Malaysia Forum

In her invigorating and excellent analyses, Meredith Weiss, a research fellow at the East West Center, Washington, started off by defining terms like “civil society” as “the space between the family and the state”, which extends to the media, student groups and social clubs, and “students” as someone poised to negotiate between “a functional/role identity” and “a collective identity”. She highlighted that in Malaysian schools, the functional/role identity is stressed over the other, leading to a lack of “progressive and bold” political action.

A large portion of her speech comprised a succinct recount of student movements in the 20^th century. She dated the start of civil society from the 1920s when political legitimacy not only stemmed from the political strongholds of the time – the Sultan, but also from outside, such as trade unions, secret societies, chambers of commerce, even silat groups. She said that the “assumption that Malaysians are politically apathetic is overstated and inconsistent”, and highlighted how in the 1960-70s, student activism was alive at University of Malaya, how in the 1980-90s, there was a rise of NGOs with a more activist approach.

After continuing with a brief and fascinating history of Malaysian students throughout the 20^th century, Weiss emphasized the importance of the now for students to get involved in politics, as the conditions seem promising, for example, students are building coalitions with other social bodies; alternative media provides a “career trajectory for activist students”; there is a shift to ideological, non-race-based coalitions and a resurgence of intellectualism in politics, and so on.

The Q&A session was very fruitful and well-handled.

Posted by nickwong / NMF 2008