1991 No. 1 CONTENTS - Institute of Social and Cultural ...

Book Reviews 95
cut divisions between strata among the Kelabit and related groups, but rather a
hierarchy with an infmite number of points.
Rousseau tends to stress the discontinuity between strata, emphasizing the class
divisions he sees emerging. It might be useful in this context to consider the
nature of status differentiation among the Kelabit. It can be argued that the
differentiation between individuals belonging to different households is parallel to
that between individuals within the household, which Rousseau has highlighted as
characteristic not only of central Bomean groups but of groups in other parts of
Borneo as well. Among the Kelabit the household is internally differentiated into
'big people' (lun merar) and children (ana! adik), with the tenn 'big people' also
being used to refer to leaders of the longhouse. Thus the parent-child axis is used
as a model for hierarchical differentiation. The leading couple of the longhouse
-the equivalent of Kayan aristocrats-may be said to be conceptualized as the
parents of the other members of the longhouse, which, it may be argued, can be
presented as equivalent to a symbolic higher-level household.
It is possible that such an analysis might be fruitfully applied to other central
Bomean (and indeed other Bornean) societies. It might also add to our understanding
of the nature of stratification in the area and lessen the gap and explain
similarities that Rousseau has himself pointed to between societies that appear to
be 'stratified' and those, like the Than, that appear in some ways to be 'egalitarian'.
Such an approach to 'stratification' has the advantage of presenting status
differentiation as an integral part of the social, economic and religious system of
the group, rather than as a problem that has to be explained.
MONICA IANOWSKI