Communication, Social Structure and Development in Rural Malaysia

A Study of Kampung Kuala Bera

William Wilder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367716479
• eBook ISBN: 9781000324402
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This is an important innovative analysis of communication and society in Pahang, West Malaysia, based on fieldwork carried out in Kampung Kuala Bera. Dr Wilder is concerned with communication networks of all kinds as found in a long-established Malay village, including the uses of language, small-scale (kinship and village-based) networks, and higher-level systems (the district and the nation as a whole). Dr Wilder lays particular emphasis on the role of communication in the process of economic development and on administration during a period of rapid and induced social change. His study is prefaced by a detailed historical account of Pahang and a thorough sociological analysis of Kampung Kuala Bera. The ethnography is meticulously detailed; its special contribution includes the first-ever publication of a Malay village genealogy, a systematic account of birth-order names (a major feature of the kinship system), complete figures on marital breakdowns for the whole village population, and an intensive analysis of leadership in its local context. This work will be of value to students of Southeast Asian societies, rural sociology, network studies, economic development, political education and the mass media in third world countries.

1
Introduction

I

RATIONALE

This is a study of communication in a broad sense: in it, I analyse the pattern of a small segment of modern Malaysian society in terms of its communications networks. I treat, as far as possible, the whole range of the message-facilities of a Malay peasant village. I argue that since social organization depends on a regular flow of messages between members of the constituent groups in society, and since message-facilities in society are bound to be many and varied, it is necessary to examine the whole broad spectrum of communications systems in order to arrive at something like a concrete and comprehensive knowledge of the social structure.

The point of view I am advocating was neatly summed up many years ago by Charles Cooley: he wrote that the analysis of communication offers us a singular advantage 'because it gives a tangible framework for our ideas'. He states:

Thus the system of communication is a tool, a progressive invention, whose improvements react upon mankind and alter the life of every individual and institution. A study of these improvements is one of the best ways by which to approach an understanding of the mental and social changes that are bound up with them ...¹

In other words, communication concepts are equally amenable to the immediate observed data and to the most abstract propositions. More recently, social anthropologists have put forward proposals for a communications perspective on similar grounds.²

I try to explain my approach as the argument progresses. It will be for the reader to judge if, having advanced my rather extravagant claims, I am really able to substantiate them!

The chapters below are arranged according to the scale of the social grouping.³ Furthermore, each chapter is addressed to one kind of communicational activity. Thus it is assumed that each level of grouping has a characteristic mode or modes of message-exchange and that these correspond in turn to some specific segment of the overall communications system. The presentation of materials in this fashion is particularized in Table 1. The list shown in the table is just the type of 'tangible framework' referred to by Cooley. A quick run-through of the analysis will help to explain the logic of it.

After an initial exposé of cultural content (Chapter 2), the analysis proper begins (Chapters 3-4) with intimate groups (domestic and marriage groups), then moves to more complex face-to-face units knitted together primarily by the spoken word – the kinship categories, the village-kindred, and the local community at large (Chapters 5-6). TogetherChapters 2-6 isolate the basic unit of communication or of sociolinguistics, variously called 'the social situation' (Ruesch), 'the communicative event' (Hymes), and 'the symbol situation' (Ogden and Richards).⁴ The analysis then moves (Chapters 7-10) to various media systems beyond the spoken word which are instrumental in the formation of larger groupings, viz. mass media, commerce, administration, and associations. First of all, Chapter 7 describes mechanized transport and the social effects of mass media channels such as schools, cash and radios, all giving access to messages which originate far outside the village, unlike the basic or 'authentic' units of communication described earlier. Then, Chapters 8, 9 and 10 deal with the role of intermediaries as message-channels, figures such as entrepreneurs, officials and semi-officials whose calling takes them in a variety of ways outside the village and who link the village with the nation. While such distant ties are still person-to-person links, they are only made possible by impersonal 'rational' systems such as writing, education, and the bureaucratic process.

In this logical framework I hope to show how the communications devices are located in relation to each other and how they relate to their users, the members of the community served by them. On a higher level of abstraction, it will be possible to draw together in a single universe of concepts the many, apparently disparate, forms of social communication.

TABLE 1 Plan of this book

Chapter number and title	Communications subject-matter or discipline	Representative sources
2 HISTORY	Message-content; symbol-formation; cosmology	Malay-language dictionaries; Malay classical literature; general ethnography
3 RESIDENCE	Face-to-face interaction; proxemics (territorial organization); socialization	Parsons & Bales 1956 Goody 1958
4 MARRIAGE	Social exchange; marriage alliance	Lévi-Strauss 1969
5 KINSHIP	Structural linguistics	Leach 1971 Conklin 1964
6 SPEAKING	Sociolinguistics	Gumperz & Hymes 1972
7 MASS MEDIA	Mass media	McLuhan 1964
8 EXTERNAL NETWORKS	Social networks	Boissevain & Mitchell 1973
9 ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT	Cybernetics; systems theory; leadership	Bateson 1972 Wiener 1954
10 ASSOCIATIONS	Voluntary organizations; literacy; ideology	Geertz 1960

Note:

Full titles will be found under authors' names in the List of Works Cited.

II

FIELDWORK

The materials for this study were collected in Kampung Kuala Bera, in Pahang State, from October 1964 to February 1966 and from July to September 1976. The fieldwork of 1964-66 was carried out with the support of the London Committee of the London-Cornell Project for East and Southeast Asian Studies, a project financed jointly by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Nuffield Foundation of Great Britain. My visit to Kampung Kuala Bera in July–September 1976 was aided by a travel grant from the Centre of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Durham. These bodies also supported departmental and library consultations in Malaysia and the USA. I am grateful to both of them. I owe many other debts to friends and colleagues in Malaysia and elsewhere; I thank them all. My critics too have never been less than kind. In the present study I have tried to take account of the comments offered by Dr H. S. Morris, Professor P. E. de Josselin de Jong, and Professor Sir Raymond Firth; where I have not met their strictures the fault is mine.

At several points I refer to changes in the period 1966-76, but these references are brief. Two circumstances specifically affected the community (and my study) since my first visit. In 1971 serious flooding disrupted the village and many villagers – mostly younger ones – subsequently moved to a government-financed resettlement tract at Bukit Serdang about two miles inland, leaving the original settlement with only about half its population. Also when I was there in 1976 the village was formally without a headman. These circumstances mean that my account can confidently take us only up to early 1966. At some points, however, I have added later observations.

The limitation is less than might appear. My study was from the start concerned with communication and ongoing change, and the descriptive task is foremost. Many materials are, to my knowledge, published here for the first time. As far as I know, this is the first published ethnography on Malay society to include a non-royal village genealogy; a systematic description of birth-order names; a replicated tabulation of divorce statistics (in Chapter 4); and one of the first to make an intensive analysis of leadership at the local level.

To ease the burden of detail in the text, I have adopted certain conventions. Personal names are of course capitalized. Kin terms are generally italicized, sometimes honorific titles as well. But where the title, and occasionally the kin term, applies to a specific person I capitalize it. To show residence, each village house inhabited at the time of study...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Tables
• Maps
• Figures
• 1. INTRODUCTION
• 2. HISTORY
• 3. RESIDENCE
• 4. MARRIAGE
• 5. KINSHIP
• 6. SPEAKING
• 7. MASS MEDIA
• 8. EXTERNAL NETWORKS
• 9. ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT
• 10. ASSOCIATIONS
• 11. CONCLUSION
• VILLAGE GENEALOGY
• NOTES
• LIST OF WORKS CITED
• INDEX