"Getting By"

Class and State Formation among Chinese in Malaysia

Bibliographic Data

ID19931064
AuthorsD Nonini (0000-0001-8298-3052, corresponding author), Donald M Nonini (corresponding author)
Year2015
Publication date2015-08-11
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueGetting By (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherCornell University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.7591/9780801456220
OpenAlexW4231787992
ISBN9780801456220
Open LibraryOL34613042M
LanguageEN
Citations received12

How do class, ethnicity, gender, and politics interact? In what ways do they constitute everyday life among ethnic minorities? In "Getting By," Donald M. Nonini draws on three decades of research in the region of Penang state in northern West Malaysia, mainly in the city of Bukit Mertajam, to provide an ethnographic and historical account of the cultural politics of class conflict and state formation among Malaysians of Chinese descent. Countering triumphalist accounts of the capitalist Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, Nonini shows that the Chinese of Penang (as elsewhere) are riven by deep class divisions and that class issues and identities are omnipresent in everyday life. Nor are the common features of "Chinese culture" in Malaysia manifestations of some unchanging cultural essence. Rather, his long immersion in the city shows, they are the results of an interaction between Chinese-Malaysian practices in daily life and the processes of state formation—in particular, the ways in which Kuala Lumpur has defined different categories of citizens. Nonini's ethnography is based on semistructured interviews; participant observation of events, informal gatherings, and meetings; a commercial census; intensive reading of Chinese-language and English-language newspapers; the study of local Chinese-language sources; contemporary government archives; and numerous exchanges with residents

Asian Studies and History · Computer Science · Socioeconomic Development in Asia · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · asia · chinese · foreign countries · Malaysia · Nationalism · Social classes · Social conditions

Tools

Open DOILibgen