Modern Trends in Negri Sembilan

Abstract

In the preceding chapters we have repeatedly come across situations which we interpreted as showing a conflict between the theoretical demands of adat, and the practice of everyday life. Such situations might conceivably be held to illustrate culture change, as showing immemorial custom yielding ground to the demands of the modern age. Such a view would, however, not always be justified, as it is far from certain that such a deviation from the ideal adat is a typically modern phenomenon. In this chapter we shall therefore confine ourselves to these changes in native custom which have actually been observed, that is to say, which represent deviations not from an ideal pattern, but from an earlier custom that has been duly recorded and described. As we remarked in the analogous chapter on Minangkabau, this subject is eminently one for which field-work is required. Lacking any field-work data of our own we can only utilize published accounts, and this really means: only the book “Matriarchy in the Malay Peninsula” by de Moubray. He is in fact the only author who consistently brings out the time perspective in his account of Peninsular Malay custom.

The erratum of this chapter is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8198-0_25