Gaik Cheng Khoo – författare

This book explores race and multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore from a range of different disciplinary perspectives, showing how race and multiculturalism are represented, how multiculturalism works out in practice, and how attitudes towards race and multiculturalism – and multicultural practices – have developed over time. Going beyond existing studies – which concentrate on the politics and public aspects of multiculturalism – this book burrows deeper into the cultural underpinnings of multicultural politics, relating the subject to the theoretical angles of cultural studies and post-colonial theory; and discussing a range of empirical examples (drawn from extensive original research, covering diverse practices such as films, weblogs, music subcultures, art, policy discourse, textbooks, novels, poetry) which demonstrate overall how the identity politics of race and intercultural interaction are being shaped today. It concentrates on two key Asian countries particularly noted for their relatively successful record in managing ethnic differences, at a time when many fast-developing Asian countries increasingly have to come to terms with cultural pluralism and migrant diversity.

This book explores race and multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore from a range of different disciplinary perspectives, showing how race and multiculturalism are represented, how multiculturalism works out in practice, and how attitudes towards race and multiculturalism – and multicultural practices – have developed over time. Going beyond existing studies – which concentrate on the politics and public aspects of multiculturalism – this book burrows deeper into the cultural underpinnings of multicultural politics, relating the subject to the theoretical angles of cultural studies and post-colonial theory; and discussing a range of empirical examples (drawn from extensive original research, covering diverse practices such as films, weblogs, music subcultures, art, policy discourse, textbooks, novels, poetry) which demonstrate overall how the identity politics of race and intercultural interaction are being shaped today. It concentrates on two key Asian countries particularly noted for their relatively successful record in managing ethnic differences, at a time when many fast-developing Asian countries increasingly have to come to terms with cultural pluralism and migrant diversity.

In the early 1990s, the animist and Hindu traces in adat, or Malay custom, became contentious for resurgent Islam in Malaysia. Reclaiming Adat focuses on the filmmakers, intellectuals, and writers who reclaimed adat to counter the homogenizing aspects of both Islamic discourse and globalization in this period. They practised their project of recuperation with an emphasis on sexuality and a return to archaic forms such as magic and traditional healing. Using close textual readings of literature and film, Khoo Gaik Cheng reveals the tensions between gender, modernity, and nation.Khoo weaves a wealth of cultural theory into a rare analysis of Malay cinema and the work of new Malaysian anglophone writers. Reclaiming Adat makes an essential contribution to our knowledge of the complexities embedded in modern Malaysian culture, politics, and identity.The book will be a useful source for students interested in postcolonial film and literature, Asian culture, and gender studies, as well as the general reader keen to learn about contemporary Malaysia.

After the end of World War II when many Southeast Asian nations gained national independence, and up until the Asian Financial Crisis, film industries here had distinctive and colourful histories shaped by unique national and domestic conditions. Southeast Asia on Screen: From Independence to Financial Crisis (1945-1998) addresses the similar themes, histories, trends, technologies and sociopolitical events that have moulded the art and industry of film in this region, identifying the unique characteristics that continue to shape cinema, spectatorship and Southeast Asian filmmaking in the present and the future. Bringing together scholars across the region, chapters explore the conditions that have given rise to today's burgeoning Southeast Asian cinemas as well as the gaps that manifest as temporal belatedness and historical disjunctures in the more established regional industries.

This book provides a picture of a globalized Malaysia where its conventionally-conceived multi-ethnic composition of Malays, Chinese, Indians and Others rub shoulders with or interact more intimately on a daily basis with transnational ethnoscapes of migrant workers, asylum seekers, international students, and foreign spouses. It asks how, as Malaysians become wedded to their citizenship, they extend the same awareness of rights and claims to non-citizens such as African international students, the Indonesian maids who look after their children, and the Chins and stateless Rohingyas who populate the landscape as refugees and undocumented workers. What are the possibilities of forming cosmopolitan solidarities with non-Malaysians? And what are the newcomers’ strategies for place-making and belonging? And to bring the discussions of citizenship in Malaysia into relief, it is also asked how Malaysians abroad seek to enact and make meaningful their Malaysian citizenship. A diversity of experiences shapes the narratives in the chapters: of racialization, rejection, boundary-making and exclusivity, resilience and adaptation.This book was published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

This book provides a picture of a globalized Malaysia where its conventionally-conceived multi-ethnic composition of Malays, Chinese, Indians and Others rub shoulders with or interact more intimately on a daily basis with transnational ethnoscapes of migrant workers, asylum seekers, international students, and foreign spouses. It asks how, as Malaysians become wedded to their citizenship, they extend the same awareness of rights and claims to non-citizens such as African international students, the Indonesian maids who look after their children, and the Chins and stateless Rohingyas who populate the landscape as refugees and undocumented workers. What are the possibilities of forming cosmopolitan solidarities with non-Malaysians? And what are the newcomers’ strategies for place-making and belonging? And to bring the discussions of citizenship in Malaysia into relief, it is also asked how Malaysians abroad seek to enact and make meaningful their Malaysian citizenship. A diversity of experiences shapes the narratives in the chapters: of racialization, rejection, boundary-making and exclusivity, resilience and adaptation.This book was published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

Accepting the challenge of rethinking connections of food, space and identity within everyday spaces of “public” eating in Malaysia and Singapore, the authors enter street stalls, hawker centers, markets, cafes, restaurants, “food streets,” and “ethnic” neighborhoods to offer a broader picture of the meaning of eating in public places. The book creates a strong sense of the ways different people live, eat, work, and relax together, and traces negotiations and accommodations in these dynamics. The motif of rojak (Malay, meaning “mixture”), together with Ien Ang’s evocative “together-in-difference,” enables the analysis to move beyond the immediacy of street eating with its moments of exchange and remembering. Ultimately, the book traces the political tensions of “different” people living together, and the search for home and identity in a world on the move. Each of the chapters designates a different space for exploring these cultures of “mixedness” and their contradictions—whether these involve “old” and “new” forms of sociality, struggles over meanings of place, or frissons of pleasure and risk in eating “differently.” Simply put, Eating Together is about understanding complex forms of multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore through the mind, tongue, nose, and eyes.