Identity And The State In Malaysia

Using the case study of the Kadazan of Sabah, a region in the Malaysian section of Borneo, this book examines national, ethnic and local identities in post-colonial states. It shows the importance of the connection between lived experience and identity and belonging, and by doing so, provides a deeper and fuller explanation of the apparently contradictory conflict between different collective forms of identification and the way in which they are employed in reference to everyday situations. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and historical analysis, the book reconstructs the development of the cultural forms and labels associated with the collective identities it studies. The author employs an approach that sees collective identification as an expression of everyday practices and that stresses the importance of participation and familiarity between forms of identification and lived experience. In this context, he considers anthropological debates about state-minorities relations and issues of ‘dignity’ and ‘respect’. Explaining state-minority relations in Malaysia and more generally in other post-colonial realities, the insights presented are highly relevant to other cases of conflicting allegiances and identity politics in settings of post-colonial nation-building.

This text contains an examination of processes of cultural citizenship in peninsular Malaysia. In particular, it focuses upon the diverse residents of the southwestern state of Melaka and their negotiations of belonging and incorporation in Malaysian society. Following political independence and the formation of the Federation of Malaysia in 1957 Malaysian citizenship was extended to most members of these diverse social identities. In this post-colonial context, Timothy P. Daniels examines how public celebrations and representations, religious festivals, and patterns of social relations are connected to processes of inclusion and exclusion.

The Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-1998 and the political crisis it engendered in Malaysia called into question the framework of governance associated with the long-standing Barisan Nasional (National Front, BN) government. And yet, despite the traumas induced by these twin crises, the fundamental relationships and structures that characterized political and economic relationships in Malaysia were not radically transformed. The underlying puzzle this thesis seeks to address is just how domestic reverberations of "the global" are mediated by the specific historical structure of a state. Utilizing the concept of national identity as an organizing principle while employing a model which positions the relationship between the international and domestic spheres and the state as a mutually constitutive dynamic offers a much more complete picture of the processes in operation. The central research question this thesis seeks to answer is: How are conceptions of national identity in Malaysia being shaped by the interrelationship between domestic society, the state and the global? By carrying out an in-depth empirical investigation into the historical (re)construction of and practices associated with national identity discourses in Malaysia, this thesis not only illuminates the society-state-global interrelationship but, in doing so, tells a story about how political elites in Malaysia have sought to construct and use ideas about "national" identity in order to, first, sediment their power and, second, to legitimize that power as authority. This thesis demonstrates that political elites in Malaysia found it easier to manipulate that identity in the periods immediately following independence in 1957 but that, in recent times, doing so has proven more difficult. The broad hypothesis behind this thesis is that state actors have found it increasingly difficult to avoid external socio-political and economic pressures, which has then made the maintenance of power and authority more problematic. That is, global forces increasingly act upon and destabilize political culture and assumptions about what is "eternal" and "taken-for-granted" in Malaysian politics and society, disrupting elite efforts to maintain social control and authority. The findings of this research have important theoretical and policy implications. At the theoretical level, they suggest that, in practice, any divide that exists between analyses of state-society relations on the one hand and state-global processes on the other, is largely redundant. But while they may be conceived of as two sides of the same coin, the exact nature of the mutually constitutive dynamic between domestic society, the state and the global may be an asymmetrical one. What is required, therefore, is a means of exploring the shape of any such asymmetry and a central finding of this thesis is that a historical consideration of discourses on national identity provides one such way of doing so. From a policy perspective, the findings suggest that political leaders in multiethnic states need to strengthen their role in formulating more inclusive conceptions of national identity if they are going to find an acceptable balance between particularistic ethnic desires and the universal desire for economic development and "national" stability in a world that is becoming increasingly globalized.

Identity, loyalty and nation building are key global challenges today. In the first part of this book, Emeritus Professor K.J. Ratnam, a leading Malaysian social scientist, discusses multiple identities in complex societies, political loyalty, and the challenges that ethnic and religious differences pose for social cohesion. In the second section of the book, done in conversational style, he talks to researcher-writer Patrick Pillai about the importance of regaining the middle ground in Malaysian politics. He expresses a clear preference for civic over ethnic nationalism, arguing that, by embracing all citizens, it provides a more sustainable basis for loyalty. Among key issues discussed are whether Malaysia is a 13-State or a three-State federation, democracy and governance, ethnic politics, and electoral reform. Professor Ratnam also analyses current political alignments and their impact on ethnic relations, the perils of ethnic stereotyping, and the need for a national consensus on foundational issues. He says visions, narratives, national ideologies and constitutions may be useful in bringing people together, but are not enough for holding them together, and suggests some practical ways this problem can be overcome. Sweeping in scope yet detailed in analysis, this publication will interest scholars, students, policy makers and laymen, and encourage reflection on useful ways of facing up to the many complex challenges confronting multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies like Malaysia.

This publication brings together the work of several writers in documenting and understanding the consequences of state-formation on ethnicity in Malaysia and Singapore, thirty years after the two nations went their separate paths.

"Malaysia has long had an ambivalent relationship to globalization. A shining example of export-led growth and the positive role for foreign investment, the country's political leadership has also expressed skepticism about the prevailing international political and economic order. In this compelling collection, Nelson, Meerman and Rahman Embong bring together a group of Malaysian and foreign scholars to dissect the effects of globalization on Malaysian development over the long-run. They consider the full spectrum of issues from economic and social policy to new challenges from transnational Islam, and are unafraid of voicing skepticism where the effects of globalization are overblown. Malaysia is surprisingly understudied in comparative context; this volume remedies that, and provides an overview of a country undergoing important political change." – Stephan Haggard, Krause Professor, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego

Humairah and Kamaludeen examine contemporary Malay national identity in Singapore and Malaysia through the lens of ‘primordial modernity’, taking on a comparative transnational perspective. How do Malays in Singapore and Malaysia conceptualise and negotiate their ethnic identity vis-à-vis the state’s construction of Malay national identity? Humairah and Kamaludeen employ discourse analyses of both elite and mass texts that include newspaper editorials, school textbooks, political speeches, novels, movies, and letters in local newspapers. Extending current notions of Malay identity, the authors offer a comprehensive overview of Malay identity that takes into consideration both primordial dimensions and the more modern aspects such as their cosmopolitan sensibilities and their approach to social mobility. A valuable resource for scholars of Southeast Asian culture and society, as well as Sociologists looking at wider issues of ethnic and national identity.

This book seeks to break new ground, both empirically and conceptually, in examining discourses of identity formation and the agency of critical social practices in Malaysia. Taking an inclusive cultural studies perspective, it questions the ideological narrative of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ that dominates explanations of conflicts and cleavages in the Malaysian context. The contributions are organised in three broad themes. ‘Identities in Contestation: Borders, Complexities and Hybridities’ takes a range of empirical studies—literary translation, religion, gender, ethnicity, indigeneity and sexual orientation—to break down preconceived notions of fixed identities. This then opens up an examination of ‘Identities and Movements: Agency and Alternative Discourses’, in which contributors deal with counter-hegemonic social movements—of anti-racism, young people, environmentalism and independent publishing—that explicitly seek to open up greater critical, democratic space within the Malaysian polity. The third section, ‘Identities and Narratives: Culture and the Media’, then provides a close textual reading of some exemplars of new cultural and media practices found in oral testimonies, popular music, film, radio programming and storytelling who have consciously created bodies of work that question the dominant national narrative. This book is a valuable interdisciplinary work for advanced students and researchers interested in representations of identity and nationhood in Malaysia, and for those with wider interests in the fields of critical cultural studies and discourse analysis. “Here is a fresh, startling book to aid the task of unbinding the straitjackets of ‘Malay’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘Indian’, with which colonialism bound Malaysia’s plural inheritance, and on which the postcolonial state continues to rely. In it, a panoply of unlikely identities—Bajau liminality, Kelabit philosophy, Islamic feminism, refugee hybridity and more—finds expression and offers hope for liberation”. Rachel Leow, University of Cambridge “This book shakes the foundations of race thinking in Malaysian studies by expanding the range of cases, perspectives and outcomes of identity. It offers students of Malaysia an examination of identity and agency that is expansive, critical and engaging, and its interdisciplinary depth brings Malaysian studies into conversation with scholarship across the world”. Sumit Mandal, University of Nottingham Malaysia “This is a much-needed work that helps us to take apart the colonial inherited categories of race which informed the notion of the plural society, the idea of plurality without multiculturalism. It complicates the picture of identity by bringing in religion, gender, indigeneity and sexual orientation, and helps us to imagine what a truly multiculturalist Malaysia might look like”. Syed Farid Alatas, National University of Singapore

This publication brings together the work of several writers in documenting and understanding the consequences of state-formation on ethnicity in Malaysia and Singapore, thirty years after the two nations went their separate paths.