Konfabulasi akbar: Menyandarkan otak dalam akal budi ketika menelisk pembentukan aneka narasi (The Great Confabulation: Bearing the brain in mind when considering the formation of narratives)

Narrative is, as Nigel Rapport (2003, 29) puts it, 'the placing of data, of details of perception and cognition, in a particular order such that connexions are seen between them'. Socio‐cultural anthropologists have long studied myths, legends, life‐histories and other stories for what they tell us about storytellers, their audiences, and the social and cultural frameworks within which the stories are told. Little attention has been paid, however, to the possibility that narratives arise necessarily from the functioning of the human brain. In his critique of the allegedly erroneous conclusions made by Margaret Mead in her book, Coming of age in Samoa (1973), Derek Freeman highlighted the need to be mindful of the genetically endowed characteristics of our species when trying to explain human behaviour. He wrote that: 'It is now plainly incumbent on all behavioural scientists, including cultural and social anthropologists, to acquaint themselves with and take fully into account ... the phylogenetically given elements in our behaviour' (Freeman 1983a, 164). With this in mind, I propose to explore narrative in this paper with reference to developments in neuroscience and by drawing on my ethnographic data from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.