Building Cultural Nationalism in Malaysia

Identity, Representation and Citizenship

Timothy P. Daniels

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415646307
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135931223
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'Asia

This text contains an examination of processes of cultural citizenship in peninsular Malaysia. In particular, it focuses upon the diverse residents of the southwestern state of Melaka and their negotiations of belonging and incorporation in Malaysian society. Following political independence and the formation of the Federation of Malaysia in 1957 Malaysian citizenship was extended to most members of these diverse social identities. In this post-colonial context, Timothy P. Daniels examines how public celebrations and representations, religious festivals, and patterns of social relations are connected to processes of inclusion and exclusion.

Part I

Chapter One
Nation, Citizens, and Theorizing Belonging

NATIONS, CITIZENS, AND BELONGING

After over forty years of political independence, Malaysians are still aflame with nationalist sentiments and yearnings, which were not even dampened by the heavy rain punctuating the “Countdown to National Independence Day” program. Most Malaysians I have spoken with, evoking a conventional sense of togetherness, were convinced that their unity would withstand the scorching effect of economic and political crises. The apparent contradiction between their intense outpouring of patriotism and expressions of hopeful togetherness, and the Malay-bias of such public celebrations, not to speak of tensions over Malay privileges bestowed upon the political and cultural majority, struck me early in my research period in Melaka. Could these public expressions just be a hopeful facade masking a fire below? Could these politically orchestrated displays actually resonate with people in local communities in Melaka?

I set out to understand the views and interpretations of diverse members of Malaysian society about their situation and relationships to each other. I also tried to comprehend how they conceive of these apparent contradictions, in public events and social relations, and possibly resolve them. In my efforts to analyze the views of Malaysians of various backgrounds, I became disappointed with popular pluralist and multiculturalist perspectives, which failed to adequately describe and provide a framework for understanding social structures and local knowledge of people in Melaka. Thus, I turned to refining some new ideas about citizenship and belonging, and combining them with a cognitive perspective, which strives to understand the knowledge and practices of everyday people in contexts such as public celebrations.

This study examines processes of qualified or cultural citizenship and belonging in Melaka, Malaysia. It focuses upon diverse residents of this southwestern state of Peninsular Malaysia (see Map) and their negotiations of belonging and incorporation in Malaysian society. I take public celebrations and exhibitions, religious festivals and open house visiting, and interracial and inter-religious voluntary associations and cliques and intermarriages as sites through which to describe and analyze these processes of negotiation. I argue residents of Melaka and local and national leaders use several representations, schemata and models, of Malaysian society to create dominant and alternative senses of belonging and qualitative citizenship. In this chapter, I will discuss some theoretical issues surrounding conceptions of “nation” and “citizenship” and present the cognitive approach I will use to examine negotiations of qualified citizenship and belonging.

Many contemporary scholars have interrogated the taken-for-granted notions of “nation” and “citizenship” from a constructionist perspective and pointed out how these mental objects are discursive formulations (Anderson 1983; Jackson and Penrose 1993; Manzo 1996; Dominquez 1989; Yuval-Davis 1991; Gilroy 1987, 1991; Maurer 1997). As is the case with many related social and cultural constructs such as race, ethnicity, and gender, “nation” and “citizenship” are an integral part of social relations and are constitutive of structures of inequality (see Maurer 1997; Chavez 1998 [1992]). Jackson and Penrose (1993:7–8) historicize the notion of “nation” and note that discourses of “nation” have been, and are underlain with four distinct, but often overlapping senses: “nation” as “racial group,” “nation” as cultural entity, “nation” as political entity, and “nation” as synonymous with “country,” a territorial unit. The “liberal” notion of “nation” as a political entity emerged in eighteenth century Europe out of struggles against religious and dynastic empires. This notion congealed out of a surfeit of cultural materials from numerous interactions and diffusion of ideas of peoples inside and outside of Europe (cf. Anderson 1983; Maurer 1997; Wallerstein 1974). It is not of purely European origin, but it took shape in Europe in a particular fashion before Europeans exported it back around the world. An abstract notion of “the people,” defined as “citizens” who had a rightful claim to power, developed in opposition to traditional modes of legitimizing and resting power in the hands of the Church and royal families.

After congealing in Europe from a long history of interactions among diverse peoples, this liberal notion of “nation” was intertwined in the European world system (cf. Wallerstein 1974) and implanted into colonies and former colonies (Anderson 1983; Bennett 1996; Flores et al. 1999). These liberal notions of “nation” and “citizenship” are part of present day discourses in places around the world where governments profess to be democracies, republics, as well as monarchies and theocracies. They are nearly global phenomena and need to be studied from a cross-cultural perspective analyzing their particular forms and histories in particular societies (see Yuval-Davis 1991; Ong 1999; Manzo 1996).

It is not surprising, though it is important to mention, that these widely exported liberal notions appeared to have entailed inherent contradictions from the very start. The political rulers had to deal with, on the one hand, preexisting structures of inequality, those between the rising capitalist ruling classes and the peasants for instance, and on the other hand, new problems of membership in these new national “communities.” Mauer (1997:124–127) argues that Hobbes’ dictum, “nature hath made men equall,” exemplifies a critical shift in Enlightenment thought towards separating the “laws of nature” and the “laws of men,” two things previously held to be one and the same in Renaissance thought. According to Maurer, “Nature” rather than God would now explain structures of inequality that persist despite the regulating and equalizing influences of liberal law. Similarly, Anderson (1983) assumes that a loosening of the mental grip of theological thinking is part of the cultural roots of modern nations and nationalism.

Although there is a strong tendency in liberal thought to make an ideological break from religion we should not be to so quick to take liberal prescriptions as factual and assume that religion does not continue to play a role in the explanation of structures of inequality in liberal nations. Manzo (1996) argues that “modern” nations are hybrids of old and new ideologies, including racial theory and biblical theology, and that overlapping Christian narratives of race and religion have been disseminated around the world. Similarly, Drake (1993 [1945]:263–286) demonstrates how Christian and democratic values were intertwined in the process of explaining the racial hierarchies of the American plantation system (see Daniels 2000:34, 39–40). Moreover, as we study nations, nationalism, and citizenship cross-culturally, we should not discount the influence of other religions, Islam and Buddhism for instance, upon local understandings of social stratification.

In whatever manner scholars have viewed the role of religious thought in relation to liberal nations, they have often noted the contradiction between social stratification and notions of equality. Benedict Anderson (1983:7) rests his very definition of the “nation” as an imagined political community upon its ability to transcend whatever structures of inequality that may exist. He states that the “nation” is “imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.”

From Anderson’s perspective, it is this image of belonging to a community of equals that has motivated its members to great lengths, even to kill and to be killed. This “deep, horizontal comradeship” fulfills the need to create a mental realm in which its citizen-members, divided in status and interests, can unite in common identity and common will-possessing an abstract “homogeneous citizenship” and collective motives-as belongers in a limited collectivity of fundamentally similar persons (cf. Maurer 1996–17–18). Yet we must consider the means of limiting membership in these imagined communities and the ways in which structures of inequality are also imagined and linked to, and potentially constitutive of, images of the nation. In this regard, I will contribute to this literature on the contradictions of liberal nations by considering how in the case of contemporary Malaysia, citizenmembers hold and negotiate horizontal, relatively egalitarian, as well as vertical, hierarchically arranged, images of the nation.

St. Clair Drake (1993[1945]:263–286) argues that the apparent contradiction between liberal democratic and Christian ideals and patterns of social hierarchy and exclusion is resolved by the realization that liberal democratic and Christian ideals are not the “beliefs people live by.” The beliefs people live by are the various notions people use to draw distinctions between people and to evaluate human worth, notions that naturalize difference and constitute structures of inequality. Drake argues that evaluative ideas that congealed around “blood”-the innate essence assumed to differentiate races-served to erect racial hierarchies and direct the practice of racial discrimination in the US. Maurer (1996) argues that “Nature” is implicated both in the principles designed to determine membership in the liberal nation as well as in the construction of social hierarchies.

He notes that the two primary criteria historically used to determine nationality and citizenship are the “law of blood”-that follows the principle of inheritance of citizenship from parent to child-and the “law of soil”-that follows the principle of basing citizenship upon the place of birth. Both of these criteria are mutually constitutive, to some degree, and serve to naturalize one’s legal membership in liberal nations. Maurer (ibid: 123–136) shows how the legal shift, following the 1981 British Nationality Act, from the “law of soil” to the “law of blood” created a new group of “outsiders” and “nonbelongers,” turning many immigrants who were “born in” the British Virgin Islands into “aliens.” Legal citizenship was a basis of social inequality resting on essentialized distinctions between citizens and “nonbelongers.” Yet, many of these immigrants who were excluded from legal citizenship contested the basis of their exclusion and formulated a sense of “cultural citizenship.”

LEGAL AND CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP

Out of this contemporary literature about “citizenship” and the growing awareness of the inequality embedded in the notions of “citizen” and “nation” and constructions of national identities, has emerged an important analytic distinction between legal and cultural citizenship. Contemporary analysts have noted how the “concept of the citizen as a purely formal, culturally ‘empty,’ exchangeable identity-unmarked by regional, ethnic or cultural differences” has this “emptiness” filled in practice “by the naturalised or ‘invisible’ properties of the socially dominant (or ‘national’) group” (Bennett 1998:8). Paul Gilroy (1987, 1991) notes how the categories “black” and “British,” or “black” and “European” tend to be mutually exclusive. Flores and Benmayor (1997) state the same goes for “nonwhite” and “American” in the US. Similarly, Yuval-Davis (1991) and Renato Rosaldo (1994a, 1994b) note that women are marginal citizens in European and American national communities typically imagined as fraternities of equal white males. White males are the generic citizen-members of national identities such as “British” and “American,” and other categories of persons defined by various intersections of racial, ethnic, and gender difference are conditional citizen-members. This conditional status persists even though these citizen-members fulfill the requirements of legal citizenship.

The concept of cultural citizenship includes the processes and histories of legal citizenship but goes beyond them “to encompass a range of gradations in the qualities of citizenship” (Rosaldo 1994a:57). Legal citizenship here should not be considered as being static or in any way given simply by the possession or fulfillment of legal requirements or the lack thereof, but should be considered as constructed through historical and political processes as well. The legal opinions and criteria in regard to citizenship change over time and are imbued with cultural meanings, aspirations and values. On the other hand, many people who do not have the documents required to satisfy the requirements of legal citizenship, may still develop a sense of belonging, and become partially incorporated within society (see Chavez 1998 [1992]; Flores 1997:255–277). Rosaldo (ibid: 57) states that,

“cultural citizenship refers to the right to be different (in terms of race, ethnicity, or native language) with respect to the norms of the dominant national community, without compromising one’s right to belong, in the sense of participating in the nation-state’s democratic processes.”

For Rosaldo, “cultural citizenship” is a sense of belonging or qualitative citizenship for subordinate social identities-distinct in some fashion from the dominant majority-and the processes in which they claim rights. His conception does not include the qualitative citizenship of dominant majorities such as the “natives” of Fiji and Malaysia who often feel left out “in their own countries” or the whites of the United States who occasionally express similar sentiments. It appears to me that much of this sort of “nativist” discourse includes qualitative citizenship and belonging and should be encompassed within the concept of cultural citizenship. Although members of such groups are conventionally thought to be the default citizen-members of national communities, they may also develop a sense of second-class citizenship or marginalized first class citizenship due to particular social and political policies or processes.

In addition, Rosaldo (1994a, 1994b, 1997), and Flores and Benmayor (1997) lay stress upon the agency of subordinate, non-majority, groups in their collective quests to attain full citizenship rights and inclusion in the general society. Flores and Benmayor (1997:15) state that “cultural citizenship can be thought of as a broad range of activities of everyday life through which Latinos and other groups claim space in society and eventually claim rights.” Aihwa Ong (1999:264) criticizes this conception of cultural citizenship as being one-sided, with its emphasis upon the agency of subordinate groups, and adoptive of the “liberal principle of universal equality” it seeks to critique. In contrast, Ong (1999:264) proposes a conception of cultural citizenship that takes both sides of unequal power relationships into account, the agency of subordinates and the domination of the state and civil institutions:

“In contrast, I use ‘cultural citizenship’ to refer to the cultural practices and beliefs produced out of negotiating the often ambivalent and contested relations with the state and its hegemonic forms that establish the criteria of belonging within a national population and territory. Cultural citizenship is a dual process of self-making and being-made within webs of power linked to the nation-state and civil society.”

Ong (1999) and Mitchell (1997) apply this conception of cultural citizenship to wealthy Chinese immigrants who negotiate their incorporation in American and Canadian societies. In both cases, dominant notions of what it means to be citizen-members of national and local communities discipline them, and their agency is largely limited to appropriating dominant Orientalist discourses to negotiate inclusion in these societies (see also Ong 1993). Lacking the capital and status of these wealthy Chinese immigrants, Cambodian immigrants appear to be almost completely passive recipients of subject-making processes administered by the state and church institutions (see Ong 1999). Similarly, Ong and Nonini (1997) and Nonini (1997) tend to stress state domination in the same manner and exhibit a highly restricted notion of agency consonant with their adoption of Foucault’s notion of hegemony. In contrast, I will attempt to correct this flaw by utilizing a less rigid notion of hegemony, one in which citizen-members, disciplined by dominant subject-making processes, are able to produce cultural forms and practices that are not just the “effects” of domination and technologies of power (see Daniels 2000a:38).

This more fluid approach to hegemony and “self-making” is essential for explicating the roles of voluntary associations, participation in festivals and celebrations, interpretations of museum exhibits, and so on, in relation to the growth of a more “civil” society in which diverse “citizen-members” are included as full participants (see Hefner 2001:10). As Hefner points out, voluntary associations, potentially important “social capital” for civil society, may foster or hinder the development of a political culture conducive to inclusive, participatory social relations. A flexible approach allows us to take more careful note of the agency of social actors and its significance for qualitative citizenship. Moreover, as Hefner (ibid:43) argues, it is the “synergy of state and society,” the interplay between state and society and the growth of an inclusive political culture, “scaled-up” to the state and “scaleddown” to the populace, that is important for the continued development of civil society. The fluid approach that I adopt here enables us to examine not only the flows of political discourse and practice down through society but also upwards from members of society to the state.

BELONGING, CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP, AND A UNIFIED THEORY OF PRACTICE

The notions of “citizen” and “nation” and related ideas can be studied from an interpretative/symbolic or cognitive anthropological perspective. Social scientists formed both of these approaches out of the need to correct the shortcomings of earlier behaviorist approaches which relied heavily upon stimulus-response perspectives to explain behavior (see Hutchins 1980; Dougherty 1985; D’Andrade 1995). Although many anthropologists shared a concern for considering mediating systems of knowledge, there were significant differences about how to characterize such mediations. Some anthropologists focused upon symbols, loosely defined as public units of meaning or codes, and stressed that the main task of anthropology was to discern local meanings (Geertz 1960, 1973; Turner 1969). They argued that people respond to the same stimuli in different ways due to varied public symbols and modes of interpretation. These studies produced some important culturally sensitive analyses of symbolic forms and social processes in behavioral context (see Colby, Fernandez, and Kronenfield 1981). Unfortunately this interpretive, symbolic anthropological, and symbolic interactionist turn towards mediating symbols and interpretations was hampered by its chief proponent’s, Clifford Geertz’s and Victor Turner’s, overt attempts to avoid cognitive anthropologists’ concerns with the human mind (see Bradd Shore 1996:32–35). Thus, their theories relied upon observable public displays of symbols and paradigms and lacked a firm stance on acquisition, internalization, and distribution of knowledge. They produced some important insights about local commentaries on social structure, multiple meanings of symbols, and rites of passage, yet the lack of a developed approach to knowledge internalized in human minds weakened the power of their theories.

Most contemporary work on “nation,” “citizen,” identity and related notions adopt a symbolic and interpretative position, at times coupling this perspective with Marxist and neo-Marxist views. While this work has brought some important i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• PART I
• PART II
• PART III
• PART IV
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index