradition whereby novelists, story- tellers and even poets offered the public an historical explanation of their work, often in the form of a preface. Inevitably a poem or a story deals with particular experience: how this experience relates to devel- opments on a world scale can and should be implied within the writing itself—this is precisely the problem posed by the “resonance” of lan- guage . ; nevertheless it is usually not possible in a poem or story to make the relation between particular and universal fully explicit. Hence the writer’s desire to write an explanation around the work or works he is offering the reader. The tradition became established in the nineteenth century precisely because it was a century of revolutionary change in which the relation between the individual and history was be- coming a conscious one. (Berger 1975:195) am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations, for the past “Ithirty years, has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and singular set of men,” writes Her- man Melville (1974:901–2), whose view of the world pervades this book. I too am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations, for the past half-century, has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and singular set of people, people whose lives may hold a lesson for all of us, the traditionally peaceable Semai Senoi of central peninsular Malaysia. At a time when my own country is strug- gling to formulate an effective response to terrorism, there may be some- thing to learn from a people whose whole way of life seems to embody a response to terror. Let me introduce them—as they used to be because, vii viii Preface like everyone else, their lives are changing rapidly. Their current situation deserves attention, which I’ve often tried to give elsewhere. But their enormous achievement deserves attention too, not just their present struggles. But first I need to admit that when you live for a long time with people, your memory starts to blur them together. Not all of them, of course: but the ones who didn’t like you well enough to hang around with you, who had more pressing business elsewhere, or whom you for some reason didn’t make the extra effort necessary to “know.” Joseph Brodsky (1997), an exile whose life forced him to travel a lot, wrote a sad, funny essay, “A Place as Good as Any,” about how cities blend in memory into a single generic city. When teachers think about “students,” women about “men,” or adults about “children,” most of what they remember is this back- ground blur. The fragments of Semai I’m trying to cobble together in this book stick together in part because, in my memory, the experiences they represent are embedded like raisins in rice pudding, in a background no- tion of “Semai.” That’s the context that makes sense of the stories, if sense can made. And that’s all the introduction to the people is for. An “ethnographic summary” like this is about as accurate as an equally short introduction to Americans would be: vapid and oversimplified. It’s just a starting point. What you need to know at the outset are two things: individually Semai are a lot like you and me, and collectively they managed to develop a way of life that may be the most peaceable ever documented. The second part discusses the book itself and how it came to be off- beat and erratic, “experimental” in current jargon. There’s a method in the weirdness, and I try in the second part of this introduction to give a rea- son for it, though I’ve left the bulk of this discussion on the website that accompanies this book (http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com/isbn/ 0742553302).