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In both academic scholarship and the popular imagination, the globality of modern society has been represented by global cities as the corporate and financial epicentres for capital accumulation, cosmopolitan cultures and innovative change. This has created an image of the globalised world as empty beyond cities which make it into the global league as paradigmatic 'celebrity' cities. As a counterpoint this book give interpretive weight elsewhere, in 'other' places, cities and regions, drawing on a range of examples from both the developed and developing worlds. This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Urban Studies.
This book brings together a set of incisive essays that interrogate Malaysian history and social relations which began during pre-colonial times, and extended to colonial and post-colonial Malaysia. It addresses economic misinterpretations of the role of markets in the way colonial industrialisation evolved, the nature of exploitation of workers, and the participation of local actors in shaping a wide range of socioeconomic and political processes. In doing so, it takes the lead from the innovative historian, Shaharil Talib Robert who argued that the recrafting of history should go beyond the use of conventional methodologies and analytic techniques. It is in that tradition that the chapters...
This book provides a historical and ethnographic examination of gender relations in Malay society, in particular in the well-known state of Negeri Sembilan, famous for its unusual mixture of Islam and matrilineal descent. Peletz analyzes the diverse ways in which the evocative, heavily gendered symbols of "reason" and "passion" are deployed by Malay Muslims. Unlike many studies of gender, this book elucidates the cultural and political processes implicated in the constitution of both feminine and masculine identity. It also scrutinizes the relationship between gender and kinship and weighs the role of ideology in everyday life. Peletz insists on the importance of examining gender systems not...
In Unsettling Absences, Eric Thompson argues that urbanism is a cultural force unbound from the city and is a pervasive presence in the Malaysian countryside. Transported to rural communities, urbanism has motivated migration, transformed the social lives of rural inhabitants, and created a deep ambivalence about personal identity. This has left rural Malays feeling out of place in both the city and the village. Kuala Lumpur epitomises modernity, but rural Malays who move there are often marginalised in squatter settlements on its periphery. The kampung symbolises home and the locus of Malay identity, but schoolbooks and television have projected urbanism that marks rural life as backwards a...
This remarkable book brings to an English-speaking audience detailed scholarship originally conceived and written in the Malay language and with a Malay perspective. It examines the nature of monarchy in the Malay world, which includes present-day Malaysia and Indonesia, before and during the onset of Western colonialism when the Malay world was ruled by a large number of separate Muslim sultanates. It highlights that monarchs were the highest authority in the social, political, legal and economic system, rather than the government of a clearly defined territory; the notion of Dewaraja (god-king) and what a model monarch’s attributes should be; and how the monarch’s role related to Islam...
Known for his most famous works, such as The Myth of the Lazy Native (1977) and The Problem of Corruption (1986), as well as his concept of the “captive mind,” Syed Hussein Alatas (1928-2007) has made significant contributions to decolonization theory, social theory, and other forms of thought critical of the current neo-colonial and neoliberal world. Although Edward Said acknowledged his debt to Syed Hussein Alatas’ work, especially its influence on Edward W. Said’s most famous book, Orientalism, Syed Hussein Alatas’ work has long been overlooked by Western academia, trapped in its Eurocentric perspective. Spurred by the commitment to continue the development of Syed Hussein Alata...
Examines the dynamics of regionalism in Eastern Asia. Japan's diplomatic history as well as the heritage of its conquest of Eastern Asia is examined alongside China's cultural geography, paradigmatic dynamics, and intra-regional economics. Ties between East Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as the influence of American military power and European integration are also considered.
Scholars have long studied how institutions emerge and become stable. But why do institutions sometimes break down? In this book, Michael L. Ross explores the breakdown of the institutions that govern natural resource exports in developing states. He shows that these institutions often break down when states receive positive trade shocks - unanticipated windfalls. Drawing on the theory of rent-seeking, he suggests that these institutions succumb to a problem he calls 'rent-seizing' - the predatory behavior of politicians who seek to supply rent to others, and who purposefully dismantle institutions that restrain them. Using case studies of timber booms in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, he shows how windfalls tend to trigger rent-seizing activities that may have disastrous consequences for state institutions, and for the government of natural resources. More generally, he shows how institutions can collapse when they have become endogenous to any rent-seeking process.
This volume investigates the appropriate position of Islam and opposing perceptions of Muslims in Southeast Asia. The contributors examine how Southeast Asian Muslims respond to globalization in their particular regional, national and local settings, and suggest global solutions for key local issues.