INTRODUCTION

What does the village look like today? Who lives there, what do they live from, how are they related to each other? In slightly more academic terms, the questions could be rephrased as concerning the sources of household income, the extent of social differentiation or the social organization of production. The following chapters will attempt to provide answers to these questions, beginning with a concrete description of the village households, followed by an analysis of the economy and society. In other words, an attempt will be made, not merely to provide an anatomy of the village, but also the underlying mechanisms which animate the process of production and exchange taking place within it and between the village and other social units.

The research was carried out during the author's one-year stay in the village from April 1979 to March 1980. The presentation of the material follows closely the actual research procedure itself, in the course of which the blurred and indeterminate village contours gave way to a meaningful pattern. An overview of the households in the village was first obtained (from a census taken on all the village households) in order to obtain base-line indicators like demography, landownership, size of farm operation and so forth. A deeper understanding of the dynamics of household formation and the household economy was then facilitated by a six-month survey of fifteen sample households, taken as representative of well-to-do, poor, and middle-income households in the village.

At first count there were 133 households in the village but during the period of field work (one year), two households were dissolved; one was an old lady formerly living alone whose illness forced her to move in with relatives and another, a young nuclear family where divorce led to the dissolution of the household. The woman left with the children for the village of origin; the man sold the house and left to look for a new life in Pahang.