This volume examines a selection of Southeast Asian societies that are all characterised by a mode of sociality that combines a maximised personal autonomy and political egalitarianism with an inclusive form of social solidarity. The various chapters describe how these societies have achieved and maintained a balance between an open-aggregated and egalitarian type of organisation on the one hand and a state of internal solidarity on the other. By focusing on how personal autonomy is maintained through an open or fluid form of aggregation, political egalitarianism upheld by occupying areas that are difficult for the state to administer, and social solidarity or fellowship achieved through voluntary social relations, the authors present contemporary empirical evidence for a social formation that they conceptualise as anarchic.
An introductory chapter where the editors situate the volume in relation to other theories of anarchy and anarchism is followed by a theoretical introduction (Charles Macdonald) where the common features of these societies are drawn out: a loose form of social organisation, bilateral kinship, an egalitarian and non-violent ethos, and a high degree of individual autonomy. Macdonald argues further that the lack of societal institutions such as corporate groups, debt and reciprocity, authority and ranking that also characterise these communities entails that they cannot be termed ‘societies’ at all. Referring to the anthropological question much discussed during the 1960s and 1970s about the formation of social groups in such loosely organised societies, Macdonald also discusses the principal sources of solidarity involved in them and relates them to the concept of sharing, kinship and childcare, and to a set of values concerning ethics, ideology and ontology.
With this theoretical framework established, the volume continues with two chapters analysing sources of social solidarity among hunter–gatherers on the Malay Peninsula. Signe Howell discusses how the relationship between autonomy and sociality in an egalitarian society such as the Chewong must be understood in relation to the modes of thought, metaphysics and ontology operative within it. Howell relates these social values to an animistic cosmology that extends the boundary of society to include humans as well as non-human objects and beings that are perceived as conscious beings on par with humanity. Interaction is here governed by a set of spirit-enforced rules encouraging sharing, and by following these rules a person confirms adherence to a common understanding of what types of things exist in the world and what the nature of that reality is. Such rule-guided action thus becomes a major source of solidarity among the Chewong. Changes are underway, however, and with permanent settlement and increasing monetisation the cosmologically based sources of solidarity seem to dwindle and only to a certain extent be substituted by a solidarity based on a shared sense of being disadvantaged.
Similar to Howell's focus on rules, Kirk Endicott describes how Batek social solidarity can be traced to a set of ethical principles that inform social behaviour: the obligations to respect others, help others, and be self-reliant, non-violent, and non-competitive. To the extent that people behave according to them, these principles ensure a balance between people acting for the benefit of others and maintaining their personal autonomy, a combination which Endicott terms ‘cooperative autonomy’. This collection of principles is, according to Endicott, a result both of the need for economic efficiency and of pressures from outsiders, and they combine in various ways to create social solidarity in different kinds of groups such as conjugal families, camp groups and work groups.
The question of the need for the concept of ‘society’ reappears in Robert Dentan's chapter on the East Semai. Like Macdonald, he rejects the concept and instead provides a discussion based on an evolutionary understanding of how a certain reproductive strategy — filling up the relatively few slots left in an environment near its carrying capacity for the species — and the particular human need for long postpartum protection of offspring logically imply the centrality of the mother–child relationship. The importance of this relationship leads to social co-operation, and childcare, Dentan argues, provides therefore sufficient social glue to account for East Semai solidarity. In this way, Dentan treats the ideology of anarchic solidarity among the East Semai as a dependent variable, something that can be deduced from a particular evolutionary principle.
Macdonald's ethnographic contribution discusses how kinship and co-operation are central to generating solidarity among the Palawan. Although cognatic kinship rarely generates corporate groups, Macdonald demonstrates how Palawan kinship fosters the formation of what he calls ‘residential atoms’ that are aggregates formed around a female sibling group. Apart from this kinship core, however, these aggregates are dominated by weak ties and operate with a sociality where individuals are autonomous, choices purely personal and kinship nothing but a formal cognitive construct. This kind of sociality does not invite much co-operation and solidarity, but, despite this, co-operation is prevalent within them. Macdonald rejects that the Palawan co-operate because of survival or the pursuit of material goals, and discusses instead how the gregarious nature of humans engenders co-operation and how the pursuit of ritual, ideological, religious and artistic goals leads to a formation of not ‘societies’ but ‘fellowships’, i.e. an impermanent and open aggregate, which can change and morph into a more stable and more closed entity.
Kenneth Sillander's chapter also emphasises the importance of kinship as a source of solidarity. As with the other societies in this volume, the Bentian social organisation is of the open-aggregated kind, with relationships being quite flexible. Kinship provides the basic idiom of most forms of relatedness, and this kinship ideology contains values and guidelines for interaction through its emphasis on amity, co-operation, mutual obligations, respect and authority. Kinship relations are practically constituted through interaction, reciprocity and proximity, and this continuous enactment of kinship — a shared activity — provides the major source of solidarity for the Bentian.
Drawing a wider, regional outline of the Malay world, Geoffrey Benjamin discusses how the distinction between egalitarian and ranked societies arose by differentiation from within the same cultural matrix. Egalitarian societies should therefore not be considered as isolates, but should be seen as one choice made from within an array that also includes other less equal societal patterns. The different social formations of egalitarian and ranked societies thus emerged as deliberate mutual adjustments, but were also related to how these societies were differently involved in long-term contact with other ranked populations through trade.
The two following chapters (Lars Kaskija and Clifford Sather) continue this wider focus by asking what happens when societies operating with an anarchic solidarity interact with neighbouring societies organised in a fundamentally different way. Kaskija discusses how different Punan hunter–gatherer groups are encapsulated in various ways by larger and more powerful groups and uses these differences in inter-tribal relations to account for divergences in values and social organisation among different Punan groups. Despite the dissimilarities among these groups, Punan as a whole share a sense of solidarity that derives from a shared sense of self-deprivation that is also ritualised in a collective act of commiseration.
A similar focus on intertribal relations is found in Sather's chapter where he discusses how mobility, the performative use of speech, and the reciprocal sharing of food and other gifts are conducive to the emergence and maintenance of solidarity among the traditionally seafaring Sama Dilaut. Also these people were characterised by a flexible and open form of aggregation. A steady flow of words was seen as central for maintaining good relations between members of these fluid aggregates, and the ever-present possibility of dispersal enabled by living on boats hindered the escalation of discord beyond a tolerable level. The exchange of fish between kin contrasted with its commodity form in extra-ethnic trade, and thus served to maintain boundaries and create solidarity.
While most societies discussed in the volume are egalitarian and anarchic, James Eder demonstrates how these values also are identifiable within a society, the Cuyonon, that has been integrated into the Philippine state and has become ‘peasantlike’ in its social and political forms. Eder discusses how nicknaming practices were a way of promoting values of egalitarianism and personal autonomy within such a mode of sociality. Such nicknaming practices, along with other forms of joking, teasing and self-effacement were particularly prevalent in work groups based on reciprocal labour exchanges between households and in leisure-time groups formed mainly for gaming and drinking purposes. These practices have, however, almost disappeared among the Cuyonon, and Eder argues that this is due to the introduction of wage labour, the growth of social differences, and other consequences of modernity.
The volume ends with Thomas Gibson's chapter, which considers the whole Southeast Asian region as a single, loosely integrated social system composed of social groups that have developed the ability to express their political disagreements with one another in a common symbolic code. Gibson argues for seeing egalitarian and hierarchical social formations in relation to each other and that this entails that two kinds of egalitarianism can be identified: a primary form found among foraging societies and a secondary form which developed as a reaction to the predatory ranking of neighbouring societies.
This volume as a whole provides an interesting discussion of forms of sociality that combine personal autonomy, equality and an open or flexible form of social organisation with an often strongly felt solidarity. The chapters differ considerably from each other in terms of their ethnographic or regional–historical focus, and in general the former variant seems to get the message across more convincingly than the latter. The volume is particularly strong on the development and application of specific analytical concepts, but the volume would have appeared more integrated had the discussion of these concepts been more widespread and not as idiosyncratic as they appear now. The debate about the use of the concept of society actually appears in several of the articles, but not always in a very relevant manner, and neither is it convincingly argued against. Nevertheless, the volume provides ample ethnographic evidence of a contemporary form of sociality which many today have considered a thing of the past.
