Looking beyond ethnicity: the negotiation of Chinese Muslim identity in Penang,Malaysia

The conflation of ethnic and religious identities, particularly that of Malay and Muslim, has long historical and political roots in Malaysia. Being one of the most safeguarded identity marks in Malaysia, Islam has become part of the core of Malay ethnicity and plays a prominent role in ethnic politics. Muslim converts from ethnic minorities, such as the Chinese and Indians, are therefore faced with social expectation and pressure to ‘become Malay’. This paper discusses the difficulty and improbability of Chinese Muslim identity in the previous literature and the recent development that enables the decoupling of religious and ethnic identities. By looking beyond ethnicity, the most salient social divider in Malaysia, and looking into other possibilities, such as religious identity, this paper aims to paint a picture of social relations and identification that is more complex yet flexible amongst the Chinese Muslim converts in Penang.     

A curious trajectory of interrace relations: the transformation of cosmopolitan Malay port polities into the multiethnic divisions of modern Malaysia

This article aims to examine several interrelated issues pertaining to the historical development of pluralism in areas forming today´s Malaysia. Firstly, it intends to analyze the transformation of the formerly cosmopolitan populations of Malay port polities into the highly ‘racialized’ society of modern Malaysia. It also seeks to clarify the roots of ethnicity-based issues and relations in the country. Lastly, it attempts to challenge the very concept of Malaysia as a society primarily consisting of three ethnic pillars, dominated by the Malays, and ‘complemented’ by the Chinese and the Indians. I argue that the main driving force behind these tensions is the segregational colonial policies and the postcolonial arrangements of the Malay ethnocentrist governments, rather than ethnic and cultural factors as the ruling politicians tend to stress. I also contend that religious issues, especially those stemming from the dakwah movement, are gradually becoming an increasingly important factor in interrace strife.     

Minority ethnicity,social status and Uyghur community involvement in urban Xinjiang

Using a dataset (n = 4,012) from a 2001 survey in Xinjiang, I examine the effect of minority status and social status on neighbouring behaviour in urban China. Data analysis indicates that Uyghur Muslims are more neighbouring than Han Chinese. However, there is no evidence that the Uyghur approach to neighbourhood interaction can be attributed to Uyghur culture as many inter-group differences fade away once ethnic parity in social status is attained. I use my study to consider some methodological approaches used in research on ethnic behaviour in China.     

"Weapons of the Meek": Ecstatic Ritualism and Strategic Ecumenism among Tamil Hindus in Malaysia

This article examines the politics of Hindu revivalism among Tamils in Malaysia. In examining the dramatic pilgrimage and ritual of Thaipusam and the activities of a leading Hindu reform and performing arts organization, it is argued that the present resurgence of Hinduism is related to a growing sense of displacement experienced by Tamils in Malaysia. Thaipusam, while representing a collective assertion of Tamil and Hindu identity, also signifies "Indian" within an Islamic-modernist discourse of the Malaysian nation. Becoming an ethnic subject within a multicultural nationalist discourse, in turn, produces ambivalence among some Tamils which is manifested in status concerns and social distancing within the Tamil community. Many elite Hindus, in turn, are drawn to the apparently ecumenical and modernist teachings within Hindu reform organizations. The vicissitudes of Malaysian Hinduism bring into focus some of the complex ways that diasporic sentiments are produced and differentiated along lines of status and class within and against modernist state-ideologies.     

Health Divide: Economic and Demographic Factors Associated with Self-Reported Health Among Older Malaysians

Data from the 2004 Survey of Economic and Financial Aspects of Aging in Malaysia were analyzed to determine factors associated with self-reported health status among older Malaysians. Odds of self-reporting health as bad versus moderate or good were higher for respondents who were in lower income quintiles, who perceived their financial situation as bad, who were older and who were not married. Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Bumiputra ethnic groups had lower odds of perceiving their health to be bad as compared with those in other ethnic groups.     

‘It is so unfair here…it is so biased’: Negotiating the politics of ethnic identification in ways of being Malaysian schoolgirls

In this paper, the notion of Malaysian identity is conceptualised within a framework of identity and difference, drawing on contemporary theorisations of ethnicity linked to the notion of difference. The notion of Malaysian is problematised as being linked to the interplay between nationalistic official and essentialistic labelling, present and historical social and political events, and experiences of daily living in Malaysia. The author draws on the narratives of 16-year-old Malaysian schoolgirls to illustrate the discourses of ethnicity these girls negotiate in their ways of being and knowing. Being Malaysian and more importantly being Malay, Chinese, Indian or Other is not a simple matter of government-imposed labelling. It is more complicated and negotiated. Ways of being and knowing in Malaysia are multiple, shifting and contradictory as each Malaysian has to negotiate with these labels in their daily lives. The author argues that the politics of ethnic identification in Malaysia are intertwined with the politics of difference, which in turn is linked to power and inequality.     

Urban Space,Belonging, and Inequality in Multi-Ethnic Housing Estates of Melaka,Malaysia

Through ethnographic inquiry, this article explores the dynamics of urban space and ethnicity in a multi-ethnic and predominantly middle-class neighborhood in Melaka, Malaysia. Chinese developers and Malay political officials contributed to the social production of the built environment in the neighborhood, including several housing estates, commercial shop lots, religious institutions, kindergartens, and day care centers. Indians, Malays, Chinese, and Christians mark and claim spaces with polysemous symbols entailing shared meanings of protection and representation of their respective categories. While the Malay-dominated government and Chinese capital have established stable religious institutions, Indians are struggling to maintain two unregistered temples. Chinese and Indians interact in many contexts producing a shared politically marginalized identity of Malaysian citizens. International students, mostly Arabs and Africans of various nationalities, produce a politically marginalized identity of non-citizen student-customers. Fluctuating and persisting aspects of identity schemata embedded in processes of social production and construction are integral to citizen and subcitizen struggles for life-space.     

Islam and Processes of Minorisation among Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia: Oscillating between Faith and Political Economic Expediency

The main focus of studies on ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia is generally their business acumen or the extent to which they are assimilated into their respective country of residence. This paper concentrates on a rather different aspect among this ethnic group, namely the influence of Islam amongst the Chinese, especially in Indonesia and Malaysia. This is a topic on which very little research has been done, especially in terms of identity and ethnicity together with processes of integration and assimilation—in relation to both other ethnic Chinese and the local communities in which they are socially imbedded. Because of the deficiency of empirical data, it is imperative that we understand the historical processes that lead up to the present marginalised position of this group of Chinese. As a consequence, the present paper employs a historical approach towards the study of the Chinese Muslims in their respective local communities.     

Ethnic identities and national identities: Some examples from Malaysia

Using examples from Malaysia, this paper emphasizes the importance of relating ethnicity to the power of the state and political processes involving different ethnic groups. Ethnic group formation involves processes that make people identify as an imagined community in a nation‐state. Indeed, the processes that create ethnic and national identities are part and parcel of the same historical processes. It is also necessary to relate national identity to ethnicity, as national identity is imagined differently by different ethnic groups in a nation‐state. The paper describes Malay and Chinese ethnicity as well as the complex ethnic identification and ethnogenesis of the indigenous peoples of Sarawak.     

Race-based affirmative action in Malaysia: Misrecognised subjectivities,enduring inequalities

Malaysia's race-based affirmative action is often studied within the objective domain of resource deficit and distribution. In this paper, I focus on the subjective domain to interrogate how the racial identity modes of Bumiputera Malay youths shape their social attitudes towards affirmative action in Malaysia. Drawing on in-depth interviews, I posit three racial identity modes that correspond to three social attitudes towards affirmative action. The findings point to the disjuncture between Malay subjectivities and their colonial construction; the contestations over affirmative action that go beyond redistribution to recognition; and the neglect of intersectionality in conceptualising Bumiputera disadvantages. I argue that affirmative action can be better understood by incorporating non-elite perspectives, featuring different sites, scales and actors in the reproduction of subjectivities; the politics of affirmative action has to be reconstituted as struggles for recognition and redistribution; and the intersectional disadvantages of Bumiputeras must be foregrounded in the reclaiming of this policy agenda in Malaysia.     

Learning pattern of social work students: a longitudinal study

Research on learning patterns of social work students is scare. This longitudinal study addresses this issue by employing mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative study design to understand the learning pattern of students throughout their undergraduate social work studies. Six rounds of quantitative data collected by structured questionnaires and four rounds of qualitative data collected by focus group interviews have been conducted at an interval of every 6 months to track the learning pattern and to evaluate the continuous impacts of social work education on students. Results indicate that although students’ evaluation on the curriculum was positive and with significant difference in mean scores, paired sample t-tests found no significant difference between time 1 and 6 of all outcome variables. With regard to students’ change in attitude, acquisition of knowledge and skills, results indicate a ‘U-shape’ trend and a fluctuating learning pattern with a rebound in different outcome variables toward the end of the three-year study. Qualitative data echoes the findings and reveals that students go through the confused freshman stage, to disillusioned in practicum and finally with enriching experience upon graduation. The paper discusses meanings and implications of student learning pattern to social work education.     

If you look like me,I'll talk to you: a preliminary study of ethnic identity and inter‐ethnic interaction among women in Singapore

In Singapore, government policy is for equal but separate development of the four major ethnic groups—Chinese, Malay, Indian and other. In this study, I attempt to gain some preliminary views of how strongly women identify with their own ethnic group and how freely they are prepared to interact with people from other ethnic groups in non‐work‐related situations. I confine my study to females for two reasons. One is that traditional ethnic dress is common among females in Singapore but much rarer among men, and this makes a strong non‐verbal statement of identity. The second reason is to avoid differences between males and females, which I did not wish to pursue within the limits of this exploratory study. The findings of my pilot investigation indicate that intra‐ethnic spontaneous interaction is more likely to occur among women who display a strong national identity. Moreover, younger women, who were exposed during their school years to the government's recent drive to nurture ethnic and cultural differences, are less open to inter‐ethnic interaction than are women in their 30s and older, who grew up when the government drive was towards creating one common national identity for the people of Singapore.     

The New Malaysian Nationalism: Infirm Beginnings,Crashing Finale

Malaysia waged no heroic war of liberation against its colonial overlord. On the contrary, its indigenous Malay aristocrats, having been favoured as intermediaries under indirect rule, mobilised mass followings against independence, until finally their statuses were renewed. Nor did Malaysia afterward break boldly with the formal democracy and liberal economy in which it had been 'tutored', espousing new socialist defiance and autarkic development. Indeed, even the notion of 'Asian democracy' that Malaysia would one day endorse retained the legitimation of the democratic idiom, while fluctuating policies of import substitution, affirmative action, and evident cronyism were softened by pledges of economic orthodoxy and 'openness'. In cultural terms, Malaysia's ideologues had little access to complex local heritage, inscribed in high literatures, agrarian empires, and the tracelines of grand ruins. Nationalist myth-making had instead to depend on some dispersed royal lineages emanating from dank stockades and river mouths, an aphoristic lore recorded in the Malay Annals, the faint commercial din of the Melaka Sultanate, and an Islam conveyed by merchants and wayfarers from the Indian subcontinent, then palely refracted through local animism, Hinduism, sorcery, and curing. What is more, even to the limited extent that nationalism was generated in Malaysia, it was asserted less on the world stage than between rival ethnic communities. In brief, through the free labour migration policies of British colonial rule, the 'indigenous' Malays came to share their territory with the 'Overseas' Chinese, thereby producing a prototypical 'divided' or 'plural' society. The country was articulated also by smaller collectivities - partly authentic, always constructed - that were variously labelled 'Indian', 'Iban', 'Eurasian', 'Kadazan-Dusun', 'orang asli', and the like. During the process of decolonisation and the first decade of independence, these ethnic communities were managed along consociational lines. Toward the end of the 1960s, however, they erupted in sectarian violence. But either way, whether ethnic sentiments were modulated or uncorked, they diminished Malaysia's prospects for nationalism, at least of a kind that could bind the country together in addressing the rest of the world. Hence, in surveying the record in Southeast Asia, Nicholas Tarling adjudges that while nationalism helped shape the emergence of most of the region's new countries, its impact in Malaysia remained quite 'equivocal'. In short, uniquely in the region, Malaysia possessed little congenial soil in which nationalism might take root. Instead, nationalism was weakened by important continuities between indigenous élites and the colonial power, as well as sharp divisions between indigenous and migrant communities. And yet, atop this infirmity, Malaysia would suddenly bristle during the 1980s to 1990s with great nationalist vigour. At first, this took the form of aspirations to industrialise, made manifest in arousing slogans like 'Look East'. Later, as economic growth gathered pace, Malaysia gained new pride, encouraging still higher aspirations of full socio-economic development, enshrined in a declaration of 'Vision 2020'. And finally, though growth rates slowed toward the end of the decade, the new nationalism altered in tone, but did not fade. Instead, it reverberated in deep nationalist resentments, the prime minister railing against the architecture of international finance while invoking new refrains of Malaysia boleh ('Malaysia will overcome'). One notes also that globalisation posed no impediment to these latest nationalist expressions, its putative homogenising processes instead enabling Malaysia to highlight the distinctiveness of its policy responses. The paper begins with a discussion on nationalism, enumerating briefly some debates over its origins and character. Next, it sketches the ethnic forms of nationalism that emerged in Malaysia, enervating any wider loyalty to state institutions and symbols that could be asserted internationally. This paper's main task, however, is to analyse the rise of a broader nationalism over the past decade or so, made possible by the partial moderation of prior ethnic rivalries.     

Assessors

The application of technology, such as interactive digital whiteboards, in the online environment of higher education, is growing at an accelerated pace. Much is known about the tools used in an on-ground course to promote student engagement, but the literature is scant on tools to promote student engagement in the online environment. The purpose of this study is to explore qualitative data from students on faculty efforts to promote student engagement through leveraged digital whiteboard technology. A qualitative review of feedback from graduate students (n = 81) qualitative responses from open-ended questions and follow up online focus group sessions (n = 9) indicate that this technology can be useful to promote a sense of social engagement among students. It is expected that this knowledge will help instructors to better understand what promotes student engagement in an online graduate social work cohort. This learning tool can be used to promote further engagement in future assignments.     

Ethno-Religious Identity and Urban Malays in Malaysia

This article explores the forging of ethnic identity by urban Malays in Malaysia around a dialectic between being Islamic and being Malay. I introduce Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus and Anthony Giddens's notion of reflexivity to argue that the Islamic subject in Malaysia engages in different types of interaction which demand varying degrees of reflexivity. While Bourdieu's concept of habitus importantly reveals the actor to be a cultural agent, it denies the individual the meaningful agency that the increasing reflexivity of modernity demands. I suggest that Bourdieu's assertion that the dispositions of habitus are less than conscious does not hold true in a highly reflexive modernity. In this context, the individual is sufficiently conscious of his/her identity to be able to construct it in ways that allow it to be employed as a political weapon.     

In pursuit of capital: The charismatic turn among the Chinese managerial and professional class in Malaysia

This article explores a so far neglected dimension of the ongoing debate on the relationship between the politically contested position of the ethnic Chinese and their dominant role in the economies of Southeast Asia in general and in Malaysia in particular. While the prominence of the ethnic Chinese in the business life of Malaysia is ubiquitous, they also seem to be the engine of the striking growth of the Christian community, in particular the Pentecostal-Charismatic groups. This ‘charismatic turn’, it has been argued, reflects a major shift in the social position and power relations among the ethnic groups and the consolidation of the position of the Malaysian Chinese in the modern Malaysian nation state. This article critically reappraises this ‘empowerment thesis’ by analyzing the opportunities that conversion to Christianity and membership of Pentecostal-Charismatic groups offer to Malaysian Chinese business people, managers and professionals. In particular, this article identifies the forms of capital (in a Bourdieuan sense) involved and analyzes how these forms of capital are utilized and imbued with meaning in the interface of religion and business.     

Evaluating a Measure of ‘Social Orientation’ of Chinese Students in Social Work: Developing its Reliability and Validity

This study examines the reliability and validity of a measure of ‘social orientation’ indigenously developed from Chinese students of social work in Hong Kong. By administering two tests with Chinese social work students (n = 293 and n = 304) at associate degree level, the measure achieves strong internal consistency with r>0.75 and test–retest consistency with r>0.63. The instrument also has strong validity by attempting factor analysis of items generated from qualitative data in in‐depth interviews. The development of this indigenous measure of ‘social orientation’ will contribute to an understanding of the authoritarian, relationship and ‘other’ orientation of Chinese social work students. The authors propose that this will be a crucial factor in influencing the response of Chinese students towards different teaching and learning approaches in social work education.     

Interhousehold grants in peninsular Malaysia: Impact of grantors' characteristics on amount of grants given

Grants of money, goods, and services are one-way transfers between households. Tobit analysis reveals that race, household structure, household income, transportation resources (viz., vehicles owned), goods and service grants received, husband's education, and stock of small animals owned (viz., a common commodity gift in Malaysia) are characteristics of granting households that are influential in determining the amount of grants given. The incidence of granting is substantially lower among Indian than among Chinese or Malay households, although Indian households give the highest mean amount of grants. Multivariate analysis reveals that, other factors held constant, Malay households are the most generous and Indian households the least so in giving interhousehold grants. When giving of grants is conceptualized as a consumption expenditure, granting is observed to have a relationship to income similar to that of necessities rather than luxury goods.His areas of research interest are grants economics, labor economics, welfare economics, and consumer rights and protection. He received his Ph.D. in Consumer and Family Economics from the University of Missouri.His research interests include various aspects of social policy and family economic circumstances and functioning. He received his Ed.D. from the University of Missouri.     

Narrowing the gap: the educational achievements of the Malay community in Singapore

This paper discusses the educational gap between the Malay community and other ethnic communities in Singapore. Using official statistics from 1980 to 2004, the paper compares the educational achievements of the Malay community with other ethnic communities in Singapore. The paper points out that, while the Malay students have made significant improvements in their educational achievements over the years, they are still lagging behind the other ethnic communities in Singapore. Three key educational challenges faced by the Malay community and the responses to these challenges are discussed in this paper. The paper recommends that a framework should be introduced to the Malay students in Singapore to integrate secular and religious subjects within an Islamic conception of knowledge.     

What Malaysian women believe about Viagra: a qualitative inquiry

This paper highlights women's perceptions of sildenafil citrate (Viagra^®, Pfizer). It is based on a qualitative study on perceptions of erectile dysfunction in the Malaysian multicultural society. Six focus groups were conducted, consisting of 69 women, aged between 40 and 70 years, recruited from the general public and who had given informed consent. The findings revealed that the women were aware of erectile dysfunction and Viagra. Due to their concern about the negative aspects of Viagra, the Chinese and Malay traditional methods of treatment were commonly mentioned. The women from three ethnic groups viewed the possibility of their husband starting to take Viagra with lots of suspicion, mistrust and fear. They would prefer their husband discussing with them the issue of resorting to taking Viagra. The Chinese and Indian women perceived that if a man takes Viagra, it will boost his ego and he will feel more manly. Indian women felt that a man taking Viagra is proof of his love for his wife. The Malay women felt that a man would be ashamed and have a low self-esteem if he were to resort to taking Viagra. Although Viagra is meant for the male, understanding of women's perception of it is beneficial for a couple's sexual relationship.