Ethnicity And Ethnic Relations In Malaysia

With Malaysia in the throes of sweeping political change, academic turned political activist Dr Syed Husin Ali traces how ethnicity has been manipulated, since Independence, by Malaysian politicians for their own gain to the detriment of the masses. In articles spanning more than three decades, collected for the first time here, he dissects the origins, fallacies and destructive nature of ethnic politics in Malaysia and examines the issue of class versus ethnicity or race. It is time, he argues, for an end to race- or ethnic-based politics. In this new edition, the author has updated the book in terms of facts and events, and included two more articles.

Hock Tong Cheu received his Masters and Ph.D degrees from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and had lectured in Anthropology and Sociology in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia from 1976 till mid-1995. From mid-1995 till 2000, he taught in the Malay Studies Department and the Southeast Asian Studies Center, National University of Singapore. He was a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore in 1984 and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, from August 1987 to October 1988. He has made several in-depth studies of the Nine Emperor Gods Spirit-Medium Cults as well as the Chinese Locality Saints, the Nadugong, and the Malay Keramat in Southeast Asia. Dr Cheu, who is effectively trilingual in English, Chinese and Malay, wrote prolifically, and had contributed numerous articles in all three languages to professional and academic journals, magazines and newspapers. He had also presented numerous academic papers for discussion in local and international conferences.

This publication brings together the work of several writers in documenting and understanding the consequences of state-formation on ethnicity in Malaysia and Singapore, thirty years after the two nations went their separate paths.