Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Borderland Tactics: Cross-Border Marriage In The Highlands Of Borneo, Matthew H. Amster

Anthropology Faculty Publications

The first time I traveled to Borneo was near the end of 1989. The Berlin Wall had recently fallen and the economics of Southeast Asia were booming. The towns of Sarawak, an oil-rich state of East Malaysia, were experiencing rapid economic growth - due to both the oil company and an expanding logging industry. Rural-urban migration was draining indigenous people from the longhouses of the interior and swelling the populations of coastal towns. Traveling at that time to the Kelabit Highland - a remote interior plateau located in the northeastern corner of Sarawak along the Indonesian border - was to …