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.     

A Bayesian approach to Weibull survival models—Application to a cancer clinical trial

In this paper we outline a class of fully parametric proportional hazards models, in which the baseline hazard is assumed to be a power transform of the time scale, corresponding to assuming that survival times follow a Weibull distribution. Such a class of models allows for the possibility of time varying hazard rates, but assumes a constant hazard ratio. We outline how Bayesian inference proceeds for such a class of models using asymptotic approximations which require only the ability to maximize the joint log posterior density. We apply these models to a clinical trial to assess the efficacy of neutron therapy compared to conventional treatment for patients with tumors of the pelvic region. In this trial there was prior information about the log hazard ratio both in terms of elicited clinical beliefs and the results of previous studies. Finally, we consider a number of extensions to this class of models, in particular the use of alternative baseline functions, and the extension to multi-state data.     

Direct and indirect effects of unionization on the wage levels of nurses: A case study of New Jersey hospitals

This study examines the determination of wage rates for nurses in hospital employment. Of particular concern is the effect of the recent increase in unionization by nurses on their wages, both directly and indirectly via threats from competing hospitals’ unionization. To improve on earlier work, the data are disaggregated and gathered from only one state to standardize for the legal, licensing, and reimbursement systems. We also look at the difference between highly skilled professional nurses, RN’s, and more general and less professional nurses, LPN’s. The results show that working conditions and competition in the market influence the wage rate as one would expect. The unionization of nurses, however, affects the wage levels differently for the two groups. We would like to thank Professors Robert Higgs and Alan Childs of Lafayette College, Professor David Fairris of Williams College, Professor James C. Luzier of Muhlenberg College, and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments and suggestions.     

The changing determinants of U.S. Unionism: An analysis using worker-level data

In contrast to much of the literature examining the decline of trade unions in the United States, I examine the decline from the perspective of the individual employee. Worker-level data combined with industry-level data for the years 1972 and 1987 are used to investigate the decline. The central findings are that the changing sex and race composition of the labor force and increases in management resistance have had little influence, while gains in educational levels, changing occupations, and reductions in the economies of scale of union organizing have contributed greatly to the decline.     

Garfinkel before ethnomethodology

A short story titled “‘Color Trouble’” by Harold Garfinkel was published inOpportunity in 1940,The Best Short Stories 1941, andPrimer for White Folks in 1945. Garfinkel wrote this short story before World War II while a research fellow at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill under Howard W. Odum, the founder ofSocial Forces “‘Color Trouble’” narrates poignantly the racial victimization of a young black woman traveling on a public bus through the State of Virginia. The short story provides sociologists with a different medium through which to examine the seminal interests of ethnomethodology’s founder. In a literary form, the short story depicts such ethnomethodological concepts as the breaching experiment, the “et cetera clause,” “ad hocing,” and the status degradation ceremony. Garfinkel’s “‘Color Trouble’” also suggests the way in which ethnomethodology overlaps with, as well as diverges from, Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective. He received his doctoral degree from the graduate program in sociology at York University, Toronto, Ontario. His article “Autonomy and Responsibility in Social Theory” will appear inCurrent Perspectives in Social Theory, Volume 10.     

Publication trends of interlocking directorate studies

The rate of publication of interlocking directorate research in recent years is examined. The data show that the rate of reporting research on interlocking directorates has been leveling off since 1983. Methodological, theoretical, and sociology of knowledge explanations of this trend are provided. The future of interlocking directorate research is discussed, and theoretical reasons are posited to show that there is a need to continue these studies. Suggestions for future research are also offered. He is doing his dissertation research on the influence of economic and political factors on declining unionism in the United States.     

Children of problem gamblers

An anonymous 37-item Health Survey was administered to 844 randomly selected ninth- to twelfth-grade students in four Southern California public high schools. Systematic information was gathered about their general health, quality of life, school and work adjustment, involvement with a range of potentially addictive substances and activities, and indications of psychosocial maladjustment, including difficulties with the law and suicide attempts. A series of self-ratings of students who characterized one or both of their parents as having a compulsive gambling problem (N=52) were contrasted with those of their classmates who reported no gambling problem among their parents (N=792). Findings have been grouped into three major areas: (a) comparative levels and reported effects of involvement with health-threatening behaviors (i.e., smoking, drinking, drug use, overeating, and gambling); (b) comparative incidence of psychosocial risk indicators (i.e., broken home, unhappy childhood and teenage years, legal action pending, overall quality of youth rated as poor); and (c) comparative incidence of dysphoria, school and work problems, and suicide attempts. Across each of these areas children of parents said to gamble excessively were found to be at consistently greater risk than their classmates who did not describe their parents as having a problem with compulsive gambling. These findings strongly suggest that without early and competent intervention, children of parents who gamble excessively: (a) will be seriously disadvantaged when attempting to solve their present adolescent and future adult problems of living; and (b) as a consequence are, themselves, high-risk candidates for developing one or another form of dysfunctional adjustment, including an addictive pattern of behavior.     

PATHOLOGICAL INTERNET COMMUNITIES: A NEW DIRECTION FOR SEXUAL DEVIANCE RESEARCH IN A POST MODERN ERA

This article explores the impact of the Internet and related technologies on the nature of deviant behavior, deviant communities, and the future of deviance research. The idea that pathological communities, once largely suppressed by time, space, and societal restraints, can now create and use virtual communities is focal. Those new communities may expand their numbers and/or pathology, while reinforcing their rationales for rule violations. Investigation of these new virtual communities is especially complex for both conceptual and methodological reasons: identity is hard to ascertain in cyber-settings; nationality, ethnicity and other background traits and standard (e.g., random) sampling methods are not feasible. Nonetheless, the impact of communications technology on the creation and expansion of pathologically deviant communities requires exploration to determine whether, for example, immersion and social support lead to satiation-catharsis, more aggressive real-time behavior, and/or increases in the depth and number of pathological sexual preferences.