Paper short abstract:

In this paper I account for the way socialities change. I trace the relationship between what the Kelabit of Sarawak Borneo term doo' "being good" as a concept of value and show how the adet informs different kinds of sociality.

Paper long abstract:

I show how Kelabit notions of value are linked to the norms of the adet and to positions of leadership in the community, crucial for the maintenance of the adet and social cohesion. I explore how value was associated with rice cultivation and the open sociality characterized by the term lun tauh (our people). This leads to an account of how doo'-ness is obtained through an evaluation by other people. However, the argument turns to the manner in which sociality and an ultimate value are always imaginary and can be subverted by the social actors themselves, implying people have agency in their own social mobility. I give an example of this with the narrator of the Long Peluan narrative who creates value and community through the performance of the narrative. I then explore the theme of "our people" lun tauh in the narrative as a form of open relational sociality which changes as values shift .An alternative closed form of sociality is evoked, prescribed in terms of alterity and bound by ethnicity defined as "the Kelabit". This demonstrates how concepts of sociality can become fixed, defined by alterity and exclusion. This comes about through social change, a consequence of logging and the arrival of the road, and a cash economy.