Although Freeman stresses the significance of adat, it figures very little in the Iban “egalitarianism” debate. This is unfortunate as adat is seen by the Iban themselves as a normative order that is very largely constitutive of society (Heppel 1975; Sather 1980). Thus every longhouse is thought to comprise an adat community, the continued existence of which depends upon its members behaving as the rules of adat require. According to adat, equality of condition is a fundamental premise. No overt recognition is given to ranking or to hierarchical status in defining interpersonal rights and obligations, with the single, partial exception discussed later in this paper of adat mati or death rules. This exception aside, every adult, according to the terms of adat, is subject to the same rights and duties, without inherited distinction or regard to his or her achieved status, and, in principle, is equally empowered to act within the longhouse as an autonomous agent in jural matters (Freeman 1981:50). The basic unit of Iban society is the bilik-family, and all adult family members, whether they were born into the group, married-in, adopted, or incorporated — male or female — share identical rights of membership (Freeman 1957).^[3]

Not only is egality expressed through the normative rules of adat, and in adherence to these rules in longhouse relationships, but it is also affirmed in the workings of the aum (v.f. baum), a deliberative face-to-face meeting of longhouse members convened by the community headman (tuai rumah) whenever matters of common interest arise, for deliberations concerned with the administration of adat, or with repairing disturbances to the ritual order (cf. Cramb 1989:281; Sather 1980:xxiv-xxvi). Although some families take a more active role in these discussions than others, the tenor of the aum is markedly democratic. Every adult has a voice, dissenting views are normally respected, and whenever a decision is reached, discussions are characteristically lengthy and generally strive for unanimity.

By contrast, adat in neighbouring “stratified” societies very largely concerns status obligations and entitlements of rank. Thus, coastal Melanau society, to take one example, was historically divided into three rank categories corresponding roughly, Morris (1978:48, 1983) tells us, to “aristocrat” (menteri), “freeman” (bumi) and “slave” (dipen). Not only did elders of the aristocratic stratum monopolize adat, its enforcement and oral transmission, but the rules of adat themselves functioned mainly in the past to stipulate the ways in which individual Melanau expressed membership in one or the other of these categories in their overt public behaviour. Thus, for example, on the occasions of births, namings and death, adat stipulated the details of ritual behaviour and the symbols, insignia and forms of speech appropriate between members of different ascribed strata. It also defined the corvée services and material gifts that commoners and slaves owed chiefly families and the occasions on which these were due (Morris 1983:3).

The Iban situation is profoundly different. While de facto inequality is certainly present, the framework of cultural understandings differs with the result that such inequality is perceived as having a different source and is understood and socially expressed in very different ways. Thus, for the Iban, inequality is thought to be a matter of achievement rather than birth-right. Consequently, it is equality, not inequality, that is inscribed in adat. While every individual, in principle at least, is thought to begin life more or less equal, it is not “equality” that is the goal in the sense of sameness, but “proportional equality”, the ideal that inequality should be relative to merit; that if one person accomplishes more than another, he or she should enjoy greater reputation and esteem in proportion to his or her greater accomplishments. Iban institutions also work, as we shall see, to mitigate the consequences of inequality and so to assure that most persons enjoy some minimum of achieved respect.