The process of sociocultural, change in a Kenyah Community.

Abstract

This paper examines the process of change in the socio-cultural system of the Kenyah people in the Baram District of Sarawak. These changes are seen to be the result of the penetration of the market economy; the conversion to Christianity; the introduction of formal education; and employment outside the traditional economic system. In traditional Kenyah society the community was integrated within a self-subsistent economy. The longhouse was the hub of Kenyah socio-cultural life. The social organization in the longhouse expressed community relations as well as intra-familial relations within a room in the longhouse. All social rights and obligations were reinforced by Kenyah adet, a worldview encompassing the secular as well as the supernatural realm. The traditional socio-cultural system gradually disintegrated as the previously self-subsistent economy came under the impact of an individualized market system. This process was further aggravated with the conversion of the Kenyah to Christianity, which eroded the ideological basis of adet. The introduction of formal schooling and the opportunities for employment in the modern market economy further alienated the younger generation from the economic and cultural life of the traditional society. With the gradual adoption of westernized urban culture, the process of deculturalization among the emerging generation of Kenya has set in.