ABSTRACT
In any given transaction, the Orang Laut and their Malay counterparts differentiate things to be exchanged by their degrees of supernatural power. Here, I draw on Marcel Mauss’s (1990) explication of the spirit embedded in things and people to describe the ways of exchange, group relations, and identity among the Orang Laut and the Malays. The Malays believe in the spirits embedded in things and people, and how all this is intricately tied in with, and can ultimately affect, their own being. Such a belief explains why they endeavour to protect themselves from things originating from an Orang Laut territory. For the Orang Laut and all their non-Orang Laut transactors, things are differentiated by the degree of supernatural power they possess. The following is a scaled discussion of these power-endowed things.
