essay

Keeping the peace in an island world: the Sama Dilaut of Southeast Asia

keeping the peace: conflict resolution and peaceful societies around the world (8) • Published In 2004 • Pages: 123-147

By: Sather, Clifford.

Abstract
This exploration of the social and cultural mechanisms by which a boat-dwelling Sama-Bajau community maintained internal peace and order emphasizes the community’s longstanding experience of resolving disputes and grievances through publicly spoken words instead of physical violence. Maintaining the peace was made possible through a corpus of collectively enforceable norms governing social relations and individual behavior in different domains of life. Community elders played important roles in averting violence by providing means for offenders to flee or find shelter, if only by remaining strictly silent until a reconciliation is reached.
Subjects
Settlement patterns
Community structure
Community heads
Informal in-group justice
Social control
Legal norms
Avoidance and taboo
Purification and atonement
Ethnopsychology
Status and treatment of the aged
Kin relationships
Family relationships
Nonfulfillment of obligations
Theory of disease
Luck and chance
Social personality
Ethos
Sanctions
culture
Sama-Bajau
Region
Asia
Sub Region
Southeast Asia
Document Type
essay
Evaluation
Creator Type
Anthropologist
Document Rating
4: Excellent Secondary Data
5: Excellent Primary Data
Analyst
Teferi Abate Adem
Field Date
1964-1965, 1974, 1979, 1995
Coverage Date
1880-1995
Coverage Place
Semporna district, Sabah, Malaysia
Notes
Clifford Sather
LCCN
2003008813
LCSH
Bajau (Southeast Asian people)