Ethnicization and Identity Construction in Malaysia

Frederik Holst

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136330599
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is the first monograph to provide an in-depth and multifaceted study of the processes of ethnicization and identity construction in Malaysia, from the colonial period until the present. In his analysis, the author takes multiple layers of ethnicization into account and shows how these have shaped Malaysia's socio-political system and society in different ways. Moving beyond a center-focused, top-down-oriented perception of identity politics, this work highlights on the one hand the role and position of a multitude of actors - from grassroots level to mainstream politics - who contribute to the persistence of ethnicization in Malaysia in numerous ways. On the other hand, it also shows where and under which circumstances possibilities for transethnic cooperation arise.

A multi-disciplinary approach, substantiated by empirical data based on qualitative and quantitative methodologies, provides a perspective that moves beyond stereotypical narrations of Malaysia as being constituted by mainly three separate, homogenous groups. At the same time, this book gives a detailed and comprehensive account of political and historical developments and constitutes a rich resource for any Malaysia-related research.

While the focus of this publication lies on Malaysia, the concept of manifestations and implementations of ethnicization provides an analytical framework that can also be applied in the study of ethnicization and identity construction elsewhere in the region and beyond.

1 Introduction

Configurations of ethnicization in Malaysia

In Malaysia we have three major races which have practically nothing in common. Their physiognomy, language, culture and religion differ.… Nothing makes anyone forget the fact of race. So those who say “forget race” are either naive or knaves.

(Mahathir 1970: 175)

Malaysia’s longest serving Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, penned these statements in his infamous “Malay Dilemma” shortly after the watershed events of 1969, commonly referred to as “racial riots.” Having been in political exile back then and expelled from his own party, he was brought back into the fold a few years later and rose to become Prime Minister in about a decade. Some forty years have passed since then and it seems that politicians, including Mahathir, still subscribe to this perception. Given the relative absence of physical violence, they claim that Malaysia’s policies governing – or “managing” – an ethnicized society have been proven right. In addition, this system has been labeled as a “role-model” (Mustapa and Kennedy 2002: 10) for other countries as well.

Looking at the surface, the “facts of race” were and still are omnipresent all this while: Serving as convenient partitions that are often taken as givens, the four stereotypical categories of Malays, Chinese, Indians, and Others have been around since the time of colonial rule, and they have also been used for political expediency since those days, including a seamless “handover” after the country achieved independence. Whenever there are tensions and violent conflicts, these are usually traced back to contestations between ethnicized groups. These contestations are seen as best “managed” by negotiating group interests on an elite level and based on numerical strength rather than quality of arguments or social background. The omnipresent quota system – be it in the field of politics, economy, or education – is one of the results of this approach that assumes that these groups have homogenous interests in how society should be shaped. As a consequence, ethnicized identity has become a central point of reference and has made significant impacts on Malaysia’s political and societal systems.

Therefore it comes as no surprise that bangsa, the Malay expression used for approximating terms such as race¹ or ethnic group, exists in (and on) many forms, even if one is merely registering for a loyalty program in the nearest supermarket chain. Primordial notions of race still dominate discourses in politics and society: from the composition of the ruling coalition, in which bangsa is a – if not the – most important point of reference right down to everyday conversations in which the assertion of one’s own and the other’s bangsa-background is part and parcel of getting to know each other. This environment with its clear-cut notions of homogeneity (whose existence in reality is highly doubtable) leaves limited spaces for those people whom Mahathir denigrates as “naive or knaves.” These can be grassroots activists who reach out for transethnic cooperation,² scholars dealing with the subject academically, politicians in non-ethnic-based parties – or just “ordinary” people who by their own background and experience do not fit in the nicely framed bangsa-boxes.

Thus, the verve with which Mahathir declares race as an essential human feature and belittles those who think otherwise indicates that there appear to be more dimensions than just perceived differences regarding “physiognomy, language, culture and religion.” The centrality of bangsa in so many societal sub-systems in Malaysia – in “economic and education policies – and everything else including the kitchen sink,” as even Razaleigh, former vice-president of the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) put it sarcastically – poses the question of the purposes and functions that are being served and fulfilled thereby.³ These purposes and functions exist not in one distinct environment but rather in various configurations. These are characterized by “chain[s] of events through which objective conditions of economic or political grievances become the basis of political claims justified by reference to a collective identity,” which is referred to as ethnicization (Eder et al. 2002: 17). The analysis of selected configurations of ethnicization will therefore be the scope of this work.

The claim that ethnicity is central to Malaysian politics and policies is nothing new and the world, not even the academic, would not need another analysis that shows where and how ethnicity becomes a bone of contention in Malaysia. However, Nair observes that in scholarly works about nationalism in Malaysia “there are remarkably fewer critical academic analyses of nationalism in Malaysia than there are of political institutions, the state and ruling elites” and suggests that:

one important reason for the relative lack of attention to the political implications of nationalism and its social and cultural dimensions is that for many scholars an analysis of Malayan, and later, Malaysian nationalism, has meant an engagement with Malay politics.

(Nair 1999: 56)

Although she focuses on nationalism, the same can be said about the role of ethnicization: Many scholars go at length into deconstructing the use of ethnie and ethnicity, but fall back on still using these terms to explain the political and societal systems in Malaysia and thereby fail to see how they are embedded in complex cultural and social dimensions. Indeed it is hard to disentangle the manifold ways in which ethnie and ethnicity have become rooted in these systems. Regarding the lack of focus on the ambiguities and inconsistencies, Mandal states that:

[u]ndoubtedly, race has played a crucial role in the making of Malaysia’s party politics and society, though not without displaying significant ambiguities and inconsistencies. Elucidating the instability of the concept and social phenomenon requires a departure from the dominant party political framework of academic and journalistic analyses to the realm of cultural politics. Race wins elections in the country’s party politics (though not without upsets and surprises). It does not, however, rule social and cultural movements with equal success.

(Mandal 2003: 52)

Taking inspirations from these two scholars, the social and cultural dimensions of ethnicization as well as the ambiguities and inconsistencies of the role and function of race and ethnicity are central aspects for researching this subject as they break up dichotomies that are often taken as givens. This leads to questions such as whether the two perspectives on Malaysia, one as a role model and one rife with ethnicized contestations, are mutually exclusive and opposing each other, or whether there are there any connections that might explain the persistence of ethnicization in Malaysia in different terms and concepts, including social and cultural dimensions.

In this book, I examine the backgrounds and impacts of ethnicization on a number of fields and levels, hoping to contribute new perspectives on rationales that seem to be taken as given by politicians and scholars alike who regard Malaysia’s dealing with ethnicization as inevitable or even as a role model. A critical encounter with the concept of ethnicity as well as new analytical categories – the layers of manifestations and implementations of ethnicization – will provide the framework for this approach und underline the process character of ethnicization that leaves behind ascriptive and rather static notions of ethnicity.⁴

When applying this theoretical framework of defining boundaries and identities to Malaysia, it becomes clear that ethnicization did not begin with the installation of the ethnic-based party system in Malaysia, nor will it cease to exist should the Barisan Nasional government be voted out of power. For this reason, a historical perspective on the formation of ethnicization is necessary to explain its persistency. Whereas the colonial powers, especially the British, played a significant role in setting up a divide-and-rule system, the dominant political actors in independent Malaysia did not strive to dismantle this system. However, rather than putting the blame on individual actors or groups that instrumentalize ethnicity in a grand master plan, the framework of manifestations and implementations of ethnicization helps to examine where agency is located and where it is limited. I aim not so much to analyze developments in light of a dominant center or individuals but rather to look at the circumstances under which ethnicized policies are implemented and what interests are involved. Likewise, the perspective of manifestations of ethnicization is taken into account to see where such policies have become core pillars in societal sub-systems and influence and limit how people deal with ethnicization. However, contrary to center-focused perspectives, these influences and limitations apply to all actors involved, including the actors in the center. With this framework, I hope to provide multi-faceted explanations for exuberant ethnicized conflicts such as the emergence of right-wing nationalist groups or overzealous Islamization by analyzing the circumstances in which these emerge and on what manifestations they build, rather than focusing on the role of central powers.

Taking its cue from Nair, this work does not look so much at the policies and impacts of selected Prime Ministers (and can therefore cannot provide catchy titles as in “the Mahathir years” or “the Abdullah administration”). Nor does it focus specifically on prominent events (such as the events of 13 May or the elections in 2008). The focus will rather be put on identity formation processes that surround these actors and events, thereby shifting the focus also to developments that are less prominent but pivotal nevertheless.

Identity formation processes become apparent in a number of fields: for example in the political sphere, where a competitive authoritarian system limits democratic contestations while an ethnicized party system is further limiting the availability of points of reference beyond ethnicized identities. They also can be identified in the economic domain, despite the impact of economic globalization, in which ethnicized affirmative action policies have become a central tool to channel competition for resources within the boundaries of ethnicized, rather than for example class-based, demands. In these areas, I argue, ethnicization has already become manifest because it has turned into a central reference point in the respective societal sub-system. At times, these manifestations of ethnicization have also led to an environment in which they are taken as given or an unavoidable routine, which further limits possibilities for a critical engagement of these developments. This also affects political and societal actors who aim to define themselves outside or beyond ethnicized demarcations. However, even though they may work on issues which may not be related to concrete aspects of ethnicized policies for example, they will still have to deal with ethnicized claims to a large degree, as these constitute a social, political, and economic reality for all Malaysians. Therefore, groups or movements that strive to transgress ethnicized boundaries in their work face an even more uphill battle.

On the other hand, processes of ethnicized identity formation take on concrete forms and develop into practices, which, however, are not necessarily static but can vary in their direction depending on the circumstances. These I refer to as implementations of ethnicization. Since in Malaysia questions regarding language and religion are recurring points of reference in ethnicized identity formation processes as well as contestations, their functions and modes of ethnicized policy implementations will also have to be addressed. Language and religion further constitute central pillars in political discourses and go beyond repulsion of what is often termed “Western influence” or referred to as cultural globalization. In this respect, questions about how aspects of these discourses become implementations of ethnicization and sustain the ethnicized political system as well as the competitive authoritarian regime need to be raised, as well as whether other aspects of identity, such as religion, become ethnicized and may replace ethnicized identities based on bangsa.⁵

These ethnicized discourses provide a significant framework for concrete implementations of ethnicized identity constructions that need to be analyzed – for example the dichotomy between inclusivist notions such as Bangsa Malaysia as an all-encompassing racial identification on one side and exclusivist concepts such as ketuanan Melayu, which underlines the dominance of ethnicized Malays, on the other side. This kind of conceptual parallelism is characteristic of a number of forms of ethnicization in Malaysia. It is therefore necessary to investigate if apparent contradictions are vital for providing the raison d’être for the Barisan Nasional government and its component parties and if under these circumstances substantial “unity” could possibly ever be achieved.

However, despite all target-orientation, implementations of ethnicization can be influenced only up to a certain degree and may develop a life on their own, eventually even becoming challenges for those political actors who implemented them in the first place. These two aspects – beneficial and obstructive – that implementations of ethnicization can have for political actors need to be addressed, in order to underline the claim that ethnicization in the political system is not merely a top-down approach that can be safely managed and controlled.

The outcome of these ambiguities can be traced in impacts of ethnicization. For example, what appears to be akin to flip-flop policies in the economic field is not necessarily irrational, as implementations of ethnicization in labor migration policies underline. In examining the – economically largely counterproductive – stigmatizations and deportations of undocumented migrant workers in a critical discourse analysis, the question is addressed how the creation of the “outside other” has sustained ethnicization by creating a feeling of belonging among Malaysia’s ethnicized groups.

The question of how effective ethnicization affects society cannot be addressed in respect of society as a whole, of course. For that reason, a small sample has been identified in the form of university students from University Sains Malaysia (USM) to be at least able to test several factors that work in favor of ethnicization. Taking the mentioned constraints as given, this sample is used to carry out a quantitative analysis of the impact of ethnicization on society because students often move from their hometown to the university and become exposed to a setting in which ethnicized groups need to interact with each other. In this respect a limited before-and-after comparison can be applied. Besides language and religion, whose importance has been underlined before, the questions of social class and geographical background will be taken into account too, to get a better understanding of which factors determine modes of interaction across as well as within ethnicized groups.

Last but not least, the question of impacts of ethnicization needs to be addressed to social actors and activists as well. They often work in environments where the transgression of ethnicized cleavages is necessary in order to achieve their respective goals. The factors and possibilities that impede or facilitate transethnic cooperation will be examined, and how selected actors deal with these circumstances.

It can be assumed that, as often, the answers to these questions will not yield answers as clear-cut as Mahathir’s introductory quote. When even political and economic upheavals such as the politico-economic crisis in 1998/1999, the elections in 2008, or the impact of the financial crisis in 2009/2010 do not change the ethnicized system substantially, it means that the configurations of ethnicization are much more complex than one might assume beforehand. Nevertheless, I hope that the analytic framework introduced in this book might shed some extra spots of light on this entanglement of ethnicized groups, policies, and discourses.

Current state of research

Scholarly works on race and ethnie exist in abundance. The Library of Congress alone lists more than 10,000 titles that carry the word “race,” still well over 7,000 containing the term “ethnic,” and almost 3,000 on “ethnicity.” Certainly, there are a number of contributions that problematize the genesis and history of the terms race and ethnicity. However, browsing through the titles shows that a good number of these publications deal with various forms of ethnic conflicts and the political, social, or societal position of an ethnic group within a given society. This creates the impression that societies consisting of various ethnies are by default likely to be prone to conflicts. As these are mostly scholarly publications, it is assumed that none of these works carries the intention to reify or essentialize concepts of ethnicity. Quite a few are probably sensitive to the relevance of social class in what Khoo characterizes as “a ‘class-within-community’ approach which investigates class while holding ethnicity ‘constant’” (Khoo B. T. 1995: xix). For Malaysia, he mentions for example works such as Arasaratnam’s (1979) Indians in Malaysia and Singapore, Loh’s (1988) Beyond the Tin Mines, and Syed Husin’s (1975) Malay Peasant Society and Leadership as “sharing an underlying appreciation of the ethnic-and-class origins of Malaysia’s plural society and its colonial division of labour.” However, although I share the recognition of the social realities that derive from concepts of race and ethnicity, the lack of a critical approach to these concepts may pose an analytical weakness in the works mentioned by Khoo as well as in others. Mandal argues that in most cases “a disciplined and sustained critique of the very notion of ‘race’ [is absent,] with the consequence of affirming the prevailing racialised formula of party politics defined by the tripartite division of ‘Chinese,’ ‘Indian’ and ‘Malay’ constituencies” (Mandal 2003: 56). He states that, on one hand, not questioning the dubious origins of race, or merely replacing the term with ethnicity while sticking to racial classifications, does not provide the necessary distance that prevents the reinforcement of these concepts. On the other hand, ethnicization as a concept is often traced back to colonial periods and it is thus shown how it was socially constructed, but the terms race and ethnicity themselves maintain a questionable stability in these works. In the end this not only leads to the stabilization of ethnicized groups and identities; it also serves to underpin the idea that so-called multi-ethnic societies are relatively unstable, because primordial notions of race and ethnicity suggest stable bonds within et...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary
• 1. Introduction: Configurations of ethnicization in Malaysia
• 2. Reconceptualizing ethnicized identities
• 3. History of ethnicization in Malaysia
• 4. Manifestations of ethnicization
• 5. Implementations of ethnicization
• 6. Impacts of ethnicization
• 7. Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index