IN 2019, the then Umno Youth deputy chief and now co-host of “Keluar Sekejap” podcast, Shahril Hamdan claimed that interethnic relations in Malaysia are at an all-time low.
Fast forward five years, and they have declined further. “It is absurd that interethnic hostility in Malaysia is peaking in an age of modernisation where society is expected to be more advanced and educated,” remarked a Facebook commentator. This sentiment is echoed by many, who seem equally baffled by this phenomenon.
Is there, however, a connection between an educated, mature society and interethnic cohesion? This question was posed by a group of academics from the Chicago School back in the early 1900s, a period in which “modernisation” was gaining momentum in the United States.
Barring a few exceptions, the Chicago School generally assumed that acculturation would eventually eliminate ethnic divisions. The school was instrumental in popularising the “American melting-pot” idiom, symbolic of a society where diverse populations are blended at different rates depending on their position in the economic and political systems.
However, the “ethnic revival” of the 1960s and 1970s severely undermined the credibility of the melting pot notion for its empirical error in predicting the impending irrelevance of ethnicity.
Critics argued that rather than eradicating ethnic differences, the distinctions between ethnic groups such as Polish and Italian immigrants became more pronounced after two or more generations of mutual adaptation.
In other words, modern American society has fostered a renewed sense of self-awareness, seen in their increased identification and concern with ethnic roots and origins.
Around the same period, across the continent, Clyde Mitchell’s landmark study on the retribalisation of informal groups following the migration of rural labourers to mining towns in Africa’s Copperbelt region revealed similar findings.
The transition from subsistence farming in villages to wage labour in urban economies due to regional modernisation created new social circumstances: Groups that were once organised solely around kinship were now engaged in labour contracts that required ongoing interactions with other ethnic groups.
Their search for a new form of kinship in a collective setting cultivated a strong sense of ethnic identity and standardised modes of behaviour vis-à-vis each other.
Often, ethnic identity is emphasised in public rituals and casual exchanges. A case in point is the Kalela dance, a performance that was not originally part of the tribal groups’ cultural repertoire but developed over time to explicitly celebrate tribal identities and ridicule other urban groups.
Such traditions reinforced social identities in ways that would not have been necessary in a pre-modern, mono-ethnic village context.
Simply put, the contours of our ethnic identity, which we take for granted as innate and biological, are shaped by our social interaction with others whom we perceive to be different. This bears a resemblance to the societal landscape back home.
In post-colonial Malaya/Malaysia, the gradual disintegration of ethnic-based labour division as the country industrialised brought together people from diverse backgrounds into more frequent contact.
Just like in Copperbelt, their integration into a shared urban economy and society led to the more visible assertion of ethnic distinctions.
The Malay peasantry, long isolated from mainstream development, was confronted by the urban Chinese who had established themselves within the capital circuit as businessmen and shopkeepers.
With the economic hardships encountered by the Malays juxtaposed against the more affluent (or perceived to be so) Chinese community, the political discourse of multiculturalism was overshadowed by strong ethnic sentiments.
With time, ethnic stereotypes developed, embedding themselves in the fabric of our lived experience. Be it in America, Africa or even in Asia, it can be reasonably established that modernisation – framed in terms of post-colonial capitalist-driven growth – has exacerbated ethnic divides, rather than integrated them.
Anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen accurately observed that as people become more similar as collective citizens of modern nation-states, they simultaneously become increasingly different as champions of ethnic identities.
A pertinent inquiry at this point is: Do these historical learnings provide valuable insights into interethnic relations in present-day Malaysia?
To answer this question, the concept of modernisation needs to be expanded beyond the mid-20th century post-colonial capitalist framework.
In today’s globalised world, modernisation is characterised by a range of multifaceted factors, including improved education and technological progress, which supposedly qualify us as a mature society.
It is thus expected – as argued by the Facebook commentator – that society should transcend narrow ethnic interests and address national challenges with a more holistic approach. Herein lies the conundrum. Education is hailed as the solution, yet it is also the space that produces conditions that can aggravate the problem.
For example, when the educated who are guided by human rights discourse and democratic ideals push for more inclusive governance structures, they inevitably risk upsetting existing status quos.
There are likely to be equally compelling opposing views, for education almost always guarantees that literate populations are reasonably equipped to engage in political processes.
What follows is a looping debate, with each side – rightly or wrongly so – convinced of their higher intellectual standing. Technological advancements produce a similar dilemma. The idea that technological platforms enable society to be more interconnected is only half-truth.
Technological services thrive on market customisation, which results in a highly segmented society. Children who grew up in the era prior to satellite television had more commonalities than those of today’s generation.
With only a handful of channels to choose from, Malaysians of that era shared a sense of unity through media representations. Who could forget the tunes of Bahtera Merdeka, Sejahtera Malaysia, and the many other songs popularised during the tenure of Mohamed Rahmat as information minister?
To date, shows like Supermarket Sweep and Jangan Ketawa remain nostalgic topics of conversation among most middle-aged Malaysians.
The risks associated with the extensively polarised media consumption in contemporary society should not be underestimated.
Ethnic groups’ continued preference for programmes originating from their countries of origin, which are now accessible via satellite channels, is reflective of interest – perhaps subconsciously – to symbolically reconstruct a distant homeland. This is not unique to Malaysia.
Karen Fog Olwig provides an illustration of this in her research on Caribbean migrants who continue to strongly identify themselves as Caribbean despite not having set foot in their ancestral region.
Academically speaking, this is a form of transnationalism consistently observed across the globe since the rise of the internet in the 1990s. That being said, this is not intended as a critique of personal consumption practices. People have the right to their preferences. Nonetheless, the implications of these choices must be acknowledged.
It yet again reiterates Eriksen’s anthropological insight that the forces of modernity and globalisation produce societies which appear to be more similar (i.e. advanced, mature society) and more different (i.e. divided society) at the same time.
The perplexity highlighted by the Facebook commentator can thus be addressed by recognising that ethnicity, as a process, embodies a fundamental duality between homogenisation and fragmentation.
It would, therefore, be ambitious and erroneous to assume that a “21st-century mindset” ought to naturally regard humanity as a collective whole.
Is there a ray of hope for the Malaysian society? Despite the paradoxes, the answer is yes – for the simple reason that ethnicity is a social construct, not a biological acquisition.
Physical traits may vary but the “content” of ethnicity is not fixed, they are relational and situational. It is also noteworthy that ethnicity cannot exist in isolation, modes of behaviour and perceptions held by ethnic groups are developed through social contact with other groups.
This affirms that interethnic hostility is not a manifestation of inborn cultural antagonism. Believing otherwise is fatalistic as it renders such conflicts naturally inevitable.
Importantly, acknowledging that ethnicity is a consequence of social processes empowers us to influence outcomes. It validates the necessity of social engineering and other forms of intervention measures designed to ease ethnic tensions.
While possible solutions are aplenty, they remain speculative at this point. Education undoubtedly remains an important medium to effect changes, but its dual-edged nature adds a layer of complexity.
It would be naive to expect anthropology to provide the right answers for this, and this article does not seek to do so. Nor does it attempt to explore the factors contributing to the current state of identity politics in Malaysia.
The key message being conveyed is that adopting an anthropological gaze ensures that we approach the mitigation process with a contextualised understanding of ethnicity.
Accordingly, we can at least start asking the right questions – questions that must then be tackled by stakeholders across multiple domains with robust political support.
This is the final instalment in a three-part series on Anthropologically Speaking. The writer is a recipient of the UK government’s Chevening Scholarship and holds a Master of Arts in Social Anthropology (Distinction) from the University of Manchester. He also has a Master of Science in Marketing and Business Analysis from the University of Edinburgh. An advocate of interdisciplinary studies, he has held academic, non-academic and consultancy positions at a few universities in Malaysia and India. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
