Rungus

The Rungus are a Dusun-speaking cognatic ethnic group of the Kudat District in Sabah, northern Borneo, whose social organisation has been the subject of systematic anthropological analysis. They are one of fifteen or more named speech communities of the Dusun language family in the district, some of which are mutually intelligible with Rungus while others are not, with cultural divergence generally proportional to distance and ecological difference between communities [1, p. 193]. Their economy is based on swidden agriculture, and their social system is structured around three principal groupings: the domestic family, the long-house, and the village [1, p. 194].

Social Organisation and Kinship

The Rungus social system is cognatic, meaning descent is traced through both male and female lines, and the kinship terminology is of Eskimo type, though cousins are sometimes equated with siblings depending on the social situation and the level of contrast required [1, p. 194]. The domestic family is the foundational unit, most frequently consisting of a husband, his wife, and their children, though it may also include the parents or a widowed parent of one of the founders following the dissolution of the parental family [1, p. 194]. Marriage is preceded by a substantial bride-price provided from the accumulated assets of the groom’s natal family, and the newly married couple reside with the bride’s family for approximately one agricultural season before building a separate apartment, ideally attached to the long-house where the bride’s natal family resides [1, p. 194].

Agricultural surpluses are invested in gongs, brassware, ceramic ware, and other non-depreciating items that produce no income [1, p. 194]. These accumulated goods are referred to as indopuan do nongkob, literally “that which has been purchased and accumulated by the family” [1, p. 194]. The purchase of such goods lies in the hands of the male founder of the family, or if he is deceased, his eldest unmarried son, and contracts are made with other Rungus as well as with Chinese shopkeepers [1, pp. 194–195].

Jural and Religious Systems

The Rungus religion concerns three interrelated aspects of life: fertility, curing illness, and accumulating property [1, p. 194]. Spirits that aid in the accumulation of property are given sacrifices of pigs and chickens to secure their assistance in building the family’s fortunes. Illness is explained as the result of the loss of one’s soul, or souls, to easily angered spirits who must be appeased with similar sacrifices, and further sacrifices are made to spirits that can increase the fertility of swiddens and domestic animals [1, p. 194].

The domestic family functions as a social isolate in both the jural and religious realms. It bears debts as a unit: if the male founder contracts to purchase an item by instalments and dies before the debt is discharged, the obligation is amortised from the agricultural surpluses of future seasons rather than from his personal estate [1, pp. 194–195]. Bride-price payments and fines resulting from delicts are likewise met with family assets irrespective of the individual offender’s contribution to their accumulation [1, p. 195]. In the religious realm, the family enters into relations with the spirit world as a ritual entity; if a member violates ritual restrictions, the resulting jeopardy may fall on any family member, not necessarily the offender, and the entire family must be cleansed [1, p. 195].

The village is also a jural and ritual isolate, though its personalities are less developed than those of the family [1, p. 196]. It holds residual ownership rights over a territory with explicit boundaries, and the headman may request a trespasser to cease, sue for a piece of brassware, or fire the offending swidden before the dry period to prevent its use [1, p. 196]. Approximately every decade the village holds a corporate renewal ceremony to renew the village land and community, during which the territory is closed to non-villagers; a violation renders the ceremony invalid and the offender is sued for a pig [1, p. 196].

The long-house, by contrast, is classified as both a ritual and a jural collectivity rather than an isolate [1, pp. 197–199]. It comes into existence through the lateral accretion of individual family apartments, no section of which is jointly constructed or collectively owned [1, p. 197]. It has no corporately held property, no formal leader, and no specific office for representing the group [1, p. 198]. Nevertheless, its social nature is recognised: in cases of ritual delict, any skilled litigator in the long-house may sue on behalf of co-members, and the resulting compensation belongs to the family instituting the action rather than to a common fund [1, pp. 198–199]. A single exception exists in the ceremony for the labut, malevolent spirits that afflict a long-house when a family cuts timbers for an apartment but fails to join on to the structure; in this case the monginan, the first builder, represents the long-house as a ritual isolate before the spirit world, and the pig’s head is given to him to keep [1, pp. 200–201]. Even here, however, the long-house is not a jural isolate, as the litigation for the pig is initiated by any skilled male rather than by a specifically recognised representative [1, p. 201].

Research and Documentation

The principal scholarly treatment of Rungus social organisation is G. N. Appell’s 1968 article, which draws on his doctoral fieldwork at the Australian National University and his earlier publications on Rungus residence patterns and long-house architecture [1]. Appell’s contribution is methodological as much as descriptive: he develops a formal analytical typology distinguishing social isolates, aggregates, and collectivities, building on Oliver’s (1958) framework for describing social structure and Derham’s (1958) theory of legal personality [1]. This typology allows for a precise account of how the same physical grouping—the long-house, for instance—may function as a collectivity in most matters yet as an isolate in the specific case of the labut ceremony, a distinction that would be obscured by less granular analytical tools. The article thus represents a significant intervention in the study of cognatic societies in northern Borneo, demonstrating that social units cannot be treated as uniform across all domains of a society’s life [1].

MBRAS Sources

• G.N. Appell (1968). Social groupings among the Rungus, a cognatic society of northern Borneo. JMBRAS 41(2): 193–202

References

1. G.N. Appell (1968). Social groupings among the Rungus, a cognatic society of northern Borneo JMBRAS 41(2): 193–202. Read on JSTOR