Sama Bajau

Bajau peoples or Sama Bajau in North Borneo and Phillipines is sea peoples who live in sea and traveling around eastern Indonesia, Celebes sea, and Southern Phillipines. The reputation of Bajau has known as fisherman, raider, and trader as recorded in history or oral story. Most of Bajau's life very related with sea from birth to dead, but they are settled in house around beach for many purpose although not permanent. The house become more important after stabilized most of Southeast Asia states in 1970's which made border line more secured by navy. This made most of sea tribe, including Bajau, can't travel easier as old day although the tradition of sea faring still strong among Bajau's people. The traditional house of Bajau now influenced from many aspects such local and Bajau's culture. Although most of Bajau's house quite same, but there are some different styles. In this paper, researchers identification the house of Bajau in different region of Bajau's diaspora in Eastern Indonesia, Sabah in Malaysia, and Sulu archipelago in Phillipines. With combined two methodes; history perspective for exploring the background of Bajau's diaspora and architecture for know what made Bajau's house in many area different.

This thesis presents a symmetrical analysis of the voice system of Central Sinama (often called Sama, Samal, or Badjao), an Austronesian language of the Philippines and Malaysia. Sinama has a three-way primary voice alternation, comprising two transitive voices (undergoer voice and actor voice) and an intransitive passive voice. Sinama also has two minor voices: conveyance voice and locative voice. Based on analysis of recorded text, elicited data, and dictionary example sentences, the thesis presents evidence that the NP uniquely selected by a clause’s voice morphology is the syntactic subject. It also shows that the primary voice alternation between actor voice and undergoer voice does not result in the demotion of the non-subject argument to oblique or adjunct status. The presence of two transitive voices means that Sinama has a symmetrical (i.e., non-demoting) voice system, as defined by Arka (2003).

Nama Sabah berasal daripada sejenis tanaman pisang yang dikenali sebagai "Pisang Saba" iaitu sejenis buah pisang yang dipanggil "SABBAH" atau "SAPPAH" di mana pisang ini sangat popular dibuat pisang goreng oleh masyarakat bajau. Pada abad ke-15, nama "Sabah" pertama kali digunakan oleh para pedagang yang mengembara diantara pulau-pulau yang berada di Borneo Utara hingga ke Kepulauan Sulu di Selatan Filipina. Namun, negeri Sabah telah diambil oleh syarikat berpiagam "Borneo Utara" secara rasmi pada tahun 1881. Walau bagaimanapun, nama Sabah telah digunakan semula pada tahun 1963 selepas negeri tersebut menyertai gabungan Malaysia.

Sintang Dalisay (Pure Love), a theatrical  production based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and a Filipino metrical romance written in 1901, deployed the igal, a dance tradition of the Sama-Bajau, a Muslim community in Southern Philippines, as its movement motif.  The use of this motif dictated other production elements, specifically the kind of music to be used, the decision to relocate the play in a Muslim community, the design of set and costumes, and the change of character names to more local appellations. The production adopted a collaborative approach to theater-making, working with local dance masters and musicians to teach actors and to align the reconfiguration of the dance with community practice.  The result of this collaborative effort, laudable in general to audiences, also met with resistance from several fronts. This paper assesses the reception of the work, and finds that the task of reconfiguring folk performance, must contend with issues of cultural and political representation

This study explores the profound maritime dimension in Southeast Asia's past and present. It highlights the region's "sea people", giving special attention to their complex and dynamic interactions with terrestrial communities. Their cultures and aquatic lifestyles, it is argued, are relevant to understanding the wider context of various historical and contemporary issues in this region. Since the emergence of large-scale harbour polities in Sumatra, Borneo and other parts of insular Southeast Asia, nomadic maritime communities have intermittently appropriated the roles of protégés, outlaws and victims in a multilayered and multifaceted interplay of seaborne navigation, commerce and warfare. On the one hand, many of the interethnic power relations that helped shape the maritime history of Southeast Asia have remained intact to date and can help us understand a number of present-day phenomena. On the other, 19th and 20th-century developments have largely confined these communities to the margins of society, while their erstwhile "maritory" has become the battleground of competing "globalised" crime syndicates, maritime terrorists and post-independent nation states with modern navies. The seascapes of Southeast Asia are as dynamic as they are diverse.

At the interface of Indonesia and Malaysia, border-crossing maritime trade appears to elude attempts to conserve marine resources. In Berau district (East Kalimantan) attempts to protect coastal waters from illegal fishing and trade fail to correspond with mobile trade networks. In this article, I describe how a female Bajau trader acts out her (illegal) trade network in practice. The article draws on 18 months of ethnographic research, during which I joined the trader along her travels through the coastal zone of northeastern Kalimantan. Using a performative network approach, I explore the trader’s network as a continuously generated effect of practice and movement. Following her trading practices, I show that the performance of her network requires the ceaseless movement of people and things, in travelling (mobility) as well as in the reshaping of relations (fluidity). The trader’s network is enmeshed in historically grown relations of kinship, ethnicity, and patron–client associations across the sea. These socially and spatially mobile associations are at odds with conservationists’ preoccupation with a spatial fixation of people, places, and borders. By showing how relations of loyalty, debt, and affiliation systematically transgress these borders, I demonstrate the significance of a relational approach to marine conservation that takes into account the mobility and interdependency of maritime networks. Such an approach may help to redress the hegemony of place-based approaches in marine conservation.

This research studies on the spatial extensions of nomadic Sama-Bajau dwellings in Omadal Laut settlement of Omadal Island, Semporna. This paper investigates the possible spatial extensions in relation to the lifestyle, pragmatism and social organization of the occupants. Qualitative content analysis is used to categorize the spatial distribution in each of the house attended into several coding that serve as the basis of the end-result of the study. This paper suggests that the spatial extensions amongst traditional coastal Sama-Bajau houses in Omadal consists of: 1) typical extension, which is a simply enlarged spaces; 2) attached space, enlarge private space into another chamber; 3) permanent extension, a complete house with only a single family; and 4) familial extension, consist of two familial units merged together in unison. The idea of adding spaces is already instilled since the initiation of the house and that these extensions are usually stemmed from the already existing 'core house' or also known as 'rumah ibu' in traditional Malay house. Nowadays, socioeconomic of the occupants plays a major part in dictating the intensity of added spaces; and while culture and customs are still widely being practiced, they have little weights in determining the spatial direction of the houses. This study is a step further upon understanding their core spaces and to contribute to the knowledge of spatial experiences of traditional coastal Sama-Bajau houses.

Ang panandayuhan ay ang pagbabagong-kalagayan o paglilipat na ginagawa ng indibidwal o pangkat ng mga indibidwal mula sa isang lipunan tungo sa isa pa. Ang pagbabago o paglilipat na ito ay nag-uugnay ng pag-iiwan ng nakagawiang panlipunang kalagayan at pagpasok sa isang bagong panlipunang kapaligiran.

Scholars have long remarked on the importance of the seas in Southeast Asian history. Following the well-known dictum that seas unite while the land divides, historians have looked to the seas as the most crucial conduit for human interaction and the principal medium by which foreign influences entered the region. Yet, for many Southeast Asians, the seas were much more than simply a void to be crossed. This statement is especially true for island Southeast Asia, where daily life for its inhabitants is closely calibrated with the rhythms of the monsoon winds and ocean currents, and where the vast expanse of the sea dwarfs in both size and significance the land that it envelops. There, the seas and littoral are the primary spaces of interaction and thus a crucial element in the history of the region.

Of the numerous ethnic groups in island Southeast Asia, the powerful influence of the sea on daily life is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the communities of Sama Bajo sea peoples that inhabit the region. For the Sama Bajo, the seas and littoral are the primary setting of their histories and the focal point of their culture.
Focusing on the sea-centred Sama Bajo communities of eastern Indonesia during the early modern period, in this seminar Nolde will discuss the pervasive influence of the sea in the lives of the Sama Bajo, and demonstrate how their unique relationship to the sea helped to shape the course of their history. While most scholars have characterized the Sama Bajo as timid sea nomads, marginal to the region’s important historical developments, based on extensive research in Sama Bajo oral and written traditions, Makassarese and Bugis manuscript sources, and the archives of the Dutch East India Company, Nolde argues that the Sama Bajo were in fact central to processes of state formation, commerce, and regional integration in eastern Indonesia.

This research studies the diversification of space distribution in selected Sama-Bajau houses along the west coast of Sabah- Kota Kinabalu. This paper investigates the spatial arrangements in Sama-Bajau coastal houses in relation to the socio-culture of the area and socio-economics of the occupants. This study is a step in understanding their core spaces among households in the area. Adjacency Distribution Diagram by Mushtaha et al (2011) is used to explain the space distribution in each house attended in a compact visual diagram. This paper is exploratory and applies a qualitative method. It suggests that the core of spatial distribution amongst coastal Sama-Bajau in the Urban Area specifically consists of Dynamic interconnectivity or ‘Type A’, which signifies two fundamental spaces: Guest area and Living area, interconnected with peripheral spaces inside a certain household. Majority of the household in the area however, were either in the level of stagnancy and development. The idea of adding spaces is usually ingrained at the conception stage of the house on the basis of socio-economics of two contextual scenario: household and property value. Socio-politics, as in the imposition of land ordinance; globalization, as in the pervasion of global housing knowledge; and the rise of Individualism globally dictates the direction in the spatial diversity within household. In the present, the community appeared to be diversified with various ethnic occupying the cluster. The household mostly affected by modernization without a trace of ancestral customs being practiced, and by no means accountable to determining the direction of housing attributes amongst household in the area.

The concept of social resilience thrives in studies and policies of fisheries and marine conservation. Associated with the ability of communities to adapt to change, it has spurred debates on social organisation for resilience. Considering its proliferation in maritime studies, the concept of social resilience requires a critical reflection on the ontological assumptions of 'social' and 'community' that undergirds the concept, in particular the idea that communities are place-based. Following a relational ontological approach, this article proposes to explore community as performative network of human and non-human relations acted out in practice. Drawing on insights from ethnographic research in a coastal region in Indonesia, I illustrate the performance of community networks beyond the local scale and how they sustain through the association of social and material elements. These trans-local communities have resisted conservationists' attempts to create resilient (place-based) fishing communities in the region to impede illegal fishing. The case illustrates how a relational approach helps to illuminate what social resilience in a maritime context means in practice. The article aims to contribute to critical social resilience scholarship in maritime studies by drawing out how we may think and explore 'social' and 'community' otherwise and the implications this has for how we look for resilience.

This article explores impacts of national and regional policies upon the Bajau Laut, who occupy the maritime border region shared by Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. It considers how maritime movements, ethnogenesis, visions for economic development and commercial interaction have evolved in the region. These processes, combined with contemporary nationalism, border securitization, and conservation render such populations both prominent as a target of governmental action and invisible in terms of provision of social services and implementation of conservation initiatives. These facets complicate issues of political belonging within the state of Sabah, the nation-state of Malaysia, and the wider ASEAN region.

Dive fishing with cyanide is known as a risky fishing practice, as it pushes or lures divers to the limits of what their bodies can take. Its association with physical danger is linked to a culture of machismo and a coming-of-age process in which young men prove their bravery and become part of a shared manhood. What often remains implicit in the understanding of risk-seeking activities is the notion of body and masculinity that such practices entail and produce. Understanding risk and how it relates to masculinity in native terms requires conceptual tools to think beyond the self-contained body that navigates an external environment. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Indonesia, this article explores cyanide dive fishing in the context of risky practice in relation to the body as contingent, permeable and leaky. Drawing from situated narratives and post-human phenomenology, the article makes room for masculinities beyond the self-contained man by describing dive fishing as a transformative process of becoming fluid to a submerged world of currents and spirits. By showing how this process brings bodies to or beyond their threshold of endurance, the article sheds light on the situated vulnerabilities of dive fishers in an environment of exploitation.

Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in Indonesia, this article describes a conservation outreach project that attempts to educate and convert local people into coral protectors. Both coral and the sea-dwelling Bajau people appear to be amphibious beings, moving between a changeable land-water interface, and between different, fluidly interwoven ontological constellations. We show that the failure of conservation organizations to recognize the ontologically ambiguous nature of " coral " and " people " translates to a breakdown of outreach goals. Mobilizing the concept of amphibiousness to engage this ambiguity and fluidity, we describe the moving land-water interface as the actual living environment for both coral and people. The notion of amphibiousness, we suggest, has practical and political value, in particular for reconsidering outreach and how it may be reframed as a process involving ontological dialogue. For conservation outreach to become seaworthy, it needs to cultivate an amphibious capacity, capable of moving in-between and relating partly overflowing ways of knowing and being. Providing room for ambiguity, thinking with amphibiousness furthermore encourages suspension of the (Western) tendency to explain the Other, to fix what does not add up. As such, it is of heuristic relevance for the ongoing discussions of ontological multiplicity that have proliferated at the intersection between STS and anthropology.

This research studies the diversification of space distribution in selected Sama-Bajau houses along the north coast of Sabah: Kudat and Pitas; and east coast of Sabah: Mabul Island. This study investigates the frequency of spatial arrangements in Sama-Bajau coastal dwellings as a preliminary step in understanding their ideal home based on socio-culture and economic practice. Adjacency Distribution Diagram by Mushtaha et al (2011) is used for simpler and compact visual diagram that explains the space distribution in each house attended. This paper is exploratory and applies a qualitative method. This study suggests that the spatial distribution amongst coastal Sama-Bajau consists of Dynamic interconnectivity (Type A), linear configuration (Type B), Anarchy configuration (Type C and D) and Modernist influence (Type E). The frequency of given types is found to weighs more on Type B, which is a linear configuration from the entrance towards guest area and ending up to the living area. 


KEYWORDS
Coastal dwellings, Sama-Bajau, Spatial distribution, Frequency, Adjacency Diagram

The concept of social resilience thrives in studies and policies of fisheries and marine conservation. Associated with the ability of communities to adapt to change, it has spurred debates on social organisation for resilience. Considering its proliferation in maritime studies, the concept of social resilience requires a critical reflection on the ontological assumptions of 'social' and 'community' that undergirds the concept, in particular the idea that communities are place-based. Following a relational ontological approach, this article proposes to explore community as performative network of human and non-human relations acted out in practice. Drawing on insights from ethnographic research in a coastal region in Indonesia, I illustrate the performance of community networks beyond the local scale and how they sustain through the association of social and material elements. These trans-local communities have resisted conservationists' attempts to create resilient (place-based) fishing communities in the region to impede illegal fishing. The case illustrates how a relational approach helps to illuminate what social resilience in a maritime context means in practice. The article aims to contribute to critical social resilience scholarship in maritime studies by drawing out how we may think and explore 'social' and 'community' otherwise and the implications this has for how we look for resilience.

I would also like to thank my friends Seinab Hussain, Edhy Putra and Andi Uccu who have not only made me feel at home in Makassar, but who have also shared their expertise in Indonesian fisheries as well as in Buginese and Makassarese heritage. Thanks also to Oktami Dewi Artha for accompanying me during one of my island trips, and helping with some translation work. My thanks go out to the ZMT Bremen research group coordinated by Professor Dr Marion Glaser and Dr Sebastian Ferse, who invited me along one of their weeklong fieldwork trips to the Spermonde Islands. During my fieldwork in and around Makassar I have enjoyed the company of ZMT researchers Philipp Gorris, Hauke Kegler, Veronica Breitkopf and our repeated discussions about maritime research. Some of the most influential people, those who had a profound impact on the course of my PhD journey I cannot include in a specific chronological order, as they figure as anonymised interlocutors in the chapters of this thesis. Obviously, they deserve to stand in the spotlights. Without their trust, input and support this very thesis would not have come to be. Among the most prominent are the staff of The Nature Conservancy and their network of local facilitators, the staff of local NGOs Bestari, my different host families along the coast in East Kalimantan, Sabah and the Masalima Archipelago, as well as the captains and travelling partners who allowed me to join them on their voyages across the Makassar Strait. Thanks to Ical, Hany,

Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in Indonesia, this article describes a conservation outreach project that attempts to educate and convert local people into coral protectors. Both coral and the sea-dwelling Bajau people appear to be amphibious beings, moving between a changeable land-water interface, and between different, fluidly interwoven ontological constellations. We show that the failure of conservation organizations to recognize the ontologically ambiguous nature of “coral” and “people” translates to a breakdown of outreach goals. Mobilizing the concept of amphibiousness to engage this ambiguity and fluidity, we describe the moving land-water interface as the actual living environment for both coral and people. The notion of amphibiousness, we suggest, has practical and political value, in particular for reconsidering outreach and how it may be reframed as a process involving ontological dialogue. For conservation outreach to become seaworthy, it needs to cultivate ...