What was said about the influence of the aristocrats and the old members applies equally well to the committee, especially as the two loci of power tend to overlap. In both societies the effectiveness of individual committeemen varies enormously from individual to individual. But it must be conceded that the committee is far more important at the co-op than in the longhouse. The reason for this is that the latter consists of many families, each of which is a unit of production and consumption, while at the co-op house all cooking is done on one hearth and everyone relies heavily upon the steward to make sure there is food to cook.
Two final points of comparison between the two communities are worth mentioning: the physical structure of the buildings and the pervasive chauvinism of the inhabitants.
The Berawan longhouse is a single vast wooden building extending along a river bank and raised up on stilts. It is a jungle metropolis containing between 200 and 400 souls and humming with activity. It is also a military complex, for the days of headhunting are not so far distant as to have been forgotten. The co-op house also manages a siege mentality at times, since we are even more prone to vandalism and burglary than the average Cantabrigian. Its structure also consists of wooden buildings--two large and charming old frame houses. Although our total population of 35 undergraduates and two tutors does not compare with the longhouse, we manage to achieve similar population densities, which accounts for the similarities of interpersonal behavior between the two distant societies.
When I first began fieldwork in Borneo I was disconcerted by the total lack of formulae of greeting. "Good morning" cannot be translated into Berawan. In the longhouse everyone is up and about soon after dawn, and since there is no plumbing the day often begins with a trip to the jungle. Every morning I met someone coming the other way as I wandered blearily down one of the tracks that lead away from the house. I would fumble for some simple form of greeting but invariably the person spoken to would look surprised and come to a complete halt, expecting me to engage him in conversation. Finally I had a great anthropological insight. On occasions like this one does not speak. A low grunt of acknowledgement is permissable for those compelled to formality. So deep was my prior cultural conditioning that I never quite got over the strain of keeping silent. The next visitor to my village will no doubt be surprised to be greeted by a hoard of little boys yelling "Ullo." Acculturation works in strange ways.
At the co-op house similar conditions of repeated interaction with a small number of people produce similar conventions of formal blindness. Indeed at times members seem to behave as if they lived alone in the building in a state of gracious spaciousness. I am convinced that the knack of ignoring one's fellow man is a useful trait in an urban environment, one with which Americans have a good deal of trouble. Americans are always wanting to relate to everyone. How else can we explain the incredible hostility created by the appearance of long hair styles back in the sixties? In Europe no one much cared about how people cut their hair.
To finish, let me justify the word tribal in my title. The Berawan longhouse was traditionally a sovereign political unit. No power reached from one community to another, and consequently anyone from outside the longhouse might be an enemy. Berawan houses never fought among themselves or took each others' heads, but they did suspect each other of witchcraft and other antisocial behavior. The hostility of the outside world maintained the solidarity of the Berawan community and gave rise to their own sense of identity, their feelings of superiority and their idiosyncratic ritual.
At the co-op the chain of causality seems to operate in the other direction. A sense of solidarity and in-group specialness must be built up each year so that people will cooperate with one another in their domestic chores and so that social pressure can be put upon those who do not perform up to standard. We have our little rituals for achieving these ends too, such as banquets and parties. What co-op house members often fail to realize is that we simultaneously and inevitably build a certain aloofness to outsiders. Members detest the suggestion that the co-op is a kind of fraternity and refute it by pointing to our open admission policies, which operate on a first-come-first-served basis. No "punching" at the co-op. Nevertheless, we must and do have our snobberies. We are a tribe.