Rebecca L Lee
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 213163 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Rebecca L Lee |
| PRENOMES | Rebecca L |
| SOBRENOME | Lee |
| ASSINATURA | LEE R L |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Malaya |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8407-4565 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 72 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 176 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 72 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1980 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Masses, platforms, and the new data domination
The world now resembles a mosaic of platforms orchestrating subjective responses to myriad digital stimuli in everyday communication and conduct. People appear to find fulfillment mainly through intense engagement with platforms that thrive on data produced by online entanglements. This is a world society of data domination where power is derived from high-tech interconnectivity, focused on an interplay between technological innovations and mass …
Affinities of Affectivity
The smartphone is still the reigning fetish of everyday communication. In fact, it has become the fulcrum of all interactive agencies in daily life. Yet, what is generally unnoticed about it is a screen-induced inter-subjectivity that supports a significant level of exploitation in communicative linkups where affective contagions are rapidly propagated. Through the entanglements in interactive communication that technological innovation promotes,…
When masses re-individualize
Loss of selfhood may be considered one of the most enduring assumptions in writings on crowds and masses. The contemporary idea of the social avalanche makes plain this expectation that no person can easily withstand the de-individualizing changes wrought by the momentum of collective forces. Individuals become the proverbial herd-like non-selves in those overwhelming moments. Yet the affective turn in social theory offers an alternative view of …
Affectivity, subjectivity, and vulnerability
Time, space, and power in digital modernity
Zygmunt Bauman addressed spatiotemporal compression as a critical aspect of the transition from solid to liquid modernity. In this transition, speed and flexibility came to define the conditions of social life which no longer relied on spatiotemporal separation as the basis of all power relations. But digitization of these conditions raises the question of whether the present phase of modernity depicts a resolidification of capital and power that…
Collectivity, connectivity and control
Mass society theory was originally a discourse on crowds, popular culture and revolutionary change. It portrayed the ideological control of the many by the few in situations of close contact without the complexities of mediated connectivity. The notion of social change was premised on analogue forms of collective behaviour within society rather than digital flows in networks. Reviving this theory in the digital era requires a reconsideration of c…
Mutating Multitudes, Collective Behavior, and Reinventing a Sociological Specialty
Access to excess
Recent studies of religion and the media generally assume the secular nature of the latter impacting on the former. Religious relevance is set against a media culture of screens and networks that purportedly shape and reshape the symbols of sacredness. Yet the media itself may also be regarded as constituting a form of sacredness in its generation of excess. Within an expanding digital universe, the media creates and channels an abundance of info…
Malaysian Identities and Mélange Food Cultures
Malaysian food cultures originate from various sources representing different regional types of gastronomy. They can be depicted as a type of local multiculturalism to exemplify a national smorgasbord composing heritage dishes unique to the country. Food choices are often made in line with ethnic, cultural and religious considerations. There are sometimes rules that instil strict observations of food choices, as in the case of Muslims following t…
Do online crowds really exist? Proximity, connectivity and collectivity
The concept of online crowds reflects a shift in crowd semantics occasioned by the spread of digital media. It poses an alternative to the classical notion of crowd by addressing gatherings in digital rather than physical space. Researching online crowds assumes individual participation to be additive as inferred from tweets grouped around hashtags in microblogging. However, tweets may be understood as a type of inter-textual communication rather…
Diagnosing the Selfie
Social networking sites are now reportedly flooded with millions of selfies, the purportedly narcissistic tendency to reproduce with webcams and smartphones self-images intended for widespread online dissemination. Like the chain-letter craze of yesteryears, selfies have become fast reduplicating memes targeted at no single destination and orbited in digital space as self-identities transformed into virtual signs. Psychological interpretations ca…
Consuming the afterlife
Late-modern consumer society materially supports the self’s spiritual goals. Yet the lack of fulfilment in consumption has produced ambivalence in these goals. A consideration of the continuation and intensification of afterlife beliefs suggests that these goals have not been shaped solely by consumptive trends but are implicitly tied to a deep concern with death and the quest for the inner self. Popular fascination with psychics and mediums, aft…
Smart swarms
Swarming is a new kind of collective behaviour involving leaderless formations converging as data-gathering, action-oriented entities in physical and cyberspace. It differs from the classical crowd in terms of its proclivity towards data mediation and its susceptibility to informational contagion. Swarms may form to fulfil certain goals or simply as a type of mimetic collective. Either way, various levels of cohesion bring swarming members togeth…
Modernity and crowds
The revival of crowd theory has reignited interest in the meaning of mass society in late modernity. By discarding the old stereotype of crowds as aimless, irrational, and violent, theorists are now researching different types of collectivities as instances of dynamic communicative and micro-organizational action. Yet, the refocus on crowds has not been properly situated in a context that has shifted, as Zygmunt Bauman alleged, from solid to liqu…
Travel, Liquidity and Order in Malaysian Modernity
Bodies, religion and relationality
Rethinking religion along the lines of relationality rather than focusing on practice alone may substantiate the cultural meanings of embodiment. Yet, relationality may only provide a cover for exclusive practices that are intended to reduce the significance of the religious subject, as in the case of the practice of multiple embodiments in Tibetan Buddhism. This practice refers to the ability of lamas to activate a form of transcendental recipro…
Engaging the Spirit World
Kirsten W. Endres & Andrea Lauser, eds., 2011 New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books 234 pp., US$90.00, £53.00 (hb) ISBN 978–0–85745–358–7 (hb), ISBN 978–0–85745–359–4 (eb) This collection of ten papers
Facing the Beyond
Unlike religious versions of the afterlife which promulgate notions of heaven and hell, spiritualities of the afterlife promote the idea of self-transformation in post-physical conditions. These spiritualities are more concerned with the meaning of self-authentication beyond death than with the moral conception of a salvationary future. In this respect, the extraordinary experiences claimed by proponents of the near-death and dream-travel phenome…
Modernity, modernities and modernization
The current discourse of modernity has produced many new terms to reflect the multiple conditions of social change. However, they do not automatically suggest a direct transition from the traditional but rather support a recursive modality in which present changes are not construed as fully independent of reclaimed past beliefs and actions. By comparing these terms in relation to globality, reflexivity and multiplicity, the fate of traditions is …
Global Modernity and Temporal Multiplicity
Global modernity is not only shrinking the world in terms of communication, trade, travel and many forms of social exchange but also implanting the idea that only the present matters. This logic of ‘presentism’ is infused with a growing sense of sameness precipitated by the rapidity of transnational commercialism and the seductive pull of neo-liberal ideologies. In a context marked by a hypermodern inflation of wants and commodities, the notion o…
Modernity, Solidity and Agency
Zygmunt Bauman's metaphor of liquid modernity addresses the juxtaposition of increased freedom and mobility with accelerated anxiety in an era of deregulated consumption. His proposal that this emergent condition represents a transition from solid to liquid modernity requires closer scrutiny. If solid modernity concerns new forms of engagement consequent to the breakup of old ones, does liquidity necessarily suggest a process of disembedding with…
Weber, Re-enchantment and Social Futures
Weber's portrayal of modern society as disenchanted was implicitly a way of considering the rationalization of social futures. These are futures derived from empiricist understandings of world mastery and regarded as devoid of mystery. Yet he devoted some writings to charisma and magic that were incongruent with his focus on rationality, suggesting alternative social futures that highlight mysteries for the recovery of meaning. By examining these…
Forgotten fantasies? Modernity, reenchantment, and dream consciousness
On the margins of belonging
Recent debates on cosmopolitanism have focused on the problem of solidarity and belonging within the context of the nation-state. In particular, the idea of belonging is taken to be a key feature of social organization related to the institutions of the nation-state. Yet the complexities of belonging have not been closely examined. In this regard, the idea of liquid modernity and the recent work on racialized labour pose new questions concerning …
Putting a face on free-market economics
The election, in 1990, of the Japanese-descended Fujimori to the presidency of Peru, against novelist Vargas Llosa and against the backdrop of Sendero Luminoso, revealed the deep race and class divides in Peruvian society. Fujimori, the son of immigrants, was able to mobilise the indigenous majority in his favour through his appeal to the poor and their sense of marginalisation, as against Vargas Llosa s appeal to the Spanish-speaking elite. None…
Modernity, Mortality and Re-Enchantment
The death taboo has been depicted as modernity's burial of the question of human mortality. Death is prejudged as a 'pornographic' event that should be veiled. Critics argue that this taboo has been exaggerated and the sequestration of death reflects a crisis of meaning in modernity. However, sources of re-enchantment in modernity have continually undermined the death taboo by keeping alive the meaning of transcendence. New Age redefinition of de…
Reinventing Modernity
Modernity has not collapsed under the weight of postmodern criticisms. On the contrary, it has rebounded with greater vigour as witnessed by the emergence of new terms such as reflexive modernization, liquid modernity and multiple modernities. These terms suggest that modernity can no longer be conceptualized in the singular. Yet the pluralization of modernity does not necessarily imply that there is a new consensus about the meaning of modernity…
Sanskritization and Indian Ethnicity in Malaysia
M. N. Srinivas (1952) first introduced the concept of 'Sanskritization' for describing cultural and social change among the Coorgs of South India. More specifically, the term was used to explain the integration of Coorgs into Indian society through their adoption of various Sanskritbased beliefs and practices. It also referred to caste mobility, a process whereby the Coorgs attempted to raise their caste status by observing various rules of behav…
The state, religious nationalism, and ethnic rationalization in Malaysia
The history of Malay nationalism traces a path from secular issues before World War II to religious issues in the post-independence period. Before the War Malay nationalists were concerned with the encroachment upon their freedom by British colonialists and non-Malay immigrants. The establishment of Malay political power after the War effected important economic changes, creating new class-divisions in Malay society. These divisions provide a bas…
Communication and cognitive pluralism in a spirit possession event in Malaysia
This study is concerned with how diverse definitions of spirit possession events in a factory are organized into predictable equivalence structures. A model of communication is utilized to show how information about possession is exchanged through reciprocal role behaviors at the primary level and through interpretive accounts at the secondary level. This approach emphasizes the complex processes involved in the communication of possession events…
Sai Baba, salvation and syncretism
Caracteristiques et problemes d'un mouvement religieux neo-hindou dans la Malaisie contemporaine: facteurs de succes et d'echec, tendances a l'innovation. Inspire de la bhakti, ne en Inde autour d'un chef conteste, il a ses racines dans les classes moyennes hindoues, mais se veut syncretique et pratique, et recrute de plus en plus dans les milieux chinois: les rapports de force politiques et ethniques contribuent a expliquer ces faits
Modernity, Solidity and Agency
Zygmunt Bauman's metaphor of liquid modernity addresses the juxtaposition of increased freedom and mobility with accelerated anxiety in an era of deregulated consumption. His proposal that this emergent condition represents a transition from solid to liquid modernity requires closer scrutiny. If solid modernity concerns new forms of engagement consequent to the breakup of old ones, does liquidity necessarily suggest a process of disembedding with…
Taipūcam in Malaysia
The Transformation of Race Relations in Malaysia
Malaysians are under no illusion that they have shed their racial identities to embrace a single national identity. Yet the multiculturalism practiced in contemporary Malaysia seems to be compatible with a patriotic nationalism espoused by the government. This compatibility has the appearance of multiculturalism surviving the ordeal of postcolonial racial politics. The turbulence of racial politics seems to have been surpassed by a revitalized na…
The Micro‐Macro Problem in Collective Behavior
Mortality and Re-enchantment
The emergence of conscious dying in modern society suggests that the redefinition of death as consciousness transference not only challenges the fear of death, but also empowers a personal approach to dying moments. It can be considered a form of individualized spirituality, because the meaning of consciousness transference is not exclusively rooted in institutionalized meanings of the sacred, but redefines the sacred in highly individualistic te…
Bauman, Liquid Modernity and Dilemmas of Development
The concept of liquid modernity proposed by Zygmunt Bauman suggests a rapidly changing order that undermines all notions of durability. It implies a sense of rootlessness to all forms of social construction. In the field of development, such a concept challenges the meaning of modernization as an effort to establish long lasting structures. By applying this concept to development, it is possible to address the nuances of social change in terms of…
Weber, Re-enchantment and Social Futures
Weber's portrayal of modern society as disenchanted was implicitly a way of considering the rationalization of social futures. These are futures derived from empiricist understandings of world mastery and regarded as devoid of mystery. Yet he devoted some writings to charisma and magic that were incongruent with his focus on rationality, suggesting alternative social futures that highlight mysteries for the recovery of meaning. By examining these…
In search of second modernity
Ulrich Beck's contention that first modernity has metamorphosed into second or reflexive modernity is an attempt at explaining social change in Europe at the meta-level. This explanation involves raising the issues of contingency and boundaries to distinguish second from first modernity. A critique of these issues and their assumptions suggests an attempt to reinvent modernity without considering its shifting centre. It is argued that second mode…
Fare well to Ethnography
A partir de son experience personnelle et de sa recherche sur un mouvement religieux urbain malaisien, l'A. montre comment l'embourgeoisement ne touche plus seulement les ethnologues mais aussi leurs sujets d'etude. Ce changement modifie la nature du privilege ethnographique et les relations de pouvoir dans la representation de l'autre : il reduit la distnace personnelle et institutionnelle entre l'auteur et les sujets. L'action communicante selo…
The Globalization of Religious Markets
Religion in late capitalism may be conceptualized as an international salvationary market. As suggested by proponents of the secularization thesis, the declining public power of religion frees individuals to privately select from a wide range of religious services without necessarily responding to institutional pressures. In Malaysia secularization is an uneven process, bifurcating religious practices into an Islamic and non-Islamic field. The fo…
Modernity, Anti-Modernity and Post-Modernity in Malaysia
The problem of modernity and post-modernity centres on the fate of the bourgeois carriers of the Protestant Ethic in an inordinately differentiated and rationalised world. Post-modernity is a reaction to the advanced alienation of late capitalism, an attempt to restore some meaning to the existential despair over the growing irrationality of modernity. The emphases on sensualism, pluralism and realism comprise desperate efforts to cling on to the…
Time, space, and power in digital modernity
Zygmunt Bauman addressed spatiotemporal compression as a critical aspect of the transition from solid to liquid modernity. In this transition, speed and flexibility came to define the conditions of social life which no longer relied on spatiotemporal separation as the basis of all power relations. But digitization of these conditions raises the question of whether the present phase of modernity depicts a resolidification of capital and power that…
Do online crowds really exist? Proximity, connectivity and collectivity
The concept of online crowds reflects a shift in crowd semantics occasioned by the spread of digital media. It poses an alternative to the classical notion of crowd by addressing gatherings in digital rather than physical space. Researching online crowds assumes individual participation to be additive as inferred from tweets grouped around hashtags in microblogging. However, tweets may be understood as a type of inter-textual communication rather…
Modernity, modernities and modernization
The current discourse of modernity has produced many new terms to reflect the multiple conditions of social change. However, they do not automatically suggest a direct transition from the traditional but rather support a recursive modality in which present changes are not construed as fully independent of reclaimed past beliefs and actions. By comparing these terms in relation to globality, reflexivity and multiplicity, the fate of traditions is …
On the margins of belonging
Recent debates on cosmopolitanism have focused on the problem of solidarity and belonging within the context of the nation-state. In particular, the idea of belonging is taken to be a key feature of social organization related to the institutions of the nation-state. Yet the complexities of belonging have not been closely examined. In this regard, the idea of liquid modernity and the recent work on racialized labour pose new questions concerning …
Death at the Crossroad
Modernity has generated a disenchanted attitude toward death but it has also produced conditions that force us to confront the meaning of death. Although troubled by the fear of death, we want to know whether the self ends with death and what comes after death. New sources of knowledge stemming from death and near-death research are changing our perceptions of dying and the survival of consciousness. Techniques of dying are being taught to mitiga…
The New Face of Death
Reflections on the near-death experience, the bardo teachings in Tibetan Buddhism, and the relationship between dying and dreaming have made possible many new insights into the death process. The postmodern context in which this knowledge is being disseminated provides an environment conducive to understanding the meaning of self-transformation in life and death. These developments suggest that the denial and fear of death have been an unnecessar…
The Limits and Renewal of Modernity
The breakdown of modernity has brought into question the future of world development. Structural changes in the West, the disintegration of socialist governments and the rise of the East Asian economies suggest the need for a serious rethinking of this question. Development can no longer be conceptualized as a hierarchy of three worlds but as a dynamic interplay of global capital, instrumental rationality and traditional values. Each of these con…
Global sociology or “Ghettoized” knowledges? The paradox of sociological universalization in the Third World
Conflict and Solidarity in a Pentecostal Group in Urban Malaysia
Ethnic Relations In Intcractionist Perspective
By applying the model of negotiated order to a specific case of ethnic conflict in West Malaysia, an attempt is made to draw explicit relationships between ethnic group interests, power and collective definition of ethnic group positions. The focus is on how ethnic group images emerge through the occurence of a 'big event' centering on conflicting group interests. It is pointed out that although power differences between ethnic groups are due lar…
Structure and anti-structure in the culture-bound syndromes
Communication and cognitive pluralism in a spirit possession event in Malaysia
This study is concerned with how diverse definitions of spirit possession events in a factory are organized into predictable equivalence structures. A model of communication is utilized to show how information about possession is exchanged through reciprocal role behaviors at the primary level and through interpretive accounts at the secondary level. This approach emphasizes the complex processes involved in the communication of possession events…
Pray To the Heavenly Father
PRAY TO THE HEAVENLY FATHER: A CHINESE NEW RELIGION IN MALAYSIA S. E. ACKERMAN and RAYMOND L. M. LEE Unlike the flourishing literature on Japanese new religions, there have been very few published accounts of Chinese new religions. To date, Marjorie Topley has reported on the Great Way sect based on material she collected in Malaya and Singapore between 1954 and 1955.1 Welch and Yu have given an interesting descrip- tion of a sect known as The Ho…
Sai Baba, salvation and syncretism
Caracteristiques et problemes d'un mouvement religieux neo-hindou dans la Malaisie contemporaine: facteurs de succes et d'echec, tendances a l'innovation. Inspire de la bhakti, ne en Inde autour d'un chef conteste, il a ses racines dans les classes moyennes hindoues, mais se veut syncretique et pratique, et recrute de plus en plus dans les milieux chinois: les rapports de force politiques et ethniques contribuent a expliquer ces faits
Malaysian Queue Culture
Alternative systems in Malaysian drug rehabilitation
The Ethnic Implications of Contemporary Religious Movements and Organizations in Malaysia
Religion and ethnicity in contemporary Malaysia1 are both sides of the same poli tical coin. The politically dominant Malays are Muslims by birth, while members of the other ethnic groups are predominantly non-Muslims. About 96 per cent of Malaysian Chinese are Buddhists or Taoists, and about 81 per cent of Malaysian Indians are Hindus.2 There are Christians and Muslims among the Chinese and Indians but they comprise a small minority in both ethn…
Social Networks and Ethnic Interaction in Urban Malaysia
In the last fifteen years, the structure of Malaysian society has been markedly affected by urbanization and rural-urban migration. Major cities such as Kuala Lumpur and P.enang have experienced considerable expansion and population growth. The creation of larger job markets and the establishment of industries in urban centres under the New Economic Policy have encouraged a rapid movement of people from the rural areas. An important consequence o…
Sanskritization and Indian Ethnicity in Malaysia
M. N. Srinivas (1952) first introduced the concept of 'Sanskritization' for describing cultural and social change among the Coorgs of South India. More specifically, the term was used to explain the integration of Coorgs into Indian society through their adoption of various Sanskritbased beliefs and practices. It also referred to caste mobility, a process whereby the Coorgs attempted to raise their caste status by observing various rules of behav…
Amulets and Anthropology
Theory, National Policy and the Management of Minority Cultures
Patterns of Religious Tension in Malaysia
Research Article| April 01 1988 Patterns of Religious Tension in Malaysia Raymond L. M. Lee Raymond L. M. Lee Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Far Eastern Survey (1959) 28 (4): 400–418. https://doi.org/10.2307/2644735 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Cit…
Heaven in Transition
Taipūcam in Malaysia
Heaven in Transition
The Micro‐Macro Problem in Collective Behavior
The state, religious nationalism, and ethnic rationalization in Malaysia
The history of Malay nationalism traces a path from secular issues before World War II to religious issues in the post-independence period. Before the War Malay nationalists were concerned with the encroachment upon their freedom by British colonialists and non-Malay immigrants. The establishment of Malay political power after the War effected important economic changes, creating new class-divisions in Malay society. These divisions provide a bas…
The Two Faces of Charisma
The Structuration of Disenchantment
Modernity, Anti-Modernity and Post-Modernity in Malaysia
The problem of modernity and post-modernity centres on the fate of the bourgeois carriers of the Protestant Ethic in an inordinately differentiated and rationalised world. Post-modernity is a reaction to the advanced alienation of late capitalism, an attempt to restore some meaning to the existential despair over the growing irrationality of modernity. The emphases on sensualism, pluralism and realism comprise desperate efforts to cling on to the…
The Globalization of Religious Markets
Religion in late capitalism may be conceptualized as an international salvationary market. As suggested by proponents of the secularization thesis, the declining public power of religion frees individuals to privately select from a wide range of religious services without necessarily responding to institutional pressures. In Malaysia secularization is an uneven process, bifurcating religious practices into an Islamic and non-Islamic field. The fo…
Global sociology or “Ghettoized” knowledges? The paradox of sociological universalization in the Third World
The State and New Religious Movements in Malaysia
In recent years the politics of new religious movements (NRMs) has raised the issue of the shifting relationship between state and religion. In Southeast Asia this relationship has never been ignored or downplayed because the political authoritarianism of many governments comprises an important factor in the reduced autonomy of religious institutions. This research note briefly describes the emergence of NRMs in Malaysia and their relationship to…
Sociology (64 obras) · Philosophy (39 obras) · Political science (37 obras) · Epistemology (34 obras) · Law (32 obras) · Aesthetics (24 obras) · Asian Studies and History (23 obras) · Modernity (22 obras) · Philosophy (21 obras) · Psychology (20 obras)