Continuity and Change in Brunei Darussalam: (The Modern Anthropology of Southeast Asia)

This book analyses the processes of social and economic change in Brunei Darussalam. Drawing on recent studies undertaken by both locally based scholars and senior researchers from outside the state, the book explores the underlying strengths, characteristics, and uniqueness of Malay Islamic Monarchy in Brunei Darussalam in a historical context and examines these in an increasingly challenging regional and global environment. It considers events in Brunei’s recent history and current socio-cultural transformations, which give expression to the traumatic years of decolonisation in Southeast Asia. A wide range of issues focus on foreign, non-Bruneian narratives of Brunei as against insider or domestic accounts of the sultanate, the status of minority ethnic groups in Brunei and the concept of ‘Brunei society’, as well as changes in the character and composition of the famous ‘water village’, Kampong Ayer, as the cultural heartland of Brunei Malay culture and the socio-cultural and economic effects of the resettlement of substantial segments of the population from a ‘life on water’ to a ‘life on land’. A timely and very important study on Brunei Darussalam, the book will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists, historians, geographers, and area studies specialists in Southeast Asian Studies and Asian Studies.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Donald Brown’s Brunei: Society, and Recent Transformations, Victor T. King and Stephen C. Druce 2. Monarchy in Brunei: Past, Present and Future, Ooi Keat Gin 3. ‘So near and yet so far’: Shaikh A. M. Azahari and 1962, B. A. Hussainmiya 4. Hybrid Pathways to Orthodoxy: Bureaucratisation, Sharia-Compliant Exorcism and the Powers of Japanese Water-Crystal Photography in Brunei Darussalam, Dominik M. Müller 5. Inside or Outside the Mainstream? An Ethnolinguistic Study of the Status of Minority Indigenous Groups in Negara Brunei Darussalam, Noor Azam Haji-Othman and James McLellan 6. Menteri Darat and Incorporation: Integration of Dusun Society into the Organisational Structure of the Brunei Sultanate, Pudarno Binchin 7. The Place of Kadayan in Traditional Brunei Society, Allen R. Maxwell 8. Living on Water: Water Settlements in Borneo, Hans-Dieter Evers 9. Development, Change and Modernisation in Kampong Ayer over the Last Fifty Years, Haji Tassim bin Haji Abu Bakar 10. Prospects and Challenges of Heritage Tourism at Kampong Ayer (Water Village) in Brunei Darussalam, Shafi Noor Islam 11. Epilogue: Brunei Studies: Fifty Years and More, Donald E. Brown

About the Author :
Victor T. King is Professor of Borneo Studies at the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam and Emeritus Professor of South East Asian Studies, University of Leeds, UK. He is the co-author of The Modern Anthropology of South-East Asia (Routledge 2006) and co-editor of the Routledge series Modern Anthropology of South-East Asia. Stephen C. Druce is Programme Leader in Graduate Studies and Research at the Academy of Brunei Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. He is the author of The Lands West of the Lakes: A History of the Ajattappareng Kingdoms of South Sulawesi, 1200 to 1600 CE (2009).