Vol. 6 · No. 1 · 2002

Clifford Sather

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Even before the first European penetration of Island Southeast Asia, the maritime boat people of the region were already heavily engaged in trade and in many areas were incorporated in state-based political and economic systems. This paper examines one particular group, the Bajau Laut, or Sama Dilaut, of southeastern Sabah, seeing them as players in a historical circulation of goods. Different modalities of exchange, within and outside the group, involving both gifts and commodities, helped to define the embedded nature of the Bajau Laut community and its place vis-à-vis more settled populations in a hierarchical division of economic and political labour. Here I look in particular at the symbolisation of exchange, especially in local mythic discourse, in order to understand better the role that nomadism played, down to the beginning of the last century, in sustaining this circulation and in reproducing the contrasting identities of its different players, including the sea nomads themselves.