The Legacy of Malaysian Chinese Social Structure

1981 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-402
Author(s):  
Laurence K. L. Siaw
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Chinese Community ◽  
Group Solidarity ◽  
Intrinsic Nature ◽  
Common System ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
Malaysian Chinese ◽  
Meaningful Interaction

The intrinsic nature of the Chinese community in Malaysia and its responses to “outsiders” can best be interpreted by Max Weber's ideas about the nature of a community in relation to ethnicity. Weber contends that ethnic or racial stereotypes are developed as a result of competition for, and successful monopolization of, economic and social power by groups at various levels of the society's opportunity structure. Such stereotypes can be accumulated through what Weber calls “direct understanding” (aktuelles versteheri) of social action. Weber contends that meaningful social interactions must be based on a common system of linguistic and non-linguistic symbols. When such a common system of symbols is absent or inadequately developed (as, for instance, with the heterogeneity of a typical pioneering Overseas Chinese community in the early days and the plural nature of Malaysia's present-day multi-racial society), meaningful interaction is hindered, hence limiting interpersonal and intergroup understanding. Such a situation tends to strengthen in-group solidarity and heighten ethnic and racial stereotype conceptions of other groups, thus causing the sanction of actions taken by the dominant groups, depriving the weaker ones of access to economic and political opportunities.

EVERYDAY LIFE REFLECTION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC: NATURAL EXPERIMENT IN ACADEMIA

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Adams
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Department Chairs ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Individual Decision ◽  
Home Office ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Auto Ethnography ◽  
And Coping ◽  
Viral Outbreak

The COVID-19 pandemic created a profound challenge for universities and colleges. In the USA, the response to the viral outbreak within institutions of higher education was largely driven by individual decision-makers, including professors, department chairs, and deans. As a professor of geography, the author undertook auto-ethnography as both process and product, a way to learn about his competencies and coping strategies, his social interactions and responses, and his engagements with social power relations from a particular positionality. As a scholar with longstanding interest in communication media, the author focused on a trajectory from the campus to the home office, from place-based scholarship to the online contexts of «distance learning», from in-place communications to dependence on digital technologies. The study reveals resilience and adaptation but also incompleteness and fragility.

The Peculiar Temporality of Violence: a Source of Perplexity about Social Power

KronoScope ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Thornton
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Violent Event ◽  
Final Cause ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Origin Myths

AbstractMost national myths of origin begin with some transcendent or sacrificial story of violent revolution, warfare or liberation. This is also true of many origin myths of ethnic, tribal or other forms of social identity. This makes it appear that some act of violence is the cause of their coming into being. This paper argues that this is an artefact of the temporal 'peculiarity' of violence. Violent events, it is argued, are essentially unpredictable even when statistically probable. This means that violence is only 'visible' after the fact, and rarely before and that plausible causal models can rarely be constructed in advance. Violence is always seen in retrospect, then, and where it has caused significant death and destruction, it requires that we begin to make sense of what caused it. Unlike other planned or and emotionally charged social interactions (such as eating, sexuality, ritual) acts of violence interrupt (disrupt, breach, rupture, break, etc.) and terminate parts or all of previous social relations. Since the cause of violence can only be assigned retrospectively, this means that we must (re-)construct the past in a way that allows us to make sense of it. Where some violent event is followed by the eventual emergence of a new identity, the new identity is often explained as having 'originated' in violence. This implies that violence caused the new social identity in some way, and that it functions as a political instrument. But violence can only create a void, and is chaotic. After violence, we require the (re-)telling of the past in a new way. This makes violence appear at the beginning of narratives of origin, but does not imply that violence caused these identities. Since large scale violence leads cultural loss and to large scale social (re)construction, narratives of identity tend to begin at these moments in time. This account of violence seeks, therefore, to undermine the notion that violence is an efficient or final cause of social forms.

scholarly journals Code-switching in Malaysian Chinese Community in The Film the Journey (2014)

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wan Ainaa Atiqah Mohd Ismadi ◽  
Nur Nafishah Azmi ◽  
Tan Khye Chuin ◽  
Heng Wen Zhuo
Keyword(s):  
Code Switching ◽  
Chinese Community ◽  
Malaysian Chinese

The Sacred, Profane, Pure, Impure, and Social Energization of Culture

2019 ◽  
pp. 483-506
Author(s):  
Dmitry Kurakin
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Dynamic Features ◽  
Cognitive Sociology ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Basic Model

In this chapter, I argue that the Durkheimian theory of the sacred is a crucial yet not fully recognized resource for cognitive sociology. It contains not only a theory of culture (which is acknowledged in contemporary sociology), but also a vision of culture-cognition relations. Thus, Durkheimian cultural sociology allows us to understand the crucial role the sacred/profane opposition plays in structuring culture, perception and thought. Based on a number of theories, I also show how another opposition—between the pure and impure modes of the sacred, allows us to explain dynamic features of the sacred and eventually provides a basic model of social change. While explicating this vision and resultant opportunities for sociological analysis I also criticize “cognition apart from culture” approaches established within cognitive sociology. I argue, thus, that culture not only participates in cognition but is an intrinsic ingredient of the human mind. Culture is not a chaotic and fragmented set of elements, as some sociologists imply to a greater or lesser degree, but a system; and as such it is an inner environment for human thought and social action. This system, however, is governed not by formal logic, as some critics of the autonomy of culture presuppose, but by concrete configurations of emotionally-charged categories, created and re-created in social interactions.

Selective Language Maintenance in Multilingual Malaysia

2021 ◽  
pp. 207-228
Author(s):  
Teresa Wai See Ong ◽  
Selim Ben Said
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Language Maintenance ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Chinese Community ◽  
Chinese Families ◽  
Language Maintenance And Shift ◽  
Malaysian Chinese ◽  
Malaysian Government

Aiming to understand the phenomena of language maintenance and shift in Malaysia, this chapter focuses on efforts by Penang's Chinese community to maintain Penang Hokkien alongside other Chinese community languages. The Malaysian Government has explicitly allowed the teaching of Mandarin Chinese in Chinese-medium schools, which resulted in the reduced use of Penang Hokkien and other Chinese community languages among the Malaysian Chinese community. Such a situation has caused sociolinguistic realignment in many Malaysian Chinese families, including in Penang, and raised questions about the survival of these languages in Malaysian society. Based on interviews with participants from Penang's Chinese community, the findings reveal that although past studies have demonstrated a decline in the use of Chinese community languages, the participants expressed their willingness to regularly use them in their daily life in various domains. Despite the announced desuetude of these languages, participants consistently used them and indicated their determination to pass on to the next generation.

Selective Language Maintenance in Multilingual Malaysia

2022 ◽  
pp. 558-579
Author(s):  
Teresa Wai See Ong ◽  
Selim Ben Said
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Language Maintenance ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Chinese Community ◽  
Chinese Families ◽  
Language Maintenance And Shift ◽  
Malaysian Chinese ◽  
Malaysian Government

Aiming to understand the phenomena of language maintenance and shift in Malaysia, this chapter focuses on efforts by Penang's Chinese community to maintain Penang Hokkien alongside other Chinese community languages. The Malaysian Government has explicitly allowed the teaching of Mandarin Chinese in Chinese-medium schools, which resulted in the reduced use of Penang Hokkien and other Chinese community languages among the Malaysian Chinese community. Such a situation has caused sociolinguistic realignment in many Malaysian Chinese families, including in Penang, and raised questions about the survival of these languages in Malaysian society. Based on interviews with participants from Penang's Chinese community, the findings reveal that although past studies have demonstrated a decline in the use of Chinese community languages, the participants expressed their willingness to regularly use them in their daily life in various domains. Despite the announced desuetude of these languages, participants consistently used them and indicated their determination to pass on to the next generation.

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