ABSTRACT
This chapter explores ideas concerning human nature and cognition, and their implications on actual socialisation practices among the Punan Bah, a tiny ethnic group of the Bornean rain-forest. The study focuses on Punan Bah conceptions of adults as to the understanding of children at various age levels. It presents some observations on children's acquisition of knowledge of the reality in which they grow up, especially on their assessment of self and of social differentiation, a critical aspect of Punan Bah culture. 1
The Punan Bah are a minor ethnic group of central Sarawak. They were classified by Leach (1950) in his socio-economic survey of the various ethnic groups here, as belonging to what he termed the Kajang complex, comprising a number of small groups, which presumably lived in central Sarawak prior to the larger and more well-known Iban, Kayan and Kenyah. The Punan Bah are one of the larger Kajang groups, but still number only about 1500 persons. Half live in three settlements along the Rejang river in the seventh Division while the other half lives highly scattered in four settlements in the fourth Division. They take their name after the Bah and Punan rivers, tributaries of the Rejang, the region believed to be their land of origin.
