Discourses, Agency and Identity in Malaysia: Critical Perspectives

ISBN-13: 9789813345706 / Angielski / Miękka / 2022 / 561 str.

Zawawi Ibrahim; Gareth Richards; Victor T. King

Opis

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

Recenzje

"Discourses, Agency and Identity adds significantly to various discourses relating to cultural studies, film and media studies, gender and feminism, postcolonial histories of Malaysia, and anthropology. The book is a good primer for scholars who are just starting to explore the range of possible research work, and the individual chapters are recommended for scholars who are already doing research within the relevant Malaysian research fields." (Jeannette Goon, Situations - Cultural Studies in the Asian Context, Vol. 15 (2), 2022)

Spis treści

1 Introduction

Zawawi Ibrahim, Gareth Richards and Victor T. King

PART I IDENTITIES IN CONTESTATION: BORDERS, COMPLEXITY AND HYBRIDITIES

2 Culture and identity on the move: Malaysia in Southeast Asia

Victor T. King (Universiti Brunei Darussalam)

3 The travelling text: Print cultures and translation in Penang and beyond

Gareth Richards (Independent Scholar, formerly Universiti Malaya)

4 In body and spirit: Redefining gender complementarity in Muslim Southeast Asia

Wazir Jahan Begum Abdul Karim (Independent Scholar, formerly Universiti Sains Malaysia)

5 The quest for the good life at the edge of Malaysia:Our people, the life of government and the life of prayer

Valerie Mashman (Sarawak Museum Campus)

6 Positioning Bajau identities as Bumiputera: Challenges and potentials of leveraging environmental justice and espousal of Islam in Sabah, Malaysia

Fadzilah Majid Cooke (Universiti Malaysia Terengganu) and Greg Acciaioli (University of Western Australia)

7 Sustaining local food cultures and identities in Malaysia with the disruptive power of tourism and social media

Sally Everett (Anglia Ruskin University)

8 Negotiating sinful self and desire: The diverse sexualities of non-heteronormative Malay-Muslim men in Malaysia

Chua Hang Kuen (Universiti Sains Malaysia) 

9 Ah Beng subculture in Malaysia and the anti-thesis of global habitus

Rachel Chan Suet Kay (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia)

PART II IDENTITIES AND MOVEMENTS: AGENCY AND ALTERNATIVE DISCOURSES

10 Anti-Blackness in Malaysia: The Bandung spirit and African-Asian critique in Richard Wright’s The Color Curtain

Mohan Ambikaipaker (Tulane University)

11 The emergence of new social movements in Malaysia: A case study of youth activism 

HarisZuan (UniversitiKebangsaan Malaysia)

12 Environmentalist movements in Malaysian democracy: The transformation of activist culture

Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid (Universiti Sains Malaysia) and Mohamad FaizalAbdMatalib (Universiti Utara Malaysia)

13 Alternative or mainstream? Independent book publishing in Malaysia

Muhammad Febriansyah and Sharifah Nursyahidah (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia)

PART III IDENTITIES AND NARRATIVES: CULTURE AND MEDIA

14 Fear and loathing in legal limbo: Reimagining the refugee in Malaysian public discourse and history

Gerhard Hoffstaedter (University of Queensland) and Nicole Lamb (University of Sydney)

15 Negotiating dual identities: Narratives from two Myanmar refugee youths living in Malaysia

Charity Lee (Universiti Malaya) and Zuraidah Mohd Don (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia)

16 Expressing alternative modernities in a new nation through Iban popular music, 1960s–1970s

Connie Lim Keh Nie (Universiti Malaysia Sarawak) and Made Mantle Hood (Universiti Putra Malaysia)

17 Reframing the national culture narrative of P. Ramlee 

Adil Johan (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) 

18 Genre, gender and temporal critique in Budak Kelantan and Bunohan

Norman Yusoff (Universiti Teknologi MARA)

19 Left of the dial: BFM 89.9FM independent radio station and its indie-friendly midnight programming as a site of sustainability

Azmyl Yusof (Monash University Malaysia)

20 Postcolonial indigenous storytellers and the making of a counter-discourse to the ‘civilising process’ in Malaysia

Zawawi Ibrahim (Taylor’s University)

21 Conclusion

O autorze

Zawawi Ibrahim is currently a visiting professor at Taylor’s University, Malaysia. His was most recently Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Working within the field of anthropology broadly understood, his wide-ranging research interests include youth, popular culture, storytelling and narratives, religious diversity and multiculturalism. He is the author of The Malay labourer (1995), and co-editor of Human insecurities in Southeast Asia (2016) and Borneo studies in history, society and culture (2017). He is a member of the EU-funded research project ‘Radicalisation, Secularism and the Governance of Religion: Bringing together European and Asian Perspectives’ (2019–2021).

Gareth Richards is a writer, editor and bookseller based in Malaysia. He previously taught at Manchester University, the University of the Philippines and Universiti Malaya. He is the director of the editorial company Impress Creative and Editorial, the owner of Gerakbudaya Bookshop, Penang, and co-founded the arts space Hikayat. He is the co-author/editor of Asia–Europe interregionalism: Critical perspectives (1999), the writer of the texts for two books of photography: Portraits of Penang: Little India (2011) and Panicrama (2016) as well as numerous articles on film, dance, literature and music. He is currently writing a book on the artist Ch’ng Kiah Kiean.

Victor T. King is Professor of Borneo Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, and Emeritus Professor in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds. He has long-standing interests in the sociology and anthropology of Southeast Asia. His recent publications are UNESCO in Southeast Asia: World Heritage Sites in comparative perspective (ed., 2016), and co-edited books on Human insecurities in Southeast Asia (2016), Borneo studies in history, society and culture (2017), Tourism and ethnodevelopment (2018), Tourism in East and Southeast Asia (2018, 4-volume reader), and Tourism in South-East Asia (2019).

Blurb

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 antiracism, young people, environmentalism and independent

publishing—that explicitly seek to open up greater critical, democratic space within