THE ROLE OF TRADITIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN RURAL-DEVELOPMENT - COMMUNITY-BASED LAND-TENURE AND GOVERNMENT LAND POLICY IN SARAWAK, MALAYSIA

Traditional local-level institutions are frequently considered obstacles to rural development and so attempts are made by the state to impose "dissonant" institutional forms from above. In contrast, this paper argues that traditional institutions should be viewed as the building blocks of a modern, development-oriented institutional structure. The argument is applied to the case of the Iban system of community-based land tenure and its relationship with government land policy in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. © 1990.