Discourses, Agency and Identity in Malaysia

Zawawi Ibrahim is currently a visiting professor at Taylor’s University, Malaysia. His was most recently Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Working within the field of anthropology broadly understood, his wide-ranging research interests include youth, popular culture, storytelling and narratives, religious diversity and multiculturalism. He is the author of The Malay labourer (1995), and co-editor of Human insecurities in Southeast Asia (2016) and Borneo studies in history, society and culture (2017). He is a member of the EU-funded research project ‘Radicalisation, Secularism and the Governance of Religion: Bringing together European and Asian Perspectives’ (2019–2021).Gareth Richards is a writer, editor and bookseller based in Malaysia. He previously taught at Manchester University, the University of the Philippines and Universiti Malaya. He is the director of the editorial company Impress Creative and Editorial, the owner of Gerakbudaya Bookshop, Penang, and co-founded the arts space Hikayat. He is the co-author/editor of Asia–Europe interregionalism: Critical perspectives (1999), the writer of the texts for two books of photography: Portraits of Penang: Little India (2011) and Panicrama (2016) as well as numerous articles on film, dance, literature and music. He is currently writing a book on the artist Ch’ng Kiah Kiean.Victor T. King is Professor of Borneo Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, and Emeritus Professor in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds. He has long-standing interests in the sociology and anthropology of Southeast Asia. His recent publications are UNESCO in Southeast Asia: World Heritage Sites in comparative perspective (ed., 2016), and co-edited books on Human insecurities in Southeast Asia (2016), Borneo studies in history, society and culture (2017), Tourism and ethnodevelopment (2018), Tourism in East and Southeast Asia (2018, 4-volume reader), and Tourism in South-East Asia (2019).

“Discourses, Agency and Identity adds significantly to various discourses relating to cultural studies, film and media studies, gender and feminism, postcolonial histories of Malaysia, and anthropology. The book is a good primer for scholars who are just starting to explore the range of possible research work, and the individual chapters are recommended for scholars who are already doing research within the relevant Malaysian research fields.” (Jeannette Goon, Situations - Cultural Studies in the Asian Context, Vol. 15 (2), 2022)

• Introduction.- Culture and identity on the move: Malaysia in Southeast Asia.- The travelling text: Print cultures and translation in Penang and beyond.- In body and spirit: Redefining gender complementarity in Muslim Southeast Asia.- The quest for the good life at the edge of Malaysia:Our people, the life of government and the life of prayer.- Positioning Bajau identities as Bumiputera: Challenges and potentials of leveraging environmental justice and espousal of Islam in Sabah, Malaysia.- Sustaining local food cultures and identities in Malaysia with the disruptive power of tourism and social media.- Negotiating sinful self and desire: The diverse sexualities of non-heteronormative Malay-Muslim men in Malaysia.- Ah Beng subculture in Malaysia and the anti-thesis of global habitus.- Anti-Blackness in Malaysia: The Bandung spirit and African-Asian critique in Richard Wright’s The Color Curtain.- The emergence of new social movements in Malaysia: A case study of youth activism.- Environmentalist movements in Malaysian democracy: The transformation of activist culture.- Alternative or mainstream? Independent book publishing in Malaysia.- Fear and loathing in legal limbo: Reimagining the refugee in Malaysian public discourse and history.- Negotiating dual identities: Narratives from two Myanmar refugee youths living in Malaysia.- Expressing alternative modernities in a new nation through Iban popular music, 1960s–1970s.- Reframing the national culture narrative of P. Ramlee.- Genre, gender and temporal critique in Budak Kelantan and Bunohan.- Left of the dial: BFM 89.9FM independent radio station and its indie-friendly midnight programming as a site of sustainability.- Postcolonial indigenous storytellers and the making of a counter-discourse to the ‘civilising process’ in Malaysia.- Conclusion.