ABSTRACT
In this book I have examined the different forms of exchange between the Orang Laut and non-Orang Laut in Riau and interpreted them as acts of communicating and negotiating group identities and boundaries. These exchanges carry implications for understanding the identity of the Orang Laut within the broader framework of the political and religious institutions of the Malay World. Society is not an absolute entity which exists to create exchange; rather, it is exchange that creates the bonds of society (Simmel, 1978:174-5). Society is, therefore, the synthesis of these relations. Previous studies on the Orang Laut have concentrated on questions of their ethnic identity (see for example Lenhart, 1997; Sandbukt, 1982; Sather, 1998; Mariam Mohamed. Ali, 1984; Wee, 1985). Issues concerning the wider non-Orang Laut community’s avoidance of
interaction with, and acceptance of things from, the Orang Laut have only occasionally been mentioned. However, no study has focused on the Orang Laut’s identity as engendered through the exchange of things. The narratives and ethnographic accounts in this book thus add a new dimension to how group identities and boundaries can be, and have been, negotiated, reinforced, or perpetuated through an array of exchanges between the Orang Laut and the Malays. The acquisition or avoidance of different types of material artefacts has significant implications. It reflects social relationships within a society and mirrors past and present points of differentiation and power relations between groups of people in a society. Hence, exchanges are, in real terms, also acts of communication. Alternatively put, exchange not only does something; it says something (Malinowski, 1922; LeviStrauss, 1969; Leach, 1989:6).
