Definition Of `Malay` Depends On Who Is Using Says Expert

Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam - Malay and "Malayness" are alternatively highlighted and marginalised when used in trying to determine national identities, depending on who is using the terms and why, said an expert on Malay culture yesterday.

Dr Mark Woodward from the Department of Religious Studies at Arizona State University made this assertion at the final day of the international conference on Malay Culture and Society, themed "Elevating Malay Culture in the era of Globalisation", at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD).

Dr Woodward delivered his talk on "Reflections on Malay and Malayness in the Discourse of Nationality and Culture in Southeast Asia", where his presentation explored the interrelation of "emic" (from within a culture) and etic (from outside a culture) understandings of the category "Malay".

`As an etic, or analytic category, Malay can be employed in reference to a diversity of peoples defined on the basis of shared linguist and cultural criteria," said the ethnographic researcher.

These commonalities inform the ways in which Malay and "Malayness" are used as emic categories in the construction of ethnicity and nationality in "malay" nations of contemporary Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei) and those in which "Malays" are significant minorities (Burma, Cambodia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam).

Dr Woodward said that comparative analysis points to the conclusion that emic definitions of Malay and Malayness emerge from etic and pseudo-etic constructions that figured significantly in colonial discourse and the construction and imagination of colonial states.

"The salience of `Malayness` in nationalist discourse is a product of colonial strategy to define and legitimise empire as an embodiment of cultural reality," he said.

"Part of the process of nation building is the management of ethnicity. The question is not `is a state going to manage ethnicity` but `how is the state going to choose to manage ethnicity`, either blurring of ethnic lines, simplify complex ethnicities or perhaps establish a single national ethnicity, and so on," he said.

The politicisation of Malay and Malayness in post-colonial states exaggerates and trivialises cultural distinctiveness of Malay people and peoples.

"Difference is trivialised for purposes of constructing national and sub-national identities in Malaysia and Singapore. In Indonesia and in nations in which Malays are politically marginal, "Malayness" is marked by its absence in nationalist discourse, but figures significantly in the construction and marginalisation of diversity.

"It also figures significantly in the sometimes confrontational transnational discourse of cultural nationalism," he said.

The International Conference ended yesterday, after three days of talks covering topics related to Islam, nationalism and identity.

During the conference a total of 26 working papers were delivered by 27 experts on Malay culture.  -- Courtesy of The Brunei Times (Al-Haadi Abu Bakar)

Source: http://www.brudirect.com
Photo: http://malayland.com

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