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malaySian etHnic frameWork
of Development
Economic Policy (NEP), the eminent position of
Malay
adat istiadat
(customs and traditions) and
Islamic religion has created a sense of hegemony
and superiority on the part of the Malays over
other groups in Malaysia. Consequentially, the
prominence of Malay-ness in national discourse
tends to benefit the Malays politically, socially
and economically (Shamsul, 1986; Jomo, 1985).
In the long run this framework has forced ethnic
groups into a competitive relationship with each
other, in which one group's advancement can
mean the retardation of another group (Despres,
1975; Nagata, 1979).
Putting this differently, the NEP and ethnic
framework of development as new and shifting
political, economic and social contexts have
created new form of
iyuk
competition, in which
the Kelabit must engage competitively with
other citizens who are not Kelabit for economic
and political resources. This entails the Kelabit
to compete with other ethnic groups for access
to government financial support, government
grants, development projects and schemes. All
this has introduced a particular concern or desire
among the Kelabit for new means to project their
identity in relation to others in Malaysia and glob-
ally; hence constantly looking for strategies for
collective political agency and to advance their
social status within Malaysia's economic and
political terrain.
It is partly due to this dynamic of economic
competition that the Kelabit have appropriated
e-Bario as a new means and strategy to strengthen
and articulate their
iyuk
and
doo
-ness through
what Miller and Slater describe as “dynamics of
positioning,” (2001:18). Dynamics of positioning
is a term used to denote how people engage with
the ways in which Internet media position them
within networks that transcend their immediate
location, placing them within wider flows of cul-
tural, political, and economic resources.
A good example of this is how the Kelabit
are currently using and transforming e-Bario as
a forum and a stage to position and reposition
The Malaysian Ethnic Framework of Develop-
ment under New Economic Policy (NEP) signifies
a development pattern which is tilted towards
distributional objectives, albeit along racial lines
(Brosius, 2003; Hilley, 2001; King, 1999; Scott,
1985). Underlying the national quest for rapid
economic growth is the desire to accelerate the
process of restructuring Malaysian society to
correct economic imbalance so as to reduce and
eventually eliminate the identification of race and
ethnicity with economic function (Second Malay-
sia Plan 1971-1975 provides a thorough outline of
the aims and agendas of the policy). Embedded
in the framework, however, is the requirement to
identify persons based on their ethnic and religious
affiliation for the purpose of resource and wealth
distribution. As noted by Chandra (1986, p.33),
ethnic and religious categories “carry deep mean-
ings for people” in defining a person's existence
and purpose especially in accessing political and
economic resources in Malaysia.
What are the implications of the framework for
the Kelabit, as one of the smallest ethnic groups
in Sarawak? The Kelabit have to come to grips
with their assimilation and participation within
Malaysia's inter-ethnic disparities with regard
access to key economic and political resources.
First of all, the Kelabit “peripheral situation”
in relation to particular (Malay) political cultures
is aggravated by the Highlands' physical dis-
tance from centres of power. Without numbers,
constituencies, pressure groups or lobbies, and
with their out-of-the-way location (Tsing 1993),
there is a concern that the Kelabit are not given
a hearing in the context of a national integration
discourse, which places, as will be made clear
later, the Malay-Muslim
bumiputera
at the top
of the hierarchy.
Second, although article 153 (Kedit, 1989)
guarantees the Kelabit as Bumiputera (lit. the
sons of the soil) certain privileges under the New
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