The Sulu and Celebes Seas Region: the Present in the Past

Abstract

Key words: Asia-Pacific; maritime cross-cultural exchange; barter; piracy; sea nomads.

This paper is devoted to the problem of change and stability in cross-cultural exchange patterns in the region of the Sulu and Celebes Seas. The main interest to the region is connected with the more wide study of Austronesian speakers’ common cultural patterns. The specific forms of cross-cultural exchange are among them. Discussing exchange activity in the Sulu and Celebes Seas region the current interdisciplinary study focuses on such its pristine forms as barter, and piracy. The purpose of the paper is to give a hypothetical answer on the question why in present reality the region is characterized by stability of such pristine way of cross-cultural exchange. Literature which was used for the study includes world and local news; academic and popular articles; area studies monographs, researches in international politics and cultural anthropology.

It is supposed that the main reason for those pristine forms of cross-cultural exchange stability in the Sulu and Celebes Seas region is a long term absence of any strong political power there. From the period of the first sea nomads’ migration, probably around 10,000 years ago, and until now the Sulu and Celebes Seas region remains a grey area, occupied by small competing groups of inhabitants. One type of those groups very likely is represented by the descendants of those sea nomads, who in the period of their migration in the region were in the Mesolithic stage of development. Till now several ethnic groups live there in nomadic and semi-nomadic way. At the same time from the prehistoric times those nomadic and semi-nomadic ethnic groups were involved in barter form of cross-cultural exchange with the ethnic groups of another type. That second type of ethnic groups, which engaged the dominant position with reference to the sea nomads, combines mainly agricultural way of life with sporadic seafaring expeditions, which resulted in development of such forms of cross-cultural exchange as barter, raids and piracy. Historically the targets of their raids varied from the nomadic groups to the agriculture-seafaring groups of the same type and to the subjects of colonial powers in colonial period. Very likely, that type of ethnic groups preserves the early Melanesians’ Neolithic- and Malays’ Bronze-level cultural patterns. It is supposed, that the early Melanesians and Malays brought into Malay Archipelago such cultural patterns as the domestic pig, agricultural techniques, betel-chewing, sea-going outrigger and composite canoes, ceremonial cannibalism and headhunting, human sacrifice, highly ritualized warfare, secret societies with graded membership, men’s club-houses, and more complex social organization. Later Islamization of those two types of ethnic groups didn’t bring much change in their everyday life. Muslim tiny Sultanates, which started to appear in the Sulu and Celebes Seas region from 14th century were not powerful enough to control intergroup relationships and their cross-cultural exchange traditions. European colonial powers of Spanish, Dutch and British also were not successful to change that behavior. New formed nation-states of Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei also didn’t do much: in nowadays environment, the aggressive behavior of the agriculture-seafaring groups transformed into political inter-clan feuds, religious extremism, kidnapping for ransom with continuing piracy.

Igor Sitnikov

Facts of Objective Reality with Mythological Significance in Eurasia-Pacific Unconscious Cultural Heritage

Initial Approach to a Draft of PhD Dissertation Proposal
Abstract

Today a demand to find the native logic by which different peoples in the world make sense out of life increases. Study in comparative folkloristic and mythology helps bring into light the hidden sense of understanding the world in terms of symbolic systems of various peoples both in present and in past. Comparative mythology and folkloristics together with comparative linguistic and archaeology might bring new knowledge of the early period of human history extending back before the time of written documents and in this way satisfy interests of humanity to its prehistory and bring into light unconscious cultural patterns of present societies, which they inherited from their ancestry and share among themselves nowadays. My future dissertation contribution supposed to be holistic study where I hope realize my research interests in the fields of cultural anthropology, history, archaeology, comparative mythology, folkloristics, linguistic, ethnography, and geography.

In the current initial approach to a draft of my PhD dissertation proposal I suppose to demonstrate that study in comparative mythology and folkloristics is able to discover new data concerning the phenomenon of cultural change and stability. As a source of collecting the initial data I use here the data of the well-known American folklorist Stith Thompson. In 1928 he translated the motif-based classification system of folktales, which was created by Finnish folklorist Aarne. In 1961 Thompson enlarged the catalogue scope and created the AT-number system which became six-volume Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1932–37) and until now is considered the international key to folkloristics data. As a sampling frame for my classification I chose the part of Thompson’s work, which is devoted to motifs connected with the idea of gods. An important source of new data collecting is a survey research, which I base on my preliminary analysis of Thompson data. In survey research I collected data which are relevant both for the mythological symbols, and the facts of objective phenomena.

A current exploratory research for my initial approach to a draft of PhD dissertation intends to clarify whether particular animals’ images in folklore, mythology, superstitions, and decorative arts reflect corresponding animals’ long time high level significance for such important aspects of human life as needs in food, safety, and transportation. In this work I argue that the facts of objective phenomena with certain level of significance for human biological and social life (such level of significance I call ‘mythological significance’) manifest themselves in special forms of artifacts, such as proverbs, songs, and fairy tales, which not only describe the significant for human life facts of objective phenomena, but also preserve empirical knowledge about their significance and transfer it to the next generations. I suppose also that such particular form of those artifacts as stable mythological symbols and motifs longer and most precisely preserve the empirical knowledge about especially significant facts of objective phenomena. In current paper I apply three hypotheses where I test positive correlation between two variables: facts of objective reality (a class of objective phenomena) and mythological symbols and motifs. To test this correlation I chose three groups of items - edible game (ecofacts with positive significance); dangerous animals (ecofacts with negative significance); and domestic animals (ecoartifacts). It was constructed also two dimensions (inevitability and significance for human life), and an indicator (degree of references for particular mythological symbols and motifs) which help to measure these variables and test positive correlation between them.

Igor Sitnikov

From Deception to Gift: Application of Interpersonal Communication Theories to Anthropological Analysis

Abstract

In my current exploratory and explanatory research I intend to clarify whether theories, which were developed in the field of interpersonal communication, could be applied for the analysis in anthropology? So far as through communication people meet their basic needs I suppose that interpersonal and intergroup communication itself could be the subject of anthropological research, especially in such its field as cultural anthropology. In this paper I argue that recent development of the both disciplines - interpersonal communication and anthropology - gives scholars opportunity to analyze complicated cases of human communication both cross-culturally and inside individual ethnic groups. In this paper I show it in terms of interpersonal communication theories application for analysis of four cases in domain of cultural anthropology. Two cases are examples of cross-cultural communication and another two illustrate the communication inside two individual ethnic groups. In the exploratory part of this study I observe the phenomenon of cultural change on example of modes of exchange transformations. I focus on the switching between such opposite types of modes of exchange as balanced and unbalanced exchange on example of gifting phenomenon. The concept of ‘gift’ is common both for anthropology, where it is a subject of many studies, and for interpersonal communication, where it is distinguished as a form of nonverbal communication. Such interdisciplinary quality of the ‘gift’ concept gives opportunity to verify possibility to apply interpersonal communication theories in the domain of anthropology. For my anthropological analysis I use several theories from the field of interpersonal communication: Expectancy Violations Theory, Interaction Adaptation Theory, Face Theory, Uncertainty Reduction Theory, and Constructivism Theory. To show the phases of ‘gift’ phenomenon development as communication instrument I designed my paper in order from non-gifting phase in Taiwan-Lamay case to the phase of mature practice of gift exchanging in Kula tradition, than to the phase of gift culture degradation into bribe phenomenon in modern Mongolia, and finally to the phase of gifting practice in present indigenous Kamchatka as a mean to purify and revive local culture.

The set of analyzed four cases from anthropological domain demonstrates the gift phenomenon as a nonverbal communication instrument. I discuss the usage of this instrument in terms of both its effectiveness and ethical concerns. In the exploratory part using interpersonal communication theories I observed the process of exchange modes transformations which have started in the post-Soviet period in Mongolian society and in Koriak indigenous culture in the northern Kamchatka peninsula in the Russian Far East. These two cases demonstrate examples of transformations of such common nonverbal form of communication as ‘gift’, which take place in ethnographic present. The analyses of this present cultural phenomenon could be applied for the reconstruction of similar processes, which took place in early history and even prehistory. In this paper I tried to make such reconstruction by comparison of two cases, both of which were observed in historical times, but which traces go back into far away prehistory. One case is the Kula exchange tradition in Trobriand Islands, archipelago off the eastern coast of New Guinea; and the second one is a conflict which took place in 1636 on the island Lamay near Taiwan.

Igor Sitnikov

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Legend of the Origin of the Negritos

Once upon a time the king of the Mawas (Hylobates - gibbon) monkeys fought with the king of the Siamang (Symphalangus syndactylus - black furred gibbon native to the forests of Malaysia, Thailand, and Sumatra) monkeys in the country where our ancestors lived. Our ancestors ran away from the place, being frightened by the war, and hid themselves in a plain covered with lalang grass. The king of the Mawas beat the king of the Siamang, and the latter, with his people, ran away and hid in the same plain as our ancestors. The king of the Mawas came and set fire to the grass, and the king of the Siamang and his followers fled and crossed the Perak River. Our ancestors did not run away, having hidden themselves in porcupine burrows , in order to escape from the fire. In spite of this, the fire reached them, and singed their hair, and this is the reason why we, their descendants, have curly hair to the present day.
The ancestors of the Malays, when the war arose, ran away down-stream carrying a rice-spoon with them, and that is why the Malays use a spoon in cooking their rice.
Our ancestors ran away up-stream carrying a pointed stick; and that is the reason why we still use a stick for digging tubers in the jungle.

Evans, Ivor H. N. 1970. Studies in Religion, Folk-Lore, & Custom in British Borneo and the Malay Peninsula. Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. Cambridge University Press. P. 134-135 (First published in 1923)(p. 146)

Sovereign Nations and Sovereign States

The UN estimates the world’s Indigenous population represented in over 70 countries, to be between 300 and 350 million or approximately 5 percent of the total world population. The interests of states in relation to land and natural resources are often at odds with Indigenous peoples’ wishes. The issue places at theorists’ disposal an important theme to discussion: Can self-governing sovereign nations coexist with a sovereign state and not threaten the dismemberment of the existing state?
The 1993 negotiation between four Indian nations and the United States of America set a standard for future bilateral government-to-government relations between nations and states. Basing on that empirical example R. Ryser (1995) claims that although the Jamestown S'Klallam, Hoopa, Lummi and Quinault are not strategically important nations in any geopolitical sense, their success will point the way to peaceful resolution of conflicts between states and the nations inside their boundaries around the world.There are however some obstacles to assured constructive and positive outcome to government-to-government relations between nations and states. One of them is in the fact that among Indigenous peoples the foraging peoples dominated much of the world until recently (R. Blench 1999). Foragers, by the nature of their society, will not easily form articulate advocacy groups without external assistance. However, without such groups, their rights will be eroded rapidly in many places. For example, even numbers of hunter-gatherers worldwide are extremely difficult to estimate because many national governments such as those of India and Malaysia regard foragers as indicators of backwardness and forbid research relating to them.
I believe and empirical examples of the Quinault, Lummi, Jamestown S'Klallam and Hoopa negotiation with the United States of America as well as the establishment in 1999 of Nunavut, a self-governing territory for the Inuit people of north-west Canada, confirm my stance that the self-governing sovereign nations and sovereign states coexistence is a nearest future of international relationships in the world.

Ryser, Rudolph C., 1995. Resuming Self-Government in Indian Country: From Imposed Government to Self-Rule Inside and Outside the United States of America. Center for World Indigenous Studies. Ed. by Murdoch: University School of Law, Canning Vale, Western Australia. March.
Blench, Roger, 1999. Hunter-Gatherers, Conservation and Development: From Prejudice to Policy reform. Overseas Development Institute. # 43, June. London.

Philippine Civil Society Institutions in Taiwan

Abstract

Globalization causes more and more people leave their native countries to seek work abroad. The people of weaker nations become cheap labor. Due to the lack of protections, companies from powerful industrialized nations are able to force workers to endure extremely long hours, unsafe working conditions, and just enough salary to keep them working. Another important issue is that nowadays more and more representatives of indigenous peoples also leave their native places to work abroad. It causes the loss of the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples.
Can the Diasporas’ civil society institutions achieve their purposes such as to defend overseas workers and indigenous peoples’ human and cultural rights on the territory of foreign state? In my work I focus on Philippine civil society institutions in Taiwan. I study the subject on examples of two organizations. Both organizations play role of trade unions and have a purpose to defend overseas Filipino workers rights. One among them - the Cordillera Organization in Taiwan – besides that is an indigenous peoples’ organization, which try to defend human and cultural rights of Philippine Igorot ethnic group.
In this work I show that on the territory of foreign state the Diasporas’ civil society institutions can successfully achieve their goals only in cooperation with local NGOs.

Igor Sitnikov