Histories, Cultures, Identities

Reviewed by: Histories, Cultures, Identities: Studies in Malaysian Chinese Worlds Mak Lau Fong Histories, Cultures, Identities: Studies in Malaysian Chinese Worlds. By Sharon A. Carstens. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2005. x+314 pp. This is primarily a collection of the writer's articles published from 1983 to 2003. In this book, the articles expectedly have been thematically revised. The topic, one that Carstens has been working on for about 25 years, was germinated first in J.D. Vaughan's remarks on the manners and customs of the Chinese immigrants in nineteenth-century Straits Settlements, and pursued by S.D. Middlebrook in his writings on Yap Ah Loy in the 1930s. In a nutshell, it is about the construction of identity by the Malaysian Chinese from a sub-cultural (dialect) base to a han cultural base, and further to a transnational base. Carstens is one of the very few anthropologists, if not the only one, who has been working on the Hakkas in Malaysia so resolutely. Of the three domains of inquiry, namely history, culture and identity, her analysis on culture and identity is particularly articulate and cogent. In line with Judith Nagata, Wang Gungwu, Geoffrey Benjamin and Heng Pek Koon, she observes that "Malaysian Chinese identities are always provisional and constantly modified in the different contexts of daily life" (p. 6). Her observation is largely derived from her examination of the life of a prominent Hakka (Yap Ah Loy) in Kuala Lumpur, a Hakka community (Pulai) in rural Kelantan, an exploratory survey study on Ipoh (later extended to cover Penang, Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru), and some ethnographic data. Even though few official historical documents are cited, the histories provided by the writer on the Hakkas, the Chinese immigrants in general, and the Malaysian political developments are essentially sufficient. The volume begins by evaluating the role played by economic factors or secret societies — the two being seen by Carstens as interchangeable — in the daily life of the Chinese immigrants as postulated by P.P. Lee and L.F. Mak. The author argues that Yap Ah Loy seemed to resort less to underworld connections than to strategies for conflict resolution that were embedded in Chinese culture. The strategies enabled Yap to efficiently deal with conflicts amongst the Chinese dialect groups and society at large including the British personnel and Malay Royal families. While Yap's success and achievement can be gleaned from his official "kapitanship" and his legitimate investment businesses, it is not told if such cultural strategies are uniquely part of Hakka subculture. It would probably not have been the case, for similarly successful figures are also found in contemporary Malacca, Penang, and Singapore, and not all of them are Hakka; quite a number of them are even Straits-born Chinese. Besides, similar strategies were not unknown, if not aplenty, in the underworld. It would be more convincing to [End Page 304] attribute Yap's success to his charismatic personality. A plausible assumption along this line is that he who commands the underworld commands a good level of charisma, the same quality that makes a politician or entrepreneur in legitimate society. The behavioral expression of charisma is chivalry, as is understood by the writer. The study disputes the conventional notion of solidarity of the Hakkas by showing that the Pulai Hakkas (mainly from Huizhou) do not understand Hakka folksongs (shange) that are popular among the Hakkas in contemporary Taiwan (pp. 82–83). The Hakkas are not culturally and socially homogeneous, so the author asserts. Besides, the Pulai Hakkas have shown tremendous changes in their behavior and attitude, compared to their counterparts in nineteenth-century Southeast Asia, particularly Malaya. Presently, the Pulai Hakkas value neighborliness, even with non-Hakkas, more than territorial or dialect ties. Dialect group identity that used to be instrumental in economic pursuits has been replaced by objective criteria such as education and skill. Dialect group identity, with all its associated or implied instrumentation, is gone forever, leaving behind the "knowledge of linguistic difference" between dialects rather than between dialect groups. This change is largely brought about by the increasing "exogamy" within the village, a social development that is also taking place almost everywhere in Malaysia. What, then

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