Discourses, Agency and Identity in Malaysia (eBook, PDF)

Critical Perspectives
Redaktion: Ibrahim, Zawawi; King, Victor T.; Richards, Gareth

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

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

the Malaysian polity. The third section, 'Identities and Narratives: Culture and Media', then

provides a close textual reading of some exemplars of new cultural and media practices found

in personal 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

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Springer Nature Singapore
• Seitenzahl: 561
• Erscheinungstermin: 23. Oktober 2021
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9789813345683
• Artikelnr.: 62821870

Autorenporträt

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).

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction.- Culture and identity on the move: Malaysia in Southeast Asia.- The travelling text: Print cultures and translation in Penang and beyond.- In body and spirit: Redefining gender complementarity in Muslim Southeast Asia.- The quest for the good life at the edge of Malaysia:Our people, the life of government and the life of prayer.- Positioning Bajau identities as Bumiputera: Challenges and potentials of leveraging environmental justice and espousal of Islam in Sabah, Malaysia.- Sustaining local food cultures and identities in Malaysia with the disruptive power of tourism and social media.- Negotiating sinful self and desire: The diverse sexualities of non-heteronormative Malay-Muslim men in Malaysia.- Ah Beng subculture in Malaysia and the anti-thesis of global habitus.- Anti-Blackness in Malaysia: The Bandung spirit and African-Asian critique in Richard Wright's The Color Curtain.- The emergence of new social movements in Malaysia: A case study of youth activism.- Environmentalist movements in Malaysian democracy: The transformation of activist culture.- Alternative or mainstream? Independent book publishing in Malaysia.- Fear and loathing in legal limbo: Reimagining the refugee in Malaysian public discourse and history.- Negotiating dual identities: Narratives from two Myanmar refugee youths living in Malaysia.- Expressing alternative modernities in a new nation through Iban popular music, 1960s-1970s.- Reframing the national culture narrative of P. Ramlee.- Genre, gender and temporal critique in Budak Kelantan and Bunohan.- Left of the dial: BFM 89.9FM independent radio station and its indie-friendly midnight programming as a site of sustainability.- Postcolonial indigenous storytellers and the making of a counter-discourse to the 'civilising process' in Malaysia.- Conclusion.

Rezensionen

"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)