Book
Overwhelming terror: love, fear, peace, and violence among Semai of Malaysia
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers • Lanham, Md. • Published In 2008 • Pages: xiii, 277
By: Dentan, Robert Knox.
Abstract
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, Dentan applies it to the Semai culture, as a whole. He argues that the passivity of Semai culture, for which they are famously noted, is a behavioral response to the terror wrought by foreign slavers in particular and the colonial encounter in general. To support his thesis, Dentan has turned his ethnographic accounts into stories to evoke the brutality of slaving and the degradation of enslavement. He includes the story of a rare murder of a Chinese trader by a young Semai migrant factory worker.
- HRAF PubDate
- 2012
- Region
- Asia
- Sub Region
- Southeast Asia
- Document Type
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator Type
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- Analyst
- Ian Skoggard; 2012
- Field Date
- 1961-1992
- Coverage Date
- 1874-2008
- Coverage Place
- Perak, Malaysia
- Notes
- Robert Knox Dentan
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-270) and index
- LCCN
- 2008030714
- LCSH
- Senoi (Southeast Asian people)--Psychology
- Senoi (Southeast Asian people)--Wars
- Senoi (Southeast Asian people)--Social conditions