Table of Contents
This paper develops two major themes of Mandaya social structure which operate at different levels of social and political activity. One of these principles or themes is the structure of hierarchy or precedence which operates primarily at the political level of leadership and warfare as it articulates the domination of the centre or points of origin to the periphery of social life. In this context the dominant expression of precedence is based on the political role of the bagani (the warrior class) and the various sub-units of political authority which traditionally inhabited the lands of the Mandaya. The second theme is the expression of egalitarianism which dominates throughout the domestic domain of social life and how domestic domains relate to one another as a means of establishing and cementing bonds within and between hamlets. Egalitarianism is expressed through gambling of rice harvests, through cockfighting and through mutual activity of sharing in activities which cross-cut different hamlets and communities.
These different forms of hierarchy and structure are the basis of internal contradictions which at times erupt into actual overt conflict. Although these two different domains of hierarchy are critical for assessing the importance of genealogical depth and genealogical domination within various segments of Mandaya society, in actuality, kinship groups and marriage alliances moderate potential conflict as expressed through intra-tribal economic interactions. Furthermore, Mandaya interactions with their neighbours (Bisayan, Mangguangan, Mansaka) also express this dualistic aspect of hierarchy and mythic domination towards those societies considered inferior (based in part on slavery and/or asymmetrical economic exchange) and those who control capital allocation and marketing networks.
Based on Dumont’s conception of hierarchy, in part this paper develops horizontal modes of hierarchy which appear to have received less attention in the literature on upland peoples in Mindanao. Although mythic and genealogical depth translate into various aspects of hierarchy and eventually domination between the Mandaya and the Mangguangan, this expression of vertical hierarchy creates contradictions and conflicts with the internal expression of egalitarianism which pervades each society.
The idea of culture in Dumont’s (1975, 1979, 1980, 1982) framework enters his interpretation through the concept of value. A hierarchical framework divorced from value reverts toward a structural analysis in which culture and value do not underwrite the analysis. As noted by Dumont (1979, 1980, 1982) and Fox (1990), the animation and understanding of the hierarchical structure into a local context revolves on the recognition of value which is not only at the heart of a particular social life, but also dominates various spheres of social rank. As Fox (1990:7) notes, hierarchy without value is a categorical phenomena which has implications within the realm of social relationships. Dumont’s India has a single all-encompassing value, that being the contrast between purity/impurity which is the basis of all hierarchy. However, Dumont goes further by arguing that hierarchy as the dominant ideology is almost always linked to purity/impurity. Fox (1990:7) notes that this coupling, which might work for India, virtually excludes all other possible alternate value(s).
Hierarchy per se cannot be limited to an analysis and understanding of the form and expression of opposition, contrariness, complementarity and encompassment. In Dumont’s language (1980), the principles of exclusion and inclusion establish different landscapes through which hierarchical principles occur in a variety of combinations which on the surface might appear as radically different. One has only to look at Dumont’s (1975, 1980) reading and comparison of vertical structuration in Indian caste structure in which the whole subsumes the parts to his rethinking of the Nuer where horizontal structuration establishes a whole, yet each segment relates to the whole in ways which are quite different from caste in India. This structural side of Dumont’s analysis always focuses on the various structural permutations which exist as theoretical possibilities regardless of culture and/or value.
If value is a culturally specific feature, we must assume that the range of differences in the construction of value is greater than the specific hierarchical features (i.e., the notion of opposition and its various permutations) which are the basis of the structural scaffolding which articulates value(s) throughout a social system. In his rethinking of the Dumontian framework, Fox (1990) correctly notes that the issue of purity does not exist as value in Indonesian society, and from this observation Fox appears to dissolve hierarchy, as established in Indian caste-like structures, into a category of limited utility in the context of Indonesian societies. By creating a theory of precedence based on a broad range of asymmetrical pairings of categorical oppositions which are linguistically labelled and linked with one another, Fox argues that precedence exists in terms of age (elder-younger, first born-last born), gender (male-female) directions, space and colour. In a number of Rotinese examples, Fox notes that most contrasts are based on one side as being greater, prior, or superior to the other. Greater or superior is basic to a theory of precedence in which “all of these categories are complementary but also asymmetric” (Fox 1990:9).
Yet, a question still remains. What is value in the Indonesian context? Precedence, in which one side of a binary contrast is given primacy over the other, could be understood as value though in many features it still possesses marked similarities with hierarchy except that most of the contrasts are asymmetrical whereas for Dumont, encompassment is based primarily, but not always, on symmetry. Throughout Indonesia and the Philippines, many cultures have different types of precedence, some of which deal with kinship and rank, others also extend the rule of precedence to categorical divisions based on the natural world as well as the social world. Fox’s (1990) work illuminates these differences in three specific ethnographic cases. From these cases one finds parallels with the Mandaya where precedence is the dominant rule in kinship relations (consanguineal and affinal) as well as how the body becomes a metaphor for precedence within and between generations.
Precedence, as a structural concept, is basic to cases like the Mandaya as a means of understanding questions of rank, status and origin. This is best exemplified when we look at the bagani (warrior) complex, how genealogical depth is an expression of origin and rank, and, in turn, how centres become the over-arching key to understanding how Mandaya relate place to history and myth.
What then is the constitution of value in southeast Asian society if a theory of precedence is primarily a structural canopy? In terms of my analysis of the Mandaya, I will argue that precedence as structure has a firm foundation in categorical imperatives as well as in how origin, centres and place are connected through genealogical depth from which the role of the bagani is the political manifestation. However, value is expressed in terms of an egalitarian ethos which pervades the structure and action of exchange within and between households and hamlets. Egalitarianism is best expressed in how gambling is constituted as a means of levelling and curtailing social differentiation between individuals and groups.
What transpires is a social and cultural disjunction with precedence acting as the basis of a political structure which invokes history and genealogical depth to support its position in opposition to an egalitarian ethos which dominates exchange and social differentiation. Value as egalitarianism is partially muted in the political structure where rank and status are the markers of political activity.
Dumont (1979) makes the assumption that equality is only expressed as a modern ideology and that only occurred once, that being our Western ideologies of equality which are maintained as our dominant philosophical and political foundations since the eighteenth century. This assumption is partially valid, yet at the same time, we can note that there are many southeast Asian societies which veer towards an egalitarian ethos as cultural value which might or might not have an ideological component. In such cases, the egalitarianism is expressed as cultural axioms or as tacit agreement which is not created through wilful or rational action based on group interest or even self interest.