Borneo Studies Perspectives from a Jobbing Social Scientist.doc

Draft: 4 July 2008: published as Borneo Studies: Perspectives from a Jobbing Social Scientist, Akademika, vol. 77, 2009, pp. 15-40. Borneo Studies: Perspectives from a Jobbing Social Scientist Victor T. King Department of East Asian Studies and White Rose East Asia Centre University of Leeds Introductory Remarks It is a great honour that the Malaysian Social Science Association has bestowed upon me in inviting me to address you here in Kuching and I am deeply grateful. I am especially pleased that the co-convenor of the 6th International Malaysian Studies Conference is the Faculty of Social Sciences at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. Although I am not a regular visitor to Sarawak these days, I spent a very profitable time as the host of UNIMAS in 2005 undertaking an external evaluation of the Faculty and had the privilege to meet and talk with most of the staff about their teaching and research. Hardly a startling observation for an anthropologist, but it was noticeable just how young Malaysian social scientists are these days, in comparison with ‘a veteran anthropologist’, which is the term my dear friend Professor Wan Zawawi Ibrahim uses for me these days. When I first started my career I never thought that I would achieve the exulted status of a ‘veteran’. Although I shall hope to say something appropriate to your theme of ‘Engaging Malaysian Modernity: 50 Years and Beyond’, it was suggested that I should talk about my perspectives on social science research on Borneo. In addressing these themes, among other matters, I had in mind James Chin’s comment on the occasion of a gathering of Malaysian social scientists in Kuching in February 2006 to discuss ‘New Research in Malaysian Studies’, reported on your Association’s website, that social scientists here tend to feel somewhat isolated from their Malaysian colleagues elsewhere and that Borneo remains under-studied in comparison with the Peninsula. This apparent marginality and the lack of attention to Borneo need fur