The narrative of Malay identity devised by Malay nationals, writers and filmmakers in the late colonial period associated Malayness with the village or kampung, envisaged as static, ethnically homogenous, rural, etc. Joel Kahn challenges the kampung version of Malayness, arguing that it ignores the immigration of Malays from outside the peninsula to participate in trade and commercial agriculture, the substantial Malay population in towns and cities, and the reformist Muslims who argued for a common bond in Islam. Owing to a rising dissatisfaction with the established order and new modernist...

Cultural politics have undergone a resurgence in the last decade: nationalisms in Eastern and Central Europe, tribalisms in Africa, racial and ethnic movements in the Americas and Australasia have left the world in the grip of the politics of recognition. Until this book, however, little attention has been paid to the significance of cultural politics in Southeast Asia, whose people are often assumed to be dedicated to the single goal of economic development. This study of a variety of Southeast Asian countries - including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand - reveals that such issues...

This stimulating new reading of constructions of ethnicity in Malaysia and Singapore is an important contribution to understanding the powerful linkages between ethnicity, identity and nationalism in multi-ethnic Southeast Asia. The narrative of Malay identity devised by Malay nationalists, writers and filmmakers in the late colonial period associated Malayness with the village or kampung, envisaged as static, ethnically homogenous, classless, indigenous, subsistence-oriented, rural, embedded in family and community, and loyal to a royal court. Joel Kahn challenges the kampung version of...