Innermost Borneo: Studies in Dayak Cultures

Bernard Sellato

Borneo is the planet's third largest island. Possessing great natural resources it lies athwart the equator, and contributes to the territory of three nations: Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. In the news these days as a case study of environmental devastation, or for the ravages of ethnic violence, and neo-headhunting, Borneo has many other stories to tell.

This book is a collection of essays on the peoples of Borneo's inner hinterlands, in the Muller mountains, at the watersheds of the island's great rivers. Many of them hunter-gatherers, or collectors of forest-produce, the peoples of Innermost Borneo face many challenges as they decide on how to integrate with the national, and global, economy. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, the book looks at the history, linguistics, material culture, social organization, rituals and world views of the peoples of Innermost Borneo.
 

« The publishers are to be commended for bringing together this significant, but scattered, body of scholarly work... deserves to be viewed as essential reading for all Borneo specialists and other concerned with upland minority peoples in Southeast Asia.»
- Clifford Sather

« An exhaustive historical, social and physical description of small tribal communities living in...the most remote corner of the Borneo hinterland... A rich base of knowledge regarding the methods of doing social or ethnographic research among human communities living in remote areas, as well as on the theor of social transformation and continuity. »
- International Journal of Asian Studies

Bernard SELLATO is Head of the Institute for Research on Southeast Asia (IRSEA) in Marseilles, France and edits the journal Moussons. 

publication year: 2002
224 pages
ISBN: 978-2914-93-602-6  Paperback  US$30.00  S$38.00

A co-publication with Seven Orients.
Our edition is available only in Asia.