One of the more welcome developments in contemporary anthropology is the recognition that ethnic identities are socially and historically contingent (for example, Tsing 1993; Steedly 1993, 1996). Rather than simple labels naturally emerging from increasing interaction between “primordial” groups and outsiders, ethnic ascriptions are often contested, as much within communities as between them. Even on the periphery of the world system, conventional “ethnic” labels may enter public discourse as flags of resistance to particular forms of representation by others, rather than banners signifying a bounded and unified group. The contingent nature of ethnic labels becomes particularly clear when the boundaries of ethnic contestation are shifted by external events. Thirty-five years ago the longhouse communities of the upper Balui River in the East Malaysian state of Sarawak probably had little knowledge of, let alone concern with, the ways in which they were collectively represented by others. The major locus of community “ethnic” concern was maintaining the discrete identity of each longhouse. In achieving this end, reproducing strong links between people and place was at least as important as the assertion of distinct cultural practices, so that the obvious distribution of communities in space could often stand, relatively uncontested, as also marking cultural distance. But such simple truths no longer suffice; when they are forced into negotiations with a modernizing State, the communities must understand the ways that others see them if they are to influence the cultural forms of their own futures.

The particular concern of this chapter is with one of the smallest ethnic groups in Sarawak: the Lahanans. Swidden agriculturalists whose language is the major cultural feature which differentiates them from the other indigenous communities in the region, about 500 Lahanans are associated with a single longhouse in the upper Balui while the other 200 live in an ethnically mixed longhouse on the Rejang River. At least in the nineteenth century, and almost certainly well before, tribal communities living in central Borneo such as the Lahanans were linked to the centres of the Malay world primarily through trade. Malay traders connected with the Sultanate of Brunei travelled upriver to purchase jungle produce including camphor, gums, aromatic woods, rattans, edible birds nests, rhinoceros horn, hornbill ivory and bezoar stones, in return for beads, cloth, porcelain and brassware from China, India, and Europe.