AUTHOR(S) GUIDELINES
ONLINE SUBMISSIONS
STATISTICS
FOCUS AND SCOPE
ISSN
ARTICLE TEMPLATE
Who are the Diasporas in Malaysia? The Discourse of Ethnicity and Malay(sian) Identity
Abstract
ABSTRACT: This paper attempts to offer a new understanding of the “constructed” nature of ethnic identity and ethnic-relations in Southeast Asia. Using Malaysia as a case, I first sketch the history of Indian and Indonesian diasporic cultural flows into and influences on the peninsula Malay identity from pre to post-European colonisation. Second, I point out how state-led mediatised essentialising of the peninsula “Malay” as territorial and indigenous (bumiputra) appears to have led to the inclusion and exclusion of the pre and post-colonial Indonesian migrant at various moments in the process of negotiating Malay identity, making of an urban Malay-Muslim and the re-making of a capitalist Muslim-Malay. Third, I argue and maintain that the process of “othering” in multicultural Malaysia seems triggered by “ontological insecurity” and “de-traditionalisation” – as pointed out by Anthony Giddens (1990) – and the hegemonic construction of Malay(sian) identity. Finally, the national culture and identity has been described as a form of imaginative identification as an idea that is simultaneously one of inclusion (e.g. “Bangsa Malaysia” or Malay plus Indonesian) that provides a boundary around “us” and one of exclusion (e.g. “bumiputra/bukan bumiputra” or Malay minus Indonesian) that distinguishes “us” from “them”, where race (the Malay) is symbolically expressed as national and territorial, constructed differently and distinctively.
Key Words: Diaspora, media, culture, identity, ethnicity, Islam, Indian, Indonesia, and Malay(sia).
About the Author: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Umi Manickam Khattab is Senior Lecturer at the Communications Programme, School of Social Sciences UMS (Malaysia University of Sabah), Locked Bag 2073, 88999 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. She can be reached at: umi@ums.edu.my and ukhattab@gmail.com
How to cite this article? Khattab, Umi Manickam. (2010). “Who are the Diasporas in Malaysia? The Discourse of Ethnicity and Malay(sian) Identity” in SOSIOHUMANIKA: Jurnal Pendidikan Sains Sosial dan Kemanusiaan, Vol.3, No.2 [November], pp.157-174. Bandung, Indonesia: Minda Masagi Press, UNIPA Surabaya, and UMS Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, ISSN 1979-0112.
Chronicle of article: Accepted (September 10, 2010); Revised (October 15, 2010); and Published (November 20, 2010).
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Anderson, Benedict R.O’G. (1991). Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Ang, I. (2001). On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West. London: Routledge.
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota press.
Appiah, K.A. (2003). “Citizens of the World” in M.J. Gibney [ed]. Globalizing Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.189-232.
Barker, C. (1999). Television, Globalization, and Cultural Identities. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Bhabha, H.K. (1993). “The Postcolonial and the Postmodern” in S. During [ed]. The Cultural Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge, pp.189-208.
Bhabha, H.K. (2003). “On Writing Rights” in M.J. Gibney [ed]. Globalizing Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.162-183.
Brah, A. (1996). Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge.
Chin, C.B.N. (2002). “The ‘Host’ State and the ‘Guest Worker’ in Malaysia: Public Management of Migrant Labour in Times of Economic Prosperity and Crisis” in Y.A. Debrah [ed]. Migrant Workers in Pacific Asia. London/Portland, OR: Frank Cass, pp.19-40.
Clifford, J. (1997). Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. London: Harvard University Press.
Debrah, Y.A. (2002). “Introduction: Migrant Workers in Pacific Asia” in Y.A. Debrah [ed]. Migrant Workers in Pacific Asia. London/Portland, OR: Frank Cass, pp.1-18.
Downing, J. & C. Husband. (2005). Representing “Race”: Racism, Ethnicities and Media. London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: Sage.
Embong, A.R. (2002). State-led Modernization and the New Middle Class in Malaysia. Hampshire, New York: Palgrave.
Friedman, T. (2000). The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New York: Anchor.
Fuller, T. (2005). “Malaysia Shoos Away a Key Business Asset” in Malaysia Today, 5 April.
Giddens, Anthony. (1985). The Nation State and Violence. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giddens, Anthony. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gillespie, M. (1995). Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change. London: Routledge.
Gilroy, P. (1993). The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Gladney, D.C. (1998). “Introduction: Making and Marking Majorities” in D.C. Gladney [ed]. Making Majorities: Constituting the Nation in Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey, and the United States. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, pp.1-12.
Hall, S. (1990). “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” in J. Rutherford [ed]. Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence and Wishart, pp.222-237.
Hall, S. (1991). “The Local and the Global: Globalisation and Ethnicities” in A.D. Kind [ed]. Culture, Globalisation and the World System. London: Macmillan.
Hasim, M.S. (1996). Akhbar dan Kuasa: Pekembangan Sistem Akhbar di Malaysia Sejak 1806. Kuala Lumpur: Universiti Malaya.
Husband, C. (2000). “Media and the Public Sphere in Multi-Ethnic Societies” in S. Cottle [ed]. Ethnic Minorities and the Media. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press, pp.199-214.
Hutnyk, J. (2005). “Hybridity” in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28(1), pp.79-102.
Jakubowicz, A. (2000). “Accentuate the Positive: Implications and Possibilities Raised by the Taxi Driver, the Cook, and the Greengrocer” in S. Bertone, C. Keating & J. Mullaly [eds]. The Taxi Driver, the Cook, and the Greengrocer: the Representation of Non-English Speaking Background People in Theatre, Film, and Television. NSW: Surrey Hills, pp.66-70.
Jhally, S & J. Lewis. (1992). Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream. Boulder: Westview Press.
Karim, K.H. [ed]. (2003). The Media of Diaspora. London: Routledge.
Kassim, A. (1998). “International Migration and Alien Labour Employment: The Malaysian Experience” in T.S. Toh [ed]. Megacities, Labour & Communications. Singapore: ISEAS, pp.67-102.
Kassim, A. (2000). “Indonesian Immigration Settlements in Peninsular Malaysia” in SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 15/1 (April), pp.100-124.
Kellner, D. (1995). Media Culture. London: Routledge.
Khattab, U. & Sri Nilawati. (2004). “Unkind to Kin? How Malaysian Audiences Make Sense of Indonesia — A Text and Reception Study”. Paper presented at the IAMCR Conference, Porto Alegre, Brazil, on July.
Khoo, K.K. (1993). “Malay Attitudes towards Indians” in K.S. Sandhu & S. Mani [eds]. Indian Communities in Southeast Asia. Singapore: ISEAS, Times Academic press, pp.266-287.
Kolar-Panov, D. (2003). “Video and the Macedonians in Australia” in K.H. Karim [ed]. The Media of Diaspora. London: Routledge, pp.105-118.
Liebes, T. & E. Katz. (1993). The Export of Meaning: Cross-Cultural Readings of Dallas. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mandaville, P. (2001). “Reimagining Islam in Diaspora: The Politics of Mediated Community” in Gazette, 63(2-3), pp.169-186.
Miller, D. & D. Slater. (2000). The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach. Oxford: Berg.
Milne, R.S. & D.K. Mauzy. (1986). Malaysia: Tradition, Modernity, and Islam. Boulder/London: Westview Press, pp.9-11.
Muzaffar, C. (1993). “Political Marginalisation in Malaysia” in K.S. Sandhu & S. Mani [eds]. Indian Communities in Southeast Asia. Singapore: ISEAS, Times Academic Press, pp.211-236.
Naficy, H. (1993). The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press.
Nash, M. (1989). “Ethnicity in Peninsula Malaysia: The Idiom of Communalism Confrontation and Cooperation” in The Cauldron of Ethnicity in the Modern World. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, pp.21-60.
Netto, A. (2002). “Malaysia Boots Out Illegal Workers” in Asia Times Online, 2 August.
Nederveen, Pieterse J. (1995). “Globalisation as Hybridisation” in International Sociology, 9(2), pp.161-84.
Ohmae, K. (1995). The End of the Nation State. New York: Free Press.
Orjitham, S. (2001). “Forgotten Community: Many of Malaysia’s Poor are Indians” in Asiaweek, 27(3), January 26.
Robertson, R. (1995). “Globalisation: Time Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity” in M. Featherson, S. Lash & R. Robertson [eds]. Global Modernities. London: Sage, pp.25-44.
Ross, K. (2001). “White Media, Black Audience: Diversity and Dissonance on British Television” in K. Ross & P. Playdon [eds]. Black Marks: Minority Ethnic Audiences and Media. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp.3-14.
Said, Edward. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books.
Sandhu, K.S. (1993). “The Coming of the Indians to Malaysia” in K.S. Sandhu & S. Mani [eds]. Indian Communities in Southeast Asia. Singapore: ISEAS, Times Academic Press, pp.151-189.
Sardar, Z. (1993). “Paper, Printing, and Compact Disks: The Making and Unmaking of Islamic Culture” in Media, Culture and Society, 15(1).
Seabrook, J. (1996). “Urbanization: The Making of a Transnational Working Class” in The Cities of the South: Scenes from a Developing World. London/New York: Verso, pp.17-24.
Schiller, H. (1979). “Transnational Media and National Development” in K. Nordenstreng & H. Schiller [eds]. National Sovereignty and International Communication. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, pp.21-32.
Schlesinger, P. (1991). Media, State, and Nation. London: Sage.
Shamsul, A.B. (2004). “A History of an Identity, an Identity of a History: The Idea and Practice of Malayness in Malaysia Reconsidered” in T.B. Barnard [ed]. Contesting Malayness: Malay Identity Across Boundaries. Singapore: Singapore University Press, pp.135-148.
Sinclair, J. & S. Cunningham. (2001). “Diasporas and the Media” in S. Cunningham & J. Sinclair [eds]. Floating Lives: The Media and Asian Diasporas. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, pp.1-26.
Spivak, G. (1999). Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Sreberny, A. (2000). “Media and Diasporic Consciousness: An Exploration among Iranians in London” in S. Cottle [ed]. Ethnic Minorities and the Media. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press, pp.179-196.
Sreberny-Mohammadi, A. & A. Mohammadi. (1997). “Small Media and Revolutionary Change: A New Model” in A. Sreberny-Mohammadi et al. [eds]. Media in Global Context: A Reader. London: Arnold.
Storey, J. (2003). Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.
Sundaram, J.K. (1993). “Plantation Capital and Indian labour in colonial Malaya” in K.S. Sandhu & S. Mani [eds]. Indian Communities in Southeast Asia. Singapore: ISEAS, Times Academic Press, pp.288-311.
Thompson, J.B. (1995). The Media and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Tomlinson, J. (1999). Globalization and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Van der Veer, P. (1995). “Introduction: The Diasporic Imagination” in P. van der Veer [ed]. Nation and Migration: The Politics of Space in the South Asian Diaspora. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp.1-16.
Ward, I. (2002). “The Tampa, Wedge Politics, and a Lesson for Political Journalism” in Australian Journalism Review, 24(1), pp.21-39.
Internets and Newspapers:
BBC News. London, UK: 26 January 2002.
http://www.smc.org.ph/amnews/amn060531/southeast/malaysia060531.htm [accessed in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia: 9 October 2010].
Migration News in http://migration.ucdavis.edu/MN/more [accessed in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia: 9 October 2010].
The New Straits Times. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: 9 June 2004 and 11 September 2004.
The Star. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: April – August 2002.
Utusan Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: April – August 2002.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2121/sosiohumanika.v3i2.410
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
SOSIOHUMANIKA: Jurnal Pendidikan Sains Sosial dan Kemanusiaan is published by Minda Masagi Press. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 4.0.