Culture Summary
essay 2012 Dentan, Robert Knox

SemaiAsia > Southeast Asia
This is a culture summary of the Semai. Information is presented on major aspects of the Semai culture....

Senoi
essay 1964 Dentan, Robert Knox

SemaiAsia > Southeast Asia
This source presents a detailed cultural summary of the Senoi of Malaya, covering virtually all aspects of the ethnology. Intra-cultural differences between the major groups of Senoi – the Semai, Temiar, Jah Hut and Che Wong – are discussed where the...

Some Senoi Semai dietary restrictions
Book 1988 Dentan, Robert Knox

SemaiAsia > Southeast Asia
This source is a study of the ritual treatment of food among the Senoi Semai of the Malay Peninsula. The first four chapters of the study discuss in detail the Senoi people and environment and Senoi subsistence strategies, social organization, and so...

If there were no Malays, who would the Semai be?
essay 1975 Dentan, Robert Knox

SemaiAsia > Southeast Asia
The central consideration of this source is ”how Semai come to include some of their fellows as sen'oi hii' (“we people”) and to exclude others as mai (“they”)” (p. 50). In analyzing this question the author makes reference to the Semai grammar and c...

Notes on childhood in nonviolent context
essay 1978 Dentan, Robert Knox

SemaiAsia > Southeast Asia
This source focuses on describing the ways in which the Semai enculturate their children to be non-violent. As the author views the problem of enculturation into non-violence, the process begins before the child's birth. Thus, the author examines con...

he Semai: a nonviolent people of Malaya.
Book 1968 Dentan, Robert Knox

SemaiAsia > Southeast Asia
This source is a general survey of the Senoi Semai of the hills and mountains of central Malaysia. The topics covered in the source include environment, demography, subsistence pattern, ethnoscience, nonviolence and enculturation into nonviolence, po...

Identity and ethnic conflict
article 1976 Dentan, Robert Knox

SemaiAsia > Southeast Asia
This source, which deals with Senoi Semai of West Malaysia, describes the various ways in which a number of character traits which the Senoi believe are attributed to them by non-Senoi are manipulated by them in their relationships with their rural M...

Semai response to mental aberration
article 1968 Dentan, Robert Knox

SemaiAsia > Southeast Asia
This source presents a sociological analysis of the responses to mental aberration exhibited by the Senoi (Semai) of central Malaya. After a brief introductory section dealing with the authors approach to the data, the discussion turns to a study of ...

Hocus pocus and extensionism in Central Malaya
article 1970 Dentan, Robert Knox

SemaiAsia > Southeast Asia
This paper presents a componential analysis of the kinship terminology of two groups of Senoi (Semai) studied by the author – termed eastern and western in this source. According to Dentan the eastern group were far less acculturated to the predomina...

Overwhelming terror
Book 2008 Dentan, Robert Knox

SemaiAsia > Southeast Asia
This is a remarkable treatment of Dentan's original ethnographic material pushing its emotional content to express the subjective content of the material. Borrowing the concept of "learned helplessness" from psychological studies of abused children, ...

Ambivalences in child training by the Semai of peninsular Malaysia and other peoples
article 2001 Dentan, Robert Knox

SemaiAsia > Southeast Asia
In this article, Dentan discusses child-rearing practices in context of the Semai's basic fear of hostile and more powerful outsiders. He also discusses headhunting stories as a metaphor for the same fears....

Potential food sources for foragers in Malaysian rainforest
article 1991 Dentan, Robert Knox

SemaiAsia > Southeast Asia
This is an ethnobotanical account of Semai cultivation, diet, and food hunting and collecting....