ABSTRACT
Money, and the use of it by the Orang Laut, has symbolically blurred all traditional boundaries separating people as ‘pure’ versus ‘impure’ Malays in the Malay World. Correspondingly, it has symbolically freed them from positions of authority versus subordination in the Malay hierarchy. The Malays consider those Orang Laut who use money ‘more modern and progressive’ than those who do not. What the use of money does at the point of transactions between these two groups is to reconstruct their identities by redefining the spatial and temporal context of the interaction. The use of money re-situates them in the modern market economy as opposed to the hierarchical Malay World. These reconstructions enable them to ‘interact safely,’ as the basis of the interaction now rests upon the extent of the Orang Laut’s
economic rather than supernatural power. Certain features of money have made these reconstructions possible. As Hart (1986:638-9) aptly says:
Look at a coin…One side is ‘heads’—the symbol of the political authority which minted the coin; on the other side is ‘tails’—the precise specification of the amount the coin is worth as payment in exchange. One side reminds us that states underwrite currencies and that money is originally a relation between persons in society, a token perhaps. The other reveals the coin as a thing, capable of entering into definite relations with other things, as a quantitative ratio independent of the persons engaged in any particular transaction…The coin has two sides for a good reason-both are indispensable. Money is thus at the same time an aspect of relations between persons, and a thing detached from persons.
