Kinship and Semelai Residential Arrangements: Belonging to Village and the Resilience of Communal Land Tenure in Tasek Bera, Malaysia

Abstract

By examining two villages in Pos Iskandar, Tasek Bera, the article shows that Semelai have a sense of grouping based on consanguinity, where parents, married children and siblings live in proximity, which traditionally formed a kampong (village). This contributes to the resilience of the communal land tenure system. Today, however, land is seen as property and this has led to its informal inclusion in the Semelai concept of pesakak manah (inheritance). While Semelai try to maintain their living arrangements, individual and inherited property rights in land are emerging. Land remains deeply embedded in kin-based relationships, but the legitimacy of land rights is predominantly grounded in law and legislation rather than in the customary norms of kinship and communal land tenure that is based on relationality. The moral underpinnings of land rights should, therefore, be anchored in a relational perspective that draws from kinship and the communal land tenure system.