Melayu : hierarchies of being in Riau

Abstract

This thesis argues that the phenomenon known as Melayu is not a solidary unit, but rather, in its very nature, a hierarchical gradation of being. In this study, I explore the implications and consequences of such hierarchisation. I argue that in Riau the basis of hierarchy is the sultanate. Even without the existence of the sultanate as an institutional reality, an ideology of statehood seems to suffice. Such an ideology derives from the mythologised past when the sultanate did exist institutionally. Such mythologising is not value-free: it is a means of expressing vested interests in motivated forms. I will draw out contrary views and examine the perspectives of the specific informants concerned. Such differences are not just interpersonal but also intercommunal. I explicitly acknowledge the active role of an ethnographer in putting together the different bits of information into one coherent picture. In this respect, Bateson's information theory has been of relevance to me. (See Bateson 1973, 1980.) Of primary concern to me is the hierarchy of contexts encapsulating infinite levels of text-context relationships. Adopting a reflexive principle, the writing of this thesis is also hierarchically organised. I begin with the discussion of the larger context in space and time; I move on to the mythologised past that is contextualised in the present; I then discuss the realisation of this mythologised past in the everyday present. I end by re­ contextualising the ethnographic reality in Riau in the worldwide pattern of change that I shall refer to as 'the civilising process.