Our Culture Our Future

By : Ding Choo Ming

Abstract

Culture and heritage have spawned significant attention in development the last few decades and will pave the way for an authentic dialogue among people on issues that affect their lives and impact on their future. This is an indication of a shift in development thinking and not just  rhetoric battle between the conventional and modern approaches to development? This article tries to re-examine and analyze the claims and assumptions about the role of culture and heritage in furthering Malaysian development towards achieving Wawasan 2020 following the setting up of the Ministry of Culture, Art and Heritage in Abdullah Ahmad Badawi`s administration. It hopes to spur further reflection and exploration on the issues. Only through this process of examination and criticism we  expect to identify more possibilities culture and  heritage can offer interactive communication on the issues why many individuals and countries have succeeded, but others failed. Is it because success is determined mainly by individual initiatives, working hard, willing to learn, open to new ideas, continually developing their skills and have positive attitude towards life? How can then government policy contribute to the improvement in the lives of millions of people in one country, but not the other? These issues have intrigued and puzzled the individuals and government leaders throughout history. While the Wawasan 2020 seems to say that the best is yet to come, we are habitually reminded in annual UMNO, MCA, MIC and other political parties general assemblies of our past, culture and heritage. Our future could certainly not be founded on the dominant pattern of the colonial history which made our society compartmentalized.

1. Introduction

1.1 Since independence, Malaysia has recorded impressive growth in all fields. There has been vast improvement in the lives of millions of Malaysians. We are now embarking on achieving Wawasan 2020, initiated by Mahathir Mohamad, to make us strong, democratic, united, peaceful and prosperous. In our quest for that, there are host of questions need serious soul searching. Among them, as posed by Foong (1999) are: Can we sustain our growth  to we enter the 21^st century with many unprecedented changes with IT, globalization and capitalism pushing all the countries moving towards a single free world market? How does it work?  It is self-regulating and self-correcting?  Is there anything we can do to control the free market or change it? Is it not the rich getting richer and poor poorer with the former continue to dominate the latter? Is it not that the poor countries going to have undue interference from the rich? How much more poor countries need to deregulate without hurting their abilities to grow? How to ensure that our economy is always kept in order? Though futuristic, Wawasan 2020 is a new recipe to create a new values system, involving modernization, which Daine Ying (quoted by Foong 1999: 327) defines as continuously adjusting and responding to an ever-changing world. It is certainly another example of “A New Asian Way” in Foong`s thinking. It is something to be worked for, a dream to be fulfilled. To do that, we have to be strong, resilient and willing to change.

1.2 Until the early 1960s, the answer to problem of underdevelopment was conceptualized as a simple and almost mechanistic process of uprooting traditional institutions and worldviews, and transplanting Western economic and political systems and values to the so-called Third World countries. Popularly known as the modernization paradigm, it viewed development as a unilinear evolutionary process of catching up with the developed Western countries (Guppy 1992). Thus is emphasized the measurement of oberservable, quantitative, economic differences between poor and rich countries. Development then implied that poor countries would gradually assume the qualities of modernity in the West. But, nation building is not following the West. This may result in poor and developing countries end up as copies of models of the West which may not have all the answers to all development problems (Main 2001; Ding 2002).

No matter how complicated nation building and development is, fundamental issues have to be addressed:  What makes individuals successful? What makes family strong? What makes countries prosper?  How to sustain the growth? Is nation building involving everybody working together for the well-being and prosperity of the society? How to do it if there is no leadership to give it the necessary push?  How to sustain the momentum and growth without the participation of the general public? Is Wawasan 2020 the right recipe, the right choice, the right values to meet the rising expectations of modernization in the 21st century and beyond? 

For a long time, Wawasan 2020 and Rukun Negara, are assumed to be good for our multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious country. Is it not that what is good for the country must be good for the individuals?  All Malaysians are the same deep within our hearts, despite difference in skin color, beliefs and ethnic groups. Seen in this light, there is no conflict between Wawasan 2020 and Rukun Negara, encompassing respect for learning, openness to new ideas, self-discipline, respect for others and the aspirations and yearning of every Malaysian wanting to have a happy, secure and healthy family in a prosperous, democratic and peaceful nation.  United, Malaysia, a small country, is with a great hope for the future! The age of complacency has not passed, despite great improvements made in recent years in all fields. In our quest for improvement, and to emerge as modern and democratic, and to be more progressive and prosperous, All Malaysia must be proactive, willing to learn and cultivate additional intellectual, technological and organizational capacity.

1.3 Economic development in third word countries until recently has been associated with industrialization, importing technology, particularly IT and ICT from the West. Many leaders in Afro-Asia and Latin America believe that Western technology may pay the way for developing countries to leap-frog to become knowledge-based societies without passing through the various stages of industrialization. This is because technology is no longer a luxury, but an affordable necessity. It brings advantages in quality, speed, control and flexibility, while being at the same time cost-effective. Many appropriate technologies, especially IT, can be adapted in developing countries to meet specific requirements (Wang & Dissanyake 1982). Indeed there is a correlation between poverty eradication and access to information.  In emphasizing Internet is increasingly becoming a prerequisite for economic development, World Bank agues that the more telephone lines per capita the greater the FDI per person.

It is true in a way that the competitiveness of developing countries depend also on their ability to exchange information globally. This is because, companies that can quickly access information about conditions in export markets can respond quickly to changing prices. Cocoa Boards in Ghana and Ivory Coast, for instance, need to have Internet to tie their cocoa producers to customers in world markets. In addition, Internet can also help in opening new markets (Main 2001). In theory, information infrastructure can help to provide remote rural communities to access doctors and schools. It is a fact too that while the developed countries are digitizing, building portal and databases, libraries in developing countries can  use Internet to access ready made information (wang & Dissanayke 1984). But, a question to ask: whether investment in technology in poor countries has inherently led to better lives for the people? At the moment many poor countries are struggling with just providing enough food, adequate medical and education facilities. The reality is the rich in poor countries is getting richer, while the poor poorer. Is technology empowerment or imperialism?  Development in the next 10 years will tell us if there is indeed strength in the argument that information itself is food, cloth and house and can produce wealth that can be converted into food, clothing and shelter (Gisele & Shaid 1992).

1.4 For majority of people, particularly the rural folk, in developing countries to benefit from modernization, development programs have to involve them. The basis and starting point in improving the quality of life of low income group must be the people themselves. Until recently, development programs were often approached by governments through top-down strategy. Too much overemphasizing on Western technology and overlooking the importance of local culture and  heritage in the name of modernity and development, has  resulted in the disruption of traditional economic and social systems, and worse, led to environmental degradation and even loss of habitat (Compton 1980) . In its wake is a new challenge: balancing economic development and cultural and environmental protection, as rural communities still exist as separate and distinct underdeveloped pockets, very different from the urban areas as in the colonial past.

In the past, rural folks generally and orang asli particularly were largely considered a hindrance to development. They were seen as backward, reluctant to change or even unwilling to respond to changes in the face of Western technological advances. But, after persuasion, more and more farmers are willing to use industrial fertilizers and machinery that reduce labor and increase marketable yields. Like others using the foreign technology and invention in urban areas, they may be perceived as markers of success, and their stories as modern developments.  Sillitoe (1998: 225) explains that one of the problems in development is how the people can be expected to participate when they do not know what the ultimate benefits and their alternatives are.

Development must be seen as a process that must enlarge the range of people`s choices. In this way, development can be said to be sustainable as it has become self-perpetuating, self-regulating and beneficial. But, the building of expensive ultra-modern infrastructures believed to be capable of providing quick solutions to problems are proved wrong. For development to be sustainable, it is all about benefiting the people. Their sluggish response to the use of foreign technology and invention may be because the rate of change in their attitudes, values, beliefs and social organization does not approach the speed of the changes taking place in technology. Nevertheless, participatory approaches are the most appropriate measures to bring development, particularly in rural areas, where over 70% of the population of the developing country live. Here, good leadership, good resource management, an effective flow of information are still crucial. Thus, Guppy (1992:35) has rightly explained that modernization of these people is to involve them, to expand their choices and focus on accommodating differences, rather than accelerating uniformity and congruence.

The failure of development strategies brought home the fact that for development to succeed, beneficiaries of program must be the disadvantaged, who are the means and ends of social and economic development. So far, many research studies show that the effectiveness of Western models in generating development and changes fall far short of expectations. Findings indicated that Western theories had their greatest effects on the more advantaged countries composed of literate, high income and urban segment of the population. In short, Western theories have widened the gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged.  Therefore, it is useful for us to look deep into the expectations and aspirations of the rural folks, and look at the values of these people and change them, if necessary. It is the right values make success last. All these factors are complimentary and constitute the keys to the continuing dynamism of a community and also the sustainability of a project.  As society is made up of individuals, it is the majority of the people that can give the development project the dynamism it needs to grow. Of course, leadership, timing and brilliant ideas are the factors to give it a push, or the right conditions to flourish (Foong 1999).

2. Interest in Local Culture and Heritage

2.1 Like many other countries, leaders in Malaysia have followed pattern of Western experience in development after independence. This approach has proved successful in some aspects, but unsuccessful in the others. Thus, after 50 years, we still have problems of environmental deterioration, uneven regional development, rapid urbanization, lack of sustainability of the development projects and worse “world class infrastructure and third world mentality” as Abdullah Ahmad Badawi commented in 2002. This means that there are still a lot to be done, including to change the attitude of the populace.  The problem of lack of sustainability has led many people to argue that in order to ensure a more socially and ecologically sound approach to development, it is necessary to understand, respect and utilize local culture and heritage. But, so far development theories from the West have failed as they have tended to ignore local needs, expectations, values, cultures and history which were not familiar to many policy makers and implementers in the early days, as they were educated and trained in the West. Nevertheless, references to the interest in local history, culture and heritage, were frequent in public speeches and in newspaper articles by our academics and new generation of policy makers seeking for identity in our nation building beginning in the 1970s. To them, Wang Gung-wu, Khoo Kay Kim, Zainal Abidin Wahid and Shamsul Amri Baharuddin, to mention a few, history is more than an academic matter. It has to be viewed in terms of its meaning relevant to our present and future growth and development.  

Searching for our roots and identity not only to rediscover our glory in the past, but also  represents our reaction against the European-centric  history by colonial administrators-turned-scholars and officers.  The editing and writing of colonial history of the Malay world  on the part of colonial masters to minimize the greatness of the Malay rulers and their empires have contributed to the growth of national sentiment in the Malay history ever since.  Graff (1961), MacGreggor (1961), Harrison (1961), (Cowan 1961) and Farish  Noor (2002-4), among the others,  commented that  the treatment of  myths and legends in Malay historical writings  by European colonial “scholars” had offended Malay nationalist susceptibilities, and provided weapons for us claiming that it was part of the technique of Western colonialism to teach people to despise our pre-colonial past, instead of stimulating our  pride and  desire for respect.

2.2. History is also a part of culture and heritage which generally include all intangible and tangible cultural practices, intellectual contributions and the complex set of knowledge and techniques created, nurtured and refined around specific conditions of the people and communities. It is in this context that Malaysian heritage refers to history, culture and the others developed within the Malay, Chinese, Indian and other communities inhabiting the country and passed on as part of our cultural identity. But, it is sad to find that heritage and culture were widely dismissed in development program in the past. Reasons quoted are they are quaint (with no currency or modern utility), quackery (it never worked or is probably carcinogenic) and quits (well on its way to extinction) (Daes 1993 & 1995; Guppy 1992).

It is no longer so now. They are a dynamic force in development and modernization in the rural areas as  the technique, knowledge and information embedded in the  culture and heritage lend themselves to ready or straightforward extraction and application, with some modification.  It is because heritage and culture refer to knowledge, technology and information acquired by local peoples over the generations through direct contact with their environment.  This knowledge, including an intimate and detailed understanding of plants, animals and natural phenomena, the development and use of appropriate technologies for hunting, fishing, agriculture and forestry, and a holistic knowledge of `world view` parallels the scientific disciplines of ecology and environmental studies by scientists (Daes 1993 & 1995).

They are imbedded in a dynamic, multidimensional universe in which cultural, economic, environmental and political factors interact, intersect and influence one another.  In practice, their knowledge and know- how are virtually inseparable.  Though culture, history and heritage is traditional in the sense that they are rooted in the past, they  adapt, borrow and innovate and thus build upon what has been learned by previous generations, thus they are relevant and useful, not only in the past, but also to the present.  Their usefulness and strength to the rural folks and orang asli are that they are a mixture of knowledge, technique and skills created within the communities through innovation and experimentation and also the integration of knowledge, technique and skills acquired from outside. In short, there is a vast store of “indigenous knowledge”, far greater than any one person could acquire in a single lifetime, from history, culture and heritage available in the rural areas to mankind. But, most of them are not documented, thus visible in publications in libraries, museum, or archives. They are still the authoritative sources for the history of Malay world. But, research was limited as very few of them have been studied.

2.3 The dilemmas and comments on development as an elitist and top-down enterprise, benefiting mainly certain advantaged groups in certain areas, instead of widespread popular participation by majority of the people have led to the consideration of rural folk, culture and heritage as alternative new ideas in development. Gradually, the  emphasis has shifted from the uniform, centralized, high cost, highly professional, state-controlled  development towards multiple, small scale, local, muti-interactional,  de-institutionalised, horizontal links in development at all levels of society. Scholars play an important role in the debate on Western development theories and that surround the modernization paradigm they pointed out in research that the disintegration of cultural traditions has always spawned chaos and affected development program, instead of a smooth transition to modernization in many developing countries.

Since then, scholars and development policy makers have begun to conceive the roles of culture, history and heritage in development, which in itself is an integrated, multidimensional and dialectical process. Acknowledging the desirable and indispensable roles of culture in development program, Wang and Dissayanake argue that culture can provide the necessary support for imported technology to grow (1982: 6) and believe that once the growth takes place, constant interaction between local culture and foreign technology will bring changes to both, the way that total Westernization did not take place in the most developed nation in Asia, Japan, which is very Westernized and Japanese.  In Japan, local culture and Western technology manage to adapt, blend and survive, and thus providing a firm ground for Japanese to adopt Western technology faster and maintained Japanese identity successfully. In short, to foster technology transfer, a sound understanding of local culture is needed.

The increasing attention culture and heritage are receiving by academics and the development institutions have prompted our premier, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to set up a new ministry: Ministry of Culture, Art and Heritage in his new cabinet announced on 27^th March 2004, after realizing too that culture is our future. This change in development thinking is also partly because local culture and heritage have contributed enormously to economy in a range of industries, including arts and crafts, tourism, traditional medicine, biotechnology, advertising, film and music. Local cultural industry, especially tourism, is nowadays a multi-million dollar business in Thailand, China, India and Spain. More than half of the overseas tourists to these countries are attracted to their culture and heritage, including watching performance, listening to music, enjoying theatre and dance. Value of sales from   souvenirs to tourists is not only big, but also on the rise every year.

Directly and indirectly, rural communities all over the world can and will continue to make important contributions to our economy, in terms of agriculture, pharmaceutical industry and biotechnology. The most famous example is the anti-malarial drug quinine, derived from the bark of cinchona tree. Policy makers in Malaysia too are beginning to recognize the need to understand the available knowledge systems and decision-making processes of rural folks including their traditional roles as small-scale agricultural producers in achieving national food self-sufficiency, besides the fact that Malaysia also stores many valuable but largely untapped, reservoir of indigenous agricultural and natural resources. Our hope lies also on rapid scientific progress in genetic engineering which will increase the demand for plants, animals and fungi developed, nurtured or known by the rural folks, who are generally poor.

A large proportion of the drugs and pharmaceutical products in use today are derived from plants in our forest. At least 7,000 medicinal compounds used in Western medicine came from plants in Afro-Asia and Latin America. Though the value of indigenous of local knowledge to the biotechnology industry has not been estimated, a growing number of scientists are aware that our rural communities continue to harbor useful information about the properties of biological materials that may one day lead to new breakthroughs in medicine or crop production. For instance, Kacip  Fatimah, has attracted so much attention in recent years. Research teams in many universities and agencies in Malaysia are carrying research to verify claims that the above-mentioned traditional Malay medicinal plant is a post-natal and sexual performance enhancer. They are looking into the chemicals which make up the plant and hopefully will soon come up with a value-added product that will propel Malaysia entry into the lucrative global phyomedicine market. Its success will help this plant to enjoy extra value, like ginseng or ginkgo in China, Japan and South Korea. Awareness of the importance of this plant will also lead more Malaysians to conserve it as it is threatened in the wild.

2.4 The socio-economic importance of heritage and culture in development has gone unnoticed for so long in Malaysia, partly because they are informal and disorganized, thus they operate often invisibly, within the context of their immediate agri-ecological environment, and partly because documentation of local cultural heritage has been done by foreign researchers, scientists, biologists, agriculturalists, anthropologists, archaeologists since the colonial days. Presented in varying formats (books, articles, films, theses, audio recordings, photographs, manuscripts, records, dairies), and stored in archives, museums and academic institutions heavily guarded, they are not easily available (Ding 2004). invaluable and unique records of some of the forgotten traditions, heritage, culture, techniques and history.

Until today, we do not own much of the information about us, whereas as copyright owners, they were and are still free to use the material, however they wish. The colonial masters then regarded indigenous knowledge, history, culture and heritage were free for them, part of the deserving bounty of the colonizers (Daes 1993 &1995; Moorcroft & Byrne 1996). Cowan (1961), Farish (2002-2004),  Graff (1961), Harrison (1961) and MacGragor (1961), among many others have commented that Malaysians and Indonesian have little or no say about how historical materials were represented, accessed, used and  disseminated during the colonial days. Despite the removal of some cultural properties and artifacts, and the discredit to Malay history and culture during the long 400 years of European colonization, Malay and Malaysian cultures are still intact and vibrant. Thus, it is dangerous and myopic to hear complaint from those who are disappointed with modernization and colonial rule that apart from Malay language, everything else is either changed or has been taken away by European colonial masters.

The truth is Malay and Malaysian tradition, history and heritage are inextricably linked to our land, our peoples and our associated cultures. For many years, international agencies, including World Health Organization, UNESCO and World Bank have been collecting, documenting and preserving information about us. It is hoped that Ministry of Culture, Art and Heritage with the cooperation of other ministries and research institutes will systematically collect, document, preserve and disseminate our local, culture, tradition and history, including that of our rural folks. As implied earlier, they are the best, and are noted for their special characteristics: cost-effective, user-friendly and easily communicated and most importantly, have been used in all fields of our rural communities since before colonial days. Considering the fact that they lend themselves easily to immediate extraction and application, they must be made available digitally through Internet, databases and portal (Ding 2004) to policy makers, development implementers, researchers and the others. Back-up copies must be stored on international, regional and national archives, libraries and for further research and adoptions.

We may need to create a Knowledge Mausoleum in Malaysia now, considering the attention is now turned to knowledge generation in the emerging global knowledge, where knowledge capital is equally important as monetary and other kinds of capital.  Having survived for centuries in economically and socially sustainable ways, the knowledge the rural folks and orang asli possess on their survival and development is now recognized as a valuable resource in the cause of sustainable development. The concept of  sustainable development, that is development that meets present needs without compromising the option of future generations (Sillitoe 1998),  has brought development and environment into one logical framework during the past decade, with growing evidence indicating a strong relationship between culture and heritage and sustainable development. As this knowledge can offer new models for development that are both ecologically and socially sound, it is that the Ministry of Culture, Art and Heritage will document, preserve, disseminate bring this knowledge to the fore and to be integrated into new development theory and to potentially reap socio-economic benefits for the communities where such knowledge resides, besides introducing policies to protect and ensure the continuation of our local culture.  

3.  Conclusion

3.1 Malays are perhaps the most researched people in Malaysia. But, in the past, research on them and their culture was generally conducted by colonial administrators-turned-scholars, ex-soldiers, missionary and other researchers, famed as linguists, archeologists, dialectologists, historians or generally orientalists (Dutch Scholarship, 2001; French Scholarship 2001 & Nordic Scholarship 2002). Many are invaluable and unique records of forgotten traditions, community histories, vital to the Malay sense of identity and equally important to the understanding of the interaction between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, though some were factually wrong, misconstrued, misconceived, reported out-of-context and brought discredit to the Malays. Much of the latter had caused unhappiness and dissatisfaction, especially the history books by colonial administrators with Europeans in the foreground and Malays in the background, following collapse of Malay sultanates in Palembang, Acheh, Melaka, Johore and Pattan, to mention a few. Examples are The History of Sumatra (18..) by Marsden and The History of Java (18.. ) by Raffles and the History of Malay Classical Literature (1936) by Winstedt.  With the Malay traditional myths and beliefs studied unethically and the greatness of the past Malay empires and sultanates belittled, many students laugh and ask why Malay historical writings in the past was so different from those by the Europeans. Such questions have put many teachers in a difficult position.

Under the stimulus of nationalism, much effort has been made to rewrite Malaysian history during Western dominance, which mainly recorded European colonial activities and administration. During 400 years of colonial rule, Malay societies had undergone profound changes with the history of the British and Dutch East India Companies became the frame of reference. Nevertheless, very warm tribute needs to be paid to the other outstanding contributions to the Malay world scholarship by other European orientalists. One Example is Francois Valentijn. His Oud and Nieuw Oost-Indien appeared between 1724 and 1726 in eight heavy folio volumes, with 1050 illustrations and maps, is a large, illustrated encyclopedia of the Netherlands Indies, mainly Ambon, Banda and Ternate. We salute him for so assiduously collected the materials for this gigantic work from his arrival at Batavia in 1685. The others are Tome Pire`s Suma Oriental and Manoel Godinho de Eredia`s Report on the Golden Chersonese and the Description of Malacca, Meridinal India and Cathay. Besides a visit to Java in 1513, Pires lived in Malacca from 1512 to 1515. Similarly we must not ignore the itineraries from German officials and soldiers in the service of the East India Company. They reported much that Dutchmen omitted. Some of them were published by M. Nijhoff between 1930 and 1932.

3.2 True, the arrival of European rule, spearheaded by the British and Dutch East India Company, had brought with it not only political, but also societal control.  The fall of Malay­  powers Malacca, the defeat of Johor-Riau and the domestication of Jogjakarta dan Surakarta had contributed to the growing sense of pessimism and defeatism that slowly worked its way into the collective Malay consciousness (Farish A Noor 2002). What matter worse for the self-esteem of the Malays was that Europeans  had not only defeated them by using techniques, skills and technologies that were alien to them, but also had introduced new modes of production, transport, agriculture and warfare, unknown to them. As this process of penetration and colonization progressed, the Malay world was opened up, studied, categorized and finally quarantined, within the colonizer`s order of knowledge. Raffles, Brookes, Hurgronje. Swettenham, Clifford and other colonial administrators took to the task of regulating and compartmentalizing the Malay world within their own ethnocentric. Since then, the architecture of Malay houses and dietary habits began to change, with Malay men of elite class began to wear suits. Slowly and steadily, more and more Malay traditions were seen to go out in the photographs hanging in the house. Nevertheless, Farish A. Noor (2002) is optimistic of a number of lasting legacies the civilization of the Malay Archipelago has bestowed the world: the Malay World was the focal point for the meeting of civilizations and cultures from all over Asia, thus  Malay civilization bears the traces of  the early encounters between Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese, Islamic, European and indigenous cultures.

3.4 Now, our greatest hope lies in our history, culture and heritage society in addition our rich natural resources. As we are looking for roots, identity amid modernization in this global age, with the future belongs to countries whose people can make the productive use of information, knowledge and technology, our history, culture and heritage will be our currency for the future. As knowledge is power so is IT.  The two are ever expanding. Thus, our readily to learn and change is vital to keep our nation competitive, strong and prosperous. In this future world, our history, culture and heritage will play an increasing relevant role. In the past, history, culture and heritage were seen as apolitical and non-economic. That was inaccurate.  Now, culture, history and heritage are beginning to be utilized in the development process, supplementing the conventional approaches that development processes always require technology transfer from countries that are perceived as more advanced. 

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Ding Choo Ming, Principal Research Fellow Institute of Malay World & Civilization, National University of Malaysia, 43600 Bangi

Credit photo : nyc.netblogs.com

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