Tudung

THE TUDUNG ANTHOLOGY is a women-only anthology featuring essays, fiction and comics. This is a book about a piece of cloth, and how it is able to weave its way into the hearts of people, causing multiple and different chains of reactions.This book aims to shed light on the bigger picture, and the deeper meaning that comes with a person’s choice to either keep it or discard it, giving us a different perspective to consider our side before making assumptions and drawing conclusions. (Matahari Books)

People within the Malay world hold strong but diverse opinions about the meaning of the word Melayu, which can be loosely translated as Malayness. Questions of whether the Filipinos are properly called "e;Malay"e;, or the Mon-Khmer speaking Orang Asli in Malaysia, can generate heated debates. So too can the question of whether it is appropriate to speak of a kebangsaan Melayu (Malay as nationality) as the basis of membership within an aspiring postcolonial nation-state, a political rather than a cultural community embracing all residents of the Malay states, including the immigrant Chinese and Indian population.In Melayu: The Politics, Poetics and Paradoxes of Malayness, the contributors examine the checkered, wavering and changeable understanding of the word Melayu by considering hitherto unexplored case studies dealing with use of the term in connection with origins, nations, minority-majority politics, Filipino Malays, Riau Malays, Orang Asli, Straits Chinese literature, women's veiling, vernacular television, social dissent, literary women, and modern Sufism. Taken as a whole, this volume offers a creative approach to the study of Malayness while providing new perspectives to the studies of identity formation and politics of ethnicity that have wider implications beyond the Southeast Asian region.

1. 1 Researching the global everyday of women activists 1. 1 Researching the global everyday of women activists: Experiencing and doing globalisation Going through the broad spectrum of globalisation research and literature, one might be astonished at how much it assumes the force of global change, and how little of this literature demonstrates this force in an empirically grounded way. This study, being based on six months of empirical research in Malaysia in 2004, sets out to counter this lack of thick description of globalisation processes. It takes up the challenge of researching the “global everyday” (Appadurai 2000, 18) of civil society actors in Malaysia and focuses on how social activists belonging to different branches of the women’s movement selectively app- priate, transform and even create global meanings and materialise them in local practices. The methodological endeavour of combining globalisation research and ethnography has been taken up by a diversity of authors. Burawoy and his research team have developed a complex methodological framework by focusing on the experiential dimensions of globalisation. They want to produce a “grounded globalisation” or “perspectives on globalisations from below” (Burawoy 2000b, 338, 341). This perspective is very fruitful, as the notion of experiencing globalisation as “forces, connections, and imaginations” (Burawoy et al. eds. 2000) relocates the global in the local and ties both together in mutual constitution.

Religious and ethno-religious issues are inherent in many multiethnic and multi-religious societies. Singapore society is no exception. It has long been multiethnic, multicultural and multi-religious, being at the crossroads of many major and minor civilizations, cultures and traditions, and its religious diversity continues to develop in the current contexts of growing religiosity, religious change and conflict often in the name of religion. Despite this background, there is lack of in-depth knowledge, nuanced understanding and regular dialogue about religions and the meanings of living in a multi-religious world. This volume covering major themes of Singapore's religious landscape, religion in schools and among the young, religion in the media, religious involvement in social services, and interfaith issues and interaction fills important gaps in the knowledge and understanding of Singapore's religious diversity and complexity. A collective effort of researchers and practitioners, it is a timely and useful reference for scholars, decision-makers, leaders and practitioners as well as for concerned citizens and followers.

Manja, sengal, tidak tahu membuat kerja rumah dan suka menyuruh orang mendenda diri sendiri, itulah Nurul. Jangankan hendak buat kerja, makan pun kadang-kadang masih bersuap! Bagi mengelak dikecewakan oleh Fadzley, Nurul telah telah dipaksa bernikah dengan Fandi yang digelarnya ‘Keropok masuk angin’. Penampilan Fandi memang selebet, tetapi ada sesuatu yang menarik cuba disembunyikan. Bila Nurul cuba membuat kerja, banyak perkara yang tidak diingini berlaku. Gosok baju, baju boleh terbakar. Bila memasak, terpercik minyak. Bahkan menjerang air pun sampai penuh satu cerek. Nurul yang malas bangun pagi begitu menguji kesabaran Fandi. Namun, dia terpaksa hadapi kerana berpegang pada amanah.

Home to approximately one-fifth of the world’s Muslim population, Indonesia and Malaysia are often overlooked or misrepresented in media discourses about Islam. Islam is a religion but there is also a popular culture, or popular cultures of Islam that are mass mediated, commercialized, pleasure-filled, humorous, and representative of large segments of society. During the last forty years, popular forms of Islam, targeted largely towards urbanized youth, have played a key role in the Islamisation of Indonesia and Malaysia. This book focuses on these forms and the accompanying practices of production, circulation, marketing, and consumption of Islam. Dispelling the notion that Islam is monolithic, militaristic, and primarily Middle Eastern, the book emphasizes its dynamic, contested, and performative nature in contemporary South East Asia. Written by leading scholars alongside media figures, such as Rhoma Irama and Ishadi SK, the case studies although not focused on theology per se, illuminate how Muslims (and non-Muslims) in Indonesia and Malaysia make sense of their lives within an increasingly pervasive culture of Islamic images, texts, film, songs, and narratives.

This book explores the fluid, mutable and contingent ways in which transgender men in Malaysia construct their subjectivities. Against the dearth of academic resources on Malaysian trans men, this ground-breaking monograph is rooted in the lived experiences of Malaysian trans men whose vicissitudes have mostly been hidden, silenced and overlooked. Comprising diverse age groups, ethnicities, socio-economic status, educational backgrounds and religious persuasions, these trans men reveal how they navigate life in a country with secular and religious laws that criminalise their embodiments, and the strategies they deploy to achieve self-determination and self-actualisation despite being perceived as aberrant and sinful. This book demonstrates how negotiations with constitutive elements such as gender identity, social interaction, citizenship, legality, bodily struggle, medical transitioning and personal spiritual validation condition the becomings of Malaysian trans men.