the state of malaysian studies - sheila nair

8/11/2019 The State of Malaysian Studies - Sheila Nair

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Critical sian studies f\ Routledqe3 7 : 1 ( 2 0 0 5 ) , 1 6 1 - 1 7 5 I V Taylor Francis Croup

Review Essay

The State of Malaysian StudiesSheila Nair

Edmund Terence Go me z, ed . The State of Malaysia: Ethnicity Equityand Reform London and New York: Rout ledgeCurzon, 2004.

Francis Loh Kok Wah and Johan Saravanamuttu, eds. New Politicsin Malaysia Singapore: Insti tute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2003.

Khoo Boo Teik. Beyond Mahathir: Malays ian P olitics and Its Discon -tents London and New York: Zed Books, 2003.

Vidhu Verma. Malaysia: State and Civil Society in Transition Boulder,Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002.

In the 1980s political theorist Quentin Skinner noted that the empiricist andpositivist turn in the social sciences, which had driven the study of politics andsociety in the three preceding decades , was un de r challenge by herm eneu-ticists, structuralists, post-empiricists, deconstructionists, and other invadinghordes. * The gen eral skepticism ab ou t positivist social science was a reaction ,no ted Skinner, against the assum ption tha t the natura l sciences offer an ade-quate or even a relevant model for the practice of the social disciplines. ^Anti-positivist critics advocated instead uncovering or recovering meaning, ex-plaining the contingen t and th e unpred ictable and contextualizing inquiry. The

turn toward history, a form of grou nded know ledge, and an awareness of thenormative and ideological bases of inquiry and the uses to which knowledgemay be pu t signified an im portan t shift in the social sciences an d was critical inthe evolution of area studies. The impact of the positivist mov ement on thestudy of politics and society in Malaysia during the same period and for sometime afterward has been profound. It shaped Malaysian studies in much thesame way it impacted th e inception of area studies it un de rsco red positiv-ism's central tenets about an objective u niverse that could be rationally appre-hend ed and scientifically k nown. Linear no tion s of political and social deve lop-

ment do mina ted the scholarly literature, one largely influenced by U.S. socialscientific thinking abou t mo dern ization, political systems, and the societiesh b d


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nomic growth, hardly go unchallenged today, but modernization's influencehas been lasting in the literature o n Malaysia. Co ncerned for the most pa rt withexplaining elite politics, party politics, government, and ethnic pluralism, Ma-laysian Studies particularly works focusing o n po litics and social chan ge inthe 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s tended toward analyses roo ted in a mo dernizationparadigm. Especially troubling was the tendency to see o ne or m ore variables particularly ethnic identity and conflict as explaining major political out-comes. There was also a tendency to formulate frameworks for analysis bywhich the evidence gathered w ould b e used to test the au tho r's initial hypo the-ses. Arguments were generally render ed as objective and value neu tral. How-ever, as Skinner paraphrasing Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revo lutionssuggests, there are no facts ind epen dent of our theories about them , and in con-sequence no one way of viewing, classifying and ex plain ing the w orld that all ra-tional per son s are obliged to accept. ^ Despite these efforts to scientifically

pro du ce kn ow ledge ab ou t Malaysian politics and society, the process of classi-fying, ordering, or systematizing evidence in a particular way resu lted inunderstanding that was more or less skewed toward the categories being em-ployed , instead of being a reflective rep resen tatio n of the facts of the situa-tion. Such knowledge, apart from being emb edd ed in a dualistic concep tualiza-tion of modernity and tradition, dem onstrated a preoccup ation with Western,mainly North American, social scientiflc criteria.

Despite these drawbacks, several earlier studies genera ted much insight o nthe n ature and ro le of political institutions an d p rocesses, and stimulated vigor-ous deba te amo ng scho lars. A few also revealed a self-consciousness abou tknowledge production and the position of the researcher/analyst/scholar inshaping that know ledge. Among the works that dem onstra ted such a sensitivityto context, history, and reflective inquiry is William Roff's remarkably interpre -tive analysis. The Origins of Malay Nationalism (1967 ). The narrative allows its subjects to be heard in the text rather than merely imposing the a uth or'svoice. The research is painstaking, and its presentation in the book conveysnot co ncr ete evidence of this or that event or fact, bu t instead a compefling ex-planation of the sources of Malay nationalism. Roff's analysis of SahabatPena's (Brotherhood of Pen Friends) emergence as a nationalist movement,for exam ple, informs u s of its early ideological beg inning s in a new spa per col-um n, to its growth into a correspo nde nce club, and thenc e to a national move-men t. The controversies surrou ndin g the formation of the movem ent and its political orien tation are pre sen ted in a way that brings ou t wh at m ay initiallyapp ear as minor details, such as the injunction to boys and girls in the colum npublished in the newspaper Saudara to communicate only with members ofthe sam e sex. * These bits of information are in effect critical to ou r un derstand -ing of the larger narrative generating insight into other facets of Malay society

such as the state of gen der relations. Roff's study provides us with a win dowinto the formation of early Malay nationalism that is nuanced and p ersuasive in


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and economy, betw een good and bad theorizing, or betw een fruitful and ster-ile paradigmatic thinking. ' Comparing two major studies on Latin America,James Payne's Patterns of Conflict in Colombia, and Joh n Womack's Zapataand the Mex ican Revolution (both published in the late 1960s), Hirschmansuggests that Womack, w ho has rigorously excluded from his universe anysemblance of a paradigm...invites speculation and thereby contributes to thepossibility of understanding. * Payne, on the other hand, appears trappedwithin his paradigm w hen he triumphantly presents the reader, according toHirschman, with the key to the full and com plete understand ing o fthe Colom-bian political system. The rest of the bo ok is a demo nstration that th e key in-deed unlocks all conceivable d oors of Colombian p olitical life, past, pre sen t,and future. Roff, in light of Hirschm an's critique, has prov ided us with a richlyconceived and tex tured accoun t of the rise of Malay nationa list ideology.

Hirschman's warnings against mindless theorizing as a substitute for thatoth er pitfall, rank emp iricism,is a point that all scholars and particularly tho sew ho m ight identify themselves as area or regional specialists, or ex perts o n acountry in an area or region, would do well to heed. Along those lines, otherscholarship on Malaysia emerging in the 1980s and 1990s soug ht a balance be-tween objective theo rizing and emp irical analysis. Several studies also ex-pressed a com mitm ent to social and political change by exposing and challeng-ing the underlying ideological biases of earlier approaches. The move towardgrounded theory compared with mo re general formulations about the rela-tionship between economic and political developm ent, a preoccupa tion w iththe generalizability of mod els, and quantitative m easure ments of political be-havior saw the em ergence of alternative scho ols of thou ght, which pos ed achallenge to the mod ernization paradigm . The analysis ofthe formation of classstructures and th e relationsh ip of class to political pow er in Malaysia, which wassoo n evident in the literature, co ntribu ted greatly to the study of Malaysian po-litical economy. An example being K.S. Jomo's A Question of Class (1988),which w as a timely work on class relations in colonial and postcolon ial Malaya,tracing the deve lopm ent of capitalism and its implications for th e political econ-omy of the postcolonial state. This study provided an important critique notonly of modernization, but also of the dependency school, which had influ-enced research on the political economy of Latin American and African societ-ies. Jom o's analysis also challenged theories th at focused on the state as a neu-tral arbiter of com petin g interests in a plural society. Significantly, his work alsorevealed th at a focus on the so-called eth nic bases of Malaysian society hid classrelations. A Question of Class thus uncovered the complexity ofth e Malaysianclass structure and its implications for political arrangements in thepostcolonial state. This work shed n ew light not only on class formation but alsoon the state's role in engendering the formation of new^ social forces.

The older debate betw een the modernizationists on the on e hand and neo-Marxians on the oth er (among them w orks invoking one or mo re perspectives


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postmodernism, post-structuralism, and postcolonial theory. Some of thesetheoretical shifts have influenced the study of Malaysian politics indirectly. Inanth ropo logy and sociology, in particular, these new er theo retical shifts havehad a profoun d impact on the way these disciplines have reconstituted them-selves. In addition, the emergence of a distinct bod y of feminist theo ry also sug-gests that the privileged unit of analysis, the abstract rationa l individual,group, or class, in mainstream approaches, must be viewed as an inherentlygen dered category. Among the con tributions to this literature are the writings ofOng (1987) and Peletz (1996). It is possible to view these post-positivist contri-butions to the literature as a continuation of the kind of work done by Roff(1967), Scott (1985), Jom o (1988), and othe rs writing in an interpretive a nd/orcritical vein .

However, despite the critical theoretical disjuncture provided by explicitlypost-positivist m ethodolog ies, the m odernization literature, which u tilized im-plicitly or explicitly certain m ode ls of political behavior, has also informed thedevelopment of Malaysian Studies in the last decade. For example, studies ofdem ocratiza tion in Malaysia, soft autho ritarianism , and state-society relation sin the 1990s suggest a preoccup ation with no tions of political developm ent, akey them e of mo dernization theory. I am mainly concerned in this essay withscho larship that falls within the do main o fth e study of politics or political sci-ence, but adm ittedly the distinction be tween what constitutes a particu lar disci-pline o r fleld and the interdisciplinary aspects of these studies may make this anarbitrary distinction. Malaysian Studies in the n ew m illennium reveals a con tin-uing interest in questions concerning the electoral process, democratic institu-tions, ideology, the state, political economy, and civil society. The works re-viewed below approach these questions from varying methodological anglesand perspectives. What unites these studies is a concern with new configura-tions in Malaysian politics in the aftermath of a singularly important series ofevents in recent Malaysian history. These events were triggered with the 1997Asian financia l crisis, which affected Malaysia in ra the r pro fou nd ways. The Ma-laysian currency d epreciated sharply and its fall was only halted by aggressivegovern men t policies aimed at curbing capital flows out of the country and cur-rency speculation. Serious cracks soon emerged in ruling circles and were man-ifested most plainly in differences between the Malaysian prime minister,Mahathir Mohamad, and his deputy, Anwar Ibrahim. The subseq uen t expulsionof Anwar Ibrahim from bo th the ruling party. United Malays National Organiza-tion (UMNO), and the Barisan National (BN) coalition governm ent, and h is im-prison ment o n charges of corru ption and sexual miscond uct triggered a move-men t for reform, p opularly know n as reformasi. Several key them es dom inatethe post-1997 literature and include amon g othe rs the emergen ce ofthe reformmovement and its implications for electoral politics, and political transforma-tion more broadly; the relationship between authoritarianism an d dem ocratiza-tion; and the relevance of ethnic identity and social class for an und erstan ding


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Constructing a New Id iom : The New Politics

One o fthe more com mo n term s of reference in the Malaysian Studies literaturein recen t years is the idea of a new politics. This concept is used generally todescribe a shift away from the old politics of race and ethnicity in Malaysia.

The preoccupation with ethnic relations and ethnic politics was widely re-flected in the literature for many decades and, as mentioned earlier, treated asthe single most significant factor shap ing state-society relations. While these ar-gum ents about the o verriding claims of ethnicity on political culture and iden-tity have som e merit, this is surely on ly part of th e story. Alternatively we canidentify o the r sou rces tha t have influenced social and po litical change in Ma-laysia, such as class and g en de r affiliations. The n ew po litics as it is conce ivedin recent contributions to the Malaysian Studies literature attacks the centralpremise of the earlier literature's preoccupation with ethnic identity as the

main source for the c reation and stability of political coalitions and political par-ticipation. The use of a new lexicon to describe an apparent shift in politicalalignments and ethnic con sciousness is the cen terpiece of Loh and Saravanu-muttu's edited collection, New P olitics in Malaysia. In this study the editorsand individual autho rs set out to uncover a shift in Malaysian politic s accom-panying the events of 1998, using the Malaysian general election of 1999 as aturn ing po int for an in-depth analysis of changes in the sociopolitical landscapeof the country. The volume co ntains fourteen chap ters, including two that re-flect the edito rs' efforts to analytically frame the vo lum e, and twelve empiricallydriven studies ofthe impact ofthe general election on a wide range of issues andconcern s including the drawing of electoral constituencies, voter behavior, eth-nic voting patterns , gen der and repres entation , micro-politics of particularconstituencies, and state-level politics.

A strength ofthe volume is its comprehensive coverage of key issues surfac-ing around the 1999 Malaysian genera l election and its efforts to situate shiftingpolitical alignmen ts and sentiments after 1997 throug h original and primary re-search by both well-established and junior scholars and practitioners. The vol-um e highlights th e dilemm as of a post-1997 Malaysian politics caught betw eenethnic chauvinism and a long-standing hegemonic ruling framework that re-flects partriarchal privilege, authoritarianism, and elitism, and an opposing setof political forces pushing for the dismantling of the old order. Unlike inSuharto's Indonesia w here the New O rder regime, which was by 1998 clearly anold order, fell apart in the wake o fthe currency crisis that hit that country espe -cially hard, Malaysia's ruling elite led by then prime minister Mahathir Moha-mad entrenched its position. In characteristic and perem ptory fashion Mahathirousted his oppo nen ts, triggering widespread protests, but n ot to the extent thathis governmen t was ever seriously in d ange r of collapse. Yet how co uld it hap-pen in Indonesia but not in Malaysia? Like the other works reviewed here, thisvolume struggles with why dem ocratization, und erstood in the conventionalsense ofthe institutionalization of an in dep end ent judiciary, media,civil society,


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challenge in Malaysia with the ruling party continuing to enjoy rather wide-spread electoral supp ort.

In New Politics in Malaysia some answers are offered, including the tightcontrol by the state ofth e media, gerrymandering, ethnic politics, hegem ony ofthe d om inan t political culture, and fear of change . While the different chap tersin this collection explore a slice ofth e larger electoral picture in 1999 in the con-text ofthe movement for reform, the book seeks to address the broader ques-tion and prob lem of political change. The con tributions are generally useful ad-ditions to the literature, but a few, in this writer's view, stand out, such as LimHon g Hai's The Delineation of Peninsular Electoral Con stituencies, Joh anSaranvan amu ttu's study of the middle class factor in on e electoral constitu-ency, and Tan Beng Hui and Cecilia Ng's analysis of the Malaysian women'smo vem ent in electoral politics. Lim's essay draws atten tion to the com plexitiesof delineating electoral constituencies and its relationship to ethnic relations.He no tes that in Malaysia the re-delineation of bou nda ries h as been mostly con-sistent with e thnic fragmentation and party politics. Lim suggests that grap plingwith the rules and practice of constituency delinea tion in Malaysiawill yield abetter understanding ofth e struggle for pow er and representation am ong eth-nic grou ps and political parties {44). He is able to sup port this conte ntion wellthrou gh a careful and attentive study ofth e history of constituency delineationand its contemporary effects on Malaysian electoral politics.

Saravanam uttu's essay is one ofthe rare ones inNew Politics inMalaysia thatattem pts to frame som ething of a research qu estion o r problema tic. He beginsby asking wh ether there is an electoral 'po litics' which typifies the co ncerns, in-terests, and tend encies o fth e Malaysian middle class (178). In oth er w ords,what is the relationship between social class and voting behavior, and specifi-cally how w as this man ifested, if at all, in the 1999 election? He is also intere stedin exploring th e impact of reformasi on v oters' opinio ns and behavior. Sarava-namuttu seeks to uncover an answer through his analysis of voters' attitudesand opinions on the eve of the general election in an ethnically mixed butmainly middle-class constituency, which was su bsequ ently retained by the BNruling coalition. His use of a survey instrum ent to gauge voter se ntime nt on is-sues such as incom e, security, social justice, and ethnic relations reflects the so-cial class and ethnic m akeu p of this constituency. He con cludes that desp ite th esurvey results showing respondents citing social justice as high among theirconcerns, voters expressed their electoral preferences mainly along party, andhence ethno -political, affiliations (187-88; 192-94).

In Tan and Ng's chapter we find yet ano ther variable gender ente r elec-toral calculations and electoral politics. The writers situate the ir discussion oftwo key initiatives put forth by the Malaysian w om en's m ovem ent, the Wo men'sAgenda for Change (WAC) and the W omen's Candidacy Initiative (WCI), by re-lating them to the significance and implications of a politics of repres enta tionm ore gen erally Leading from this, they ask whe ther it is essential for w om en to


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abou t the merits of formal,as in the mobilization of wo men arou nd party poli-tics, versus the informal participatory dimension, wh ere w om en remain insome sense ou tside the mainstream of political life, bu t are nev ertheless im por-tant agents in the shaping of their own histories and de stinies. Indeed, th e com-ing out as it we re of w om en into electoral politics throu gh the fielding of an in-dep end ent WCI candidate wh o stood on a wo me n's issues platform was aturnin g poin t for the wo m en 's mov emen t in its efforts to place center stage theproblem of political representation and women's rights (115). The strength ofthis chap ter lies in the way it relates recent trends in the wom en's movem ent inMalaysia to bro ade r theoretical issues concernin g gender, and pow er and re pre-sentation. Although the autho rs do no t delve into an extended theoretical dis-cussion of feminist scholarly insights, they provide en oug h theoretical de pth inthe chap ter to frame the analysis and th us save it from being merely descriptive.Unfortunately, this is not the case with several oth er chap ters, which while pro-viding valuable inform ation this wo uld b e acceptable if the b oo k's amb itionswere more m odest, tend to provide mo re of a descriptive recou nting of variousevents and data around the 1999 general election. What is lacking are morerichly textured and interpretive narratives that, as Hirschman w ould pu t it, in-vite speculation and un ders tand ing. It is also worth noting that a mainly empiri-cal discussion m ay tell a pa rt of the story, bu t will no t typically help us p ut thisstory in a wider con text or give us insight into d eep er implications of broad as-sertion s con cern ing shifts in cultural an d political identity, which is an objectiveof the volume.

An admirable effort to p rovide the central them e(s) and an overarching ana-lytical pu rpo se may be seen in the last chap ter by Francis Loh. He suggests thatwh ile ethnicity remains a formidable force in the calculations of Malaysians onwh o to vote for, it has been somew hat displaced by the politics of develop-mentalism, which links econo mic grow th, rising incomes, and c ons um ptionwith political stability in the form of th e BN state (261 ). He attrib utes the elec-toral choices of a large percentag e of Malaysian Ch inese to developm entalism,which he argues was prom oted by the BN and its com pon ent Chinese-basedparties thro ug ho ut th e 1990s. He also suggests that based on the findings of var-ious contribu tors to the volum e it wo uld b e safe to con clude that while ethnicityremains an important factor in electoral politics it is also contested. He citesother co nsiderations that should also be taken into account such as class and gen-der, although the infiuence ofth e latter may be felt more in the realm of non partypolitics. Despite the contributions of the chapter toward a rethinking of Malay-sian politics, however, the reader is still unclear by the en d of the volume ab outwhat the editors mean by on e of its central concepts: the new politics. The con-cept comes up infrequently th roug hou t the volume and whe n it is explained itsmeaning and content remain elusive. Loh provides this explanation:

the new politics alluded to is not that of participatory democracy, northat of developm entalism. The new politics refers to the increasing frag-


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He goes on to add that the new politics is evident in the realm of non-formalpolitics especially in the peninsula (278-79).

Loh's definition raises mo re qu estions: Is the new politics about fragmenta-tion and contestation amo ng ethnic com mun ities, or is it abou t the struggle be-tween comp eting disco urses driven by different social forces and interests? Or isit instead about the emergence of a nonparty politics in Malaysia? ElsewhereLoh refers to a new political culture that emphasizes developmentalism, bu tconcludes that new politics refers to this fragmentation and co ntestation inMalaysia's political culture. * It would have been helpful if Loh had distin-guished his definition from that deployed in the scholarly literature on new so-cial movem ents in the 1980s and 1990s w hen the concept new politics wascommonly used in reference to nonparty, noninstitutionalized social move-ment politics in Western Euro pe and North Am erica.' On its own terms, L oh'sexplanation does not adequately address the significance of ethnicity vis-a-visclass or gender as constitutive of the identities of political agents, or develop-men talism vis-a-vis participatory dem ocracy as socially mediated spaces wherepolitics gets played ou t. Perhaps the simplest explanation o fthe new politics isto think of it as distinct from an old politics in Malaysia, the latter driven byethn ic interes ts and class privilege. Yet this leaves this reader som ewhat dissatis-fied. Is it safe to assum e then that the old politics signified a lack of contestationand fi-agmentation? Such an assum ption wo uld surely contradict earlier studiesthat docum ent confiict and struggle over the terms and cond itions of politicaldisco urse in postcolonial Malaysia, especially obvious in the first wo decades ofindependence.

Despite these reservations, I would argue that New Politics inM alaysia suc-ceeds reasonably well in accomplishing its general objective of providing anoverview of changes in the electoral map and electoral politics and original re-search on electoral behavior. Its conclusions that events after 1997 have re-sulted in social and political shifts, even if no t on a tectonic scale, and challengea dom inant discourse structured arou nd ethnic politics and patro nag e are welltaken. Where the weakn ess of the volume lies is in the accom plishment of thetheore tical and co nceptua l significance of many of the findings generated in thevarious chapters, and implications for further research and future directions inMalaysian Studies.

Politics in Transition

Another notable contribution to the recent literature is also an edited collec-tion, Edmund Terence Gomez's 77>e State of Malaysia: Ethnicity, Equity andReform. This collection includes chapters relating post-1997 developmentssuch as the reformasi m ovem ent to Malaysia's political system, transe thnic sol-idarities, elections, and the nexu s of politics and bu siness. Gom ez nicely setsthe context for the rest of the volume in his introductio n by highlighting th e sig-nificance and implications of the reform movement for social and political


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tive, failed to mak e an impact The State of Malaysia, 19). Gomez explains thatthe chapters in the volume address two main issues: first, why Malaysians havebeen reluctant to accept the new formidable opp osition coalition led by Anwardespite their concerns abo ut po or governance by Mahathir, and second, thethem es and conflicts that animate Malaysian politics and business, specificallythe difficulties of main taining large-scale, multi-ethnic political union s an d cre-ating sustainable dom estic entrepren euria l enterp rises (19). On e of th e ten-sions that emerges in this volume, which could also be a strength, is betw eenthese two competing objectives, since the chapters do not consistently relatetheir purpose to the central question about the limited impact of the reformmo vement po sed by Gomez at the outse t. I shall take up this point a little later,but I would like first to address the significance of, and c on tribu tion s m ade by,this volume to Malaysian Studies.

The Malaysian political system has been w^idely desc ribed as semi-authori-tarian or soft authoritarian in the scholarly literatu re. Dep loying a similar ter-minology, the ch apter by Case in the The State of Malaysia refers to the cou ntryas a pseudo-dem ocracy. According to Case, Malaysia's pseudo-democracy in-volves a pattern of limited civil liberties, but at least moderately competitiveelections, driven by, yet in turn helping to sustain, a government that centres ona single dom inant party (29). Case's chap ter is an ambitious attempt to tracethe origins of Malaysia's so-called pseudo-dem ocracy, the stresses it faces, andthe reasons for its long-term stability (30). Case argues that the ruling BN hasbee n able to keep its hold o n po wer despite th e political challenges emerg ingafter 1997 in part du e to finessing its patronag e politics, dissension amo ng theopposition ranks and the rise of Isiamicists, and the historic loyalty of militaryand othe r security forces. Applying theoretical literature on dem ocratic transi-tions and dem ocratization. Case measures the Malaysian experience in light ofclaims concerning th e survival of authoritarian regimes, and finds supp ort forseveral key theoretical assertions, albeit with some modification. Among themis the link between regime survival, on the one hand, and elite cohesion,clientilism, and coercive capacity expressed in the allegiance of the military andpolice, on the other. Although Case addresses som e an omalies in the M alaysiancase, which m ake it difficult to neatly replicate theo retical claims of th e cho senmodel, he nevertheless makes some rather sweeping assertions about thepseudo-democratic character of the Malaysian political system that bring tomind th e cautionary example by Hirschman of wo rk that might provide us th e key to discovering the truth of a particular situation.

Driven by a similar interest in dem ocratization post-1997 Jason A bbott andClaudia Derichs in two sepa rate chapters in the G omez collection exp lore therole ofthe reformasi movement in shaping democratization. Abbott's concernis with the relationship betw een the in ternet an d the growth of reformasi, whileDerichs explores how intellectuals and other key figures belonging to thinktanks, the mass media, parties, advocacy or nongovernmental organizations


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internet extensively to post and promote news and information about themovem ent, the potential for democratic change occurring vis-a-vis the interne twas shaped by othe r critical factors inc luding the limited impac t of a split in theranks o fthe ruling elite signified by the ex pulsion of Anwar Ibrahim and by po-

litical repression. He also suggests that the ability of the internet to impact de-mocratization is hind ered if reform or in dep end en t civil society grou ps are no tbetter mobilized on the ground. Abbott's chapter contains some important in-sights on the relationship b etween utilization of alternative m edia and d emo c-ratization by social forces and g rou ps invested in political and social change in acou ntry such as Malaysia where access to con ven tional m edia sources is restric-tive and generally severely constrain ed. Abbott's analysis suffers, however, fromhis eflFort to also addre ss the b roader problem atic of dem ocratiza tion and civilsociety in Malaysia, which is not adequately developed in this chapter. His chap-ter contrasts with another by Mustafa Anuar on the role of Malaysia's main-stream media inNew Politics in Malaysia. Anuar draws our attention to the pro-pagandistic nature of media coverage of the ruling BN government's recordwith a silencing of key issues raised by the op position Barisan Alternatif (BA) orAlternative Fron t and its negative depic tion. Both essays highlight th e difficul-ties in articulating demands for democratization from the margins, althoughAn uar's essay wo uld have benefitted from a deep er discussion of the relation-ship betw een media co ntrol and ideological hegemony, which are only vaguelyalluded to in the essay (56).

In the chapter by Derichs the role of ideas, their infiuence and impact on pol-icy, is foreshadowed by a theoretical discussion of idea travel, presum ably theconversion of ideas into policy, and the role of opp ortunity structu res in shap-ing idea travel. The strength of Derichs's chap ter in T he State of Malaysia lies inoriginal primary research , -which consists of interview's with abo ut twen ty infor-man ts draw n firom the g roup s m ention ed above. These interviews elicit inter-esting respo nses o n question s about the kind of political reforms resp on den tswo uld like to see in Malaysia, their con tributions to political discourse, and ho wthey view their role in shaping public policy. One of the weaknesses is thatDerichs does not explain well eno ugh why idea travel is a necessary cond itionfor dem ocratic change, o r why demo cratic ideas, in this instance, are d epe nd enton opportunity structures a concept Derichs does not define or explain inher chapter for their wider dissemination? She also relates idea travel to theprem ise that a maturing m iddle class will typically supp ort ideas abou t demo c-racy and political reform, which would appear to fit well with a central claimmade by modernization theorists about the positive correlation between eco-nomic and political developm ent, a relationship that is challenged e lsewhere inthe volume (see Abbott, The State of M alaysia). Derichs concludes that the fail-ure of the economically develop ed middle class to sup po rt the reform move-ment stems in part from the salience of ethnic and econom ic interests p rotec tedby the status quo (125).


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si t ions in the l i terature. The cha pter by Sumit Ma ndal suggests the ne ed to ex-plore the ways in which transethnic cultural poli t ics has been erased fromhistory in Malaysia and to trace transeth nic solidari t ies (53) . This ch apt erconf ron t s the assum pt ions under ly ing the mains t r eame d , mod ern iza t ion-driven stu dies of Malaysian society, culture, and poli t ics. M andal writes tha t the tendency towards modular approaches in this l i terature at tr ibutes a false sta-bili ty to race by affirming i ts appar ently p rim ord ial cha racter. This in tur n rein-forces the premise that mult iethnic societ ies are unstable poli t ies. By claimingthe sal ience and universal i ty of race, the l i terature at tr ibutes far too much ofconsequence to the ' racial ' rather than the social , cultural , and poli t ical dynam-ics tha t give sh ap e to th e categor y in th e first plac e (61) . M and al's refiective es-say suggests that the pro ces s of racial izat ion em erg es o ut of poli t ical and pu blicdiscou rses that dep loy ideas abou t race or e thnic i ty. Whi le he d oe s no t c la imthat race-based thinking is not signif icant in the Malaysian context , Mandal at-tempts to show how that th inking has evolved through the h is tor ical erasuresof in t ra-e thnic d ifference a nd the prol i fera t ion of t ranse thnic ident i t ies a ndsol idar it ies that are an indel ib le par t of th e Malaysian exp er ie nce ev en pred at -ing colonial i sm. Manda l revisi ts and in te r rog ates a widely held assum pt ionabout the immutabil i ty of ethnic identi ty ( typically used interchangeably w^ithrace in the Malaysian Studies l i terature and in popular discourse) in Malaysianpol it ics, and mo ves us toward a com plex und ersta nd ing o f th e in terplay of e th-nicity, culture, and identity in postcolonial Malaysia.

Oth er chapters in th is volum e, which unfor tunate ly get only a br ief m ent i onhere due to const ra in ts of space, a lso contr ibute much through or ig inal re-search to the por trai t of a post-1 997 Malaysia w he re de mo cratic reform , ethn icidentity, and social justice converge in ways that challenge simplistic analysis.The last three chapters by Gomez, Salazar, and Hamayotsu deal with key ques-t ions concerning the re la t ionship between government economic pol icy andthe corporate sector and the implicat ions of this relat ionship for ethnic andclass re la t ions and governan ce. Ham ayotsu ' s s tudy makes som e in terest ing ob-servations about the inf iuence of Islamization on economic policy and the con-t radic t ions eng en de red by the s ta te ' s une ven im plem entat io n of Is lamic princi -ples in the public sector. However, while these chapters stand on their ownme rits i t w ou ld have be en useful i f the a uth ors co uld have related their essaysm ore c learly to the quest ion po sed by Gom ez in the in t rodu ct ion abo ut wh y thereform movement fai led to make an impact . This would have given a sense ofgreater themat ic cont inui ty to the volume. Despi te th is omission. The State ofMalaysia is a valuable con tr ibu tion to the li terature , pr ese ntin g original , analyt-ical, an d contem plative re searc h on co nte m po rar y Malaysian poli t ics and p oli t i-cal economy.

O ne o fth e co m m en da ble features of Malaysian Studies is that it is an eclect icf ield, one marked by a diversi ty of discipl inary approaches and methods andm od es of inquiry. The works reviewed h ere , by no m ean s exhaust ive or exem-


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era ture reflects this diversity of perspectives ev ident in studies that draw ou r at-tention to the unex pected and contingen t, to those favoring mo dular explana-tions, and yet oth ers who se descriptive narratives are informative b ut generallytend to be light on theoretical and conceptual content. This sample of the re-

cent literature suggests that we need to see more wo rk that com bines in-depth,original research with an attentiveness to theoretical debate and analyticaldep th. T here is no sho rtage of work tha t exp lores very similar them es by schol-ars studying Malaysia and o the r regions, and engaging these would make for anexciting and rewarding d ebate over some of the issues raised here . One of theprob lems may be a sense of urgency, understandably, in pub lishing wo rk that istimely and quickly captures the m om ent, bu t the dow nside is scholarship thatmay reflect the has te and speed at which materials are pu t together. A collectionof descriptive case stud ies may generate factual know ledge , bu t will fall sho rt oftelling us why we sho uld take seriously or be comp elled by the information pro-vided. In othe r w^ords, to what use can we pu t this information, and how doe sthe information enhance our conceptual and analytical tools and understand-ing? Alternatively, wo rk that relies mainly on second ary sou rces and pu rpor ts toprovide a holistic or m odular approach will tend to reflect a lack of nuance ordeep er und erstan ding of the com plex interspersed layers of Malaysian history,politics, religion, culture, economy, and society.

On this score, I must m ention two othe r recent con tributions, Vidhu Verma'sMalaysia: S tate and Civil Society in Transition and Khoo Boo Teik's BeyondMah athir: Malaysian Politics and Its Discontents, to the Malaysian Studies lit-eratu re that illustrate some of these po ints well. Verma expresses the pu rpo seand objective of he r ambitious book as describing and analyzing the role ofstate and civil society in two con texts: Globalization an d changes in the con ceptof nation-state. The rest of the volume vainly tries to maintain a co herentframewo rk for analysis that brings these contexts in to focus as the au thor ad-dresses five centra l them es : nationalism ; citizenship; Islam; dem ocracy andauthoritarianism; and human rights (10). Verma's research question is this: What has propelled these five them es to c enter stage given so many divergentpolitical agendas? By now the read er may be excused for being a little per-plexed about how the general purpose of the book and the primary researchquestion are related and how Verma expects to develop those connections.However, even m ore vexing is the argu ment Verma offers early on in the intro-duction where she suggests the following:

Two processes have occurred togeth er simultaneously in the past decade:on the one hand, democratic aspirations have been raised; on the other,the PAS [Islamic Party of Malaysia] has em erged as a major political force inMalaysian politics. I argue that these processes are de term ined by the in-teraction of thre e factors: state dev elopmental capacity, globalization pr o-cesses, and the historical legacy of religious institutions. (11)

Suffice to say that much of this volume suffers from a disconnect be tween the


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lacking in this volume; the boo k appea rs to rely heavily on secondary writingsfor a reconstruction of contemporary Malaysian political discourse. The heavyreliance on secondary materials does not of course invalidate this study, andVerma attempts to balance this shortcom ing with the inclusion of speeches by

Mahathir Moham ad and new s stories. Yet the absence of the voices of the verycivil society actors the auth or seeks to theorize an d are p resu me d in the titleof this volum e is painfully obvious especially in the chapters o n DebatingHu man Rights and Islam and the Malay Comm unity. Despite these reserva-tions, Verma's study should stimulate debate abo ut future directio ns for Malay-sian Studies and the need for more reflective and interpretive ap proaches .

By con trast Khoo Boo Teik's study of Malaysian politics beyon d Mahathir isa com pelling study of pow er and ideology in Malaysian politics and po pu lar dis-course . Khoo's work draws ou r atten tion to the politics of a nationalist vision

and project underwritten by a capitalist logic conceived and promoted byMahathir Mohamad d uring his term as prime minister (1981-2003). Mahathir'sremarkable political and ideological trajectory and longevity have been chroni-cled elsewhere by Khoo, bu t in this volume he seeks to uncov er the implicationsof what he calls a Mahathirist program me of socio-economic d evelopm ent,which can be regarded as a nationalist pro ject driven by capitalist imp ulses o r acapitalist project imbued with nationalist aspirations{Beyond Mahathir, 5).Khoo's central objective as he ou tlines it in the introdu ction is to give the reader a sense of social and political change that departs from mainstream interpreta-tions and standard p ercep tion s of politics in Malaysia as the 'e thn ic politics' of a'divided society ' (14). Khoo 's volume illustrates that it is possible to undertak ework that elicits theoretical insight without indulging in sterile paradigmaticthinking that can get in the way of meaningful analysis and interpretation. In-deed , Khoo demu rs that he has avoided academic and theoretical debate s with aview to reach ing a w^ider audience and r ead ersh ip. Still, on e may glean from thepages of this study useful theoretical and conce ptual arg um ents that contribu teto the scholarly literature reinforcing this writer's view that self-consciously em-ploying theory is not at issue here, but instead how theoretical pres upp osition sare in turn informed and shaped by one's research.

Conclusion

Malaysian Studies today may arguably be desc ribed as a tapestry, richly textu redand illuminated by boldness an d brilliance in places, bu t somew hat u nimagina-tive and predictable in oth er areas. Much good work has been and is being do nein this field by scholars working in Malaysia and beyond. Yet there remains roomfor more reflective and critical inquiry that takes apart conventional categoriesand m akes more explicit the scho lar's subject pos ition not merely in the con-ventional sense of contrasting on e's theories and metho ds with those employedin similar w ork, bu t also in the sense of clarifying o ne 's epistem ological an d on -tological com mitmen ts. Foucault's critical assessment of philosophy captures


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accumulating; it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophi-cal life in w hich the critique of wh at we are is at on e an d th e same time thehistorical analysis ofthe limits that are imposed on u s and an expe rimen twith the possibility of going beyon d them .'

Perhaps, it is this consciousness and imagination ofthe possibility of going be-yon d that needs to be given clearer expression in Malaysian Studies. There ismu ch at stake if scholars of Malaysian Studies rem ain co coo ned from the vigor-ou s critiques in social and political theory and cultural studies that are ong oingin the social sciences and in the hu man ities on a global scale. Without indu lgingin unnecessa ry navel-gazing, Malaysian Studies has to be mindful of the in ter-section of the experiential and theoretical without which good and consistentargumentation and critique are difficult. There is a widespread tendency toview the Malaysian experience as somehow unique, demonstrated in the fewgenuinely com parative studies available that challenge or ad dress that assump -tion. While there is much merit to good, single-case studies, it would be veryhelpful if Malaysian Studies could be more attentive to how that experience issituated in a wider tem poral and spatial context. This is an argum ent for makingMalaysian Studies speak to tho se o utsid e its confines, as well as for develop ingand defining its identity beyond the minutia of the empirically driven study.

Related Works of Interest

Bedlington, Stanley S. Malaysia and Singapore: The Building of New States,

Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978.Bowie, Alasdair. Crossing the Industrial Divide: State, Society, and the Politicsof Econom ic Transformation. New York: Colum bia University Press, 1991.

Crouch, Harold. Govemment and Society in Malaysia. Ithaca: Corn ell Univer-sity Press, 1996.

Funston, N.J. Malay Politics in Malaysia: A Study of the United Malays Na-tional O rganization and Pa rty Islam. Kuala Lumpur: Heinemann Educa-tion Books, 1980.

Jesudason, James V Ethnicity an d the Econom y: The State, Chinese Business,and Multinationals in Malaysia. Singapore: Oxford University Press,1990.

. The Syncretic State and th e Structuring of Op pos itiona l Politics in Malzy-siz, in Political O ppositions in Asia, ed. Garry Rodan. London: Rouded ge,1996.

Jom o Kwame Sundaram. A Question of Class: Capital the State, and UnevenDevelopment in Malaya. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Means, Gordon V Malaysian Politics: The Second Generation. Singapore: Ox-ford University Press, 1991

Milne, R.S. Govem ment and P olitics in Malaysia. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1967.

Milne, R.S., and Diane K. Mauzy.Malaysia: Tradition, Mod ernity and Islam.


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Peletz, Michael G. Reason and Passion: Representations of Gender in a MalaySociety. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U niversity of California Press, 1996.

Ratnam, K.J. Comm unalism and the Political Process. Kuala Lum pur: U niver-sity of Malaya Press, 1965.

Roff, William R. The Origins of Ma lay Nationalism. New Haven and London :Yale University Press, 1967.

Scott, Jam es C. Weapons ofthe Weak: Everyday Form s of Peasant Resistance.Ne w H aven: Yale University Press, 1985.

Vasil, R.K. Ethnic Politics in M alaysia. New Delhi: Radiant P ublishers, 1980.von Vorys, Karl. Democracy without Consensus: Commu nalism and Political

Stability in M alaysia. Pr ince ton , N.J: Princeto n University Press, 1975.

Notes1. Qu entin Skinner, ed.. The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences

(Cambridge and N ew York: Camb ridge U niversity Press, 1985), 6.2. Ibid.3. Ibid., 10.4. William Roff, The Origins o f Ma lay Nationalism (New Haven and Lon don: Yale

University Press, 1967), 213.5. Albert Hirschm an, The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to U nderstand-

ing, in Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look ed. Paul Rabinow and Wil-liam M. Sullivan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,1987), 178.

6. Ibid., 182

7. Ibid., 179.

8. Francis Loh, New Politics in Malaysia, available on-line at http:/Avww.aliran.com/monthly/2003/6h/html.

9. See, for example, Claus Ofife, New Social M ovem ents: Challenging the Bou nd-aries of Institutional Politics, Social Research 52, no. 4 (1985): 817-68.

10 . Michel Fou cault, What Is E nlightenment? in Rabinow and Sullivan, eds.. In-terpretive Social Science, 174.


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the state of malaysian studies - sheila nair

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