Dr Djamour spent two years in Singapore, both in the city and in a Malay fishing village, and her first-hand account draws a lively and sympathetic picture of behaviour within the family and between kinsmen. It is nonetheless an important contribution to social anthropology and discusses, as its central topic, the instability of Malay marriage. The causes and consequences of this phenomenon, which involve social, economic, and psychological considerations, are analysed in some detail. The social picture which emerges has wide validity throughout the country and should prove of value to all who seek a fuller knowledge of Malay society.

Twelve essays on the sociology of the family in Singapore in the modern period.

This book deals with the genesis, outbreak and far-reaching effects of a legal controversy and outbreak of mass violence which determined the course of British colonial rule after post World War Two in Singapore and Malaya. It will be of interest to scholars of British Colonial History and Decolonization and Asian History.

Matriliny and Modernity (1996) explores the situation both past and present of women living in the matrilineal society of Negeri Sembilan in a rapidly modernising Malaysia. Written from a feminist anthropological viewpoint, it considers how far both the colonial and post-colonial remakings of matrilineal cultural practices within modernity have left women with what many western feminists would call a degree of social agency if not autonomy. Maila Stivens looks critically at the appropriateness of such judgements, at the same time reflecting on the ways that western knowledge production and the continuing importance of images of exotic matriarchies in the western imagination have shaped debates about such societies. As well as appealing to those with an interest in issues of gender-and-development, Asian Studies and women’s situation in modernising societies, the book’s explanation of the past and present of relatively more egalitarian gender arrangements also contributes to wider debates about causes of sexual inequality and the possibilities for gender equality.

People within the Malay world hold strong but diverse opinions about the meaning of the word Melayu, which can be loosely translated as Malayness. Questions of whether the Filipinos are properly called "e;Malay"e;, or the Mon-Khmer speaking Orang Asli in Malaysia, can generate heated debates. So too can the question of whether it is appropriate to speak of a kebangsaan Melayu (Malay as nationality) as the basis of membership within an aspiring postcolonial nation-state, a political rather than a cultural community embracing all residents of the Malay states, including the immigrant Chinese and Indian population.In Melayu: The Politics, Poetics and Paradoxes of Malayness, the contributors examine the checkered, wavering and changeable understanding of the word Melayu by considering hitherto unexplored case studies dealing with use of the term in connection with origins, nations, minority-majority politics, Filipino Malays, Riau Malays, Orang Asli, Straits Chinese literature, women's veiling, vernacular television, social dissent, literary women, and modern Sufism. Taken as a whole, this volume offers a creative approach to the study of Malayness while providing new perspectives to the studies of identity formation and politics of ethnicity that have wider implications beyond the Southeast Asian region.

This facsimile edition of Alex Josey’s Lee Kuan Yew: The Crucial Years (1968) contains practically everything that Singapore’s first prime minister had said politically since his student days at Cambridge right up to his speeches at the 1971 Commonwealth Prime Minister’s Conference held in Singapore. More than a political biography of a remarkable Asian statesman, this indispensable volume shows how Lee successfully created an independent multiracial nation while tackling and solving problems which confront all developing states. The account ends in 1970 when Singapore was faced with the gloomy prospect of the withdrawal of British troops in 1971, and the necessity of creating, almost overnight, a credible Singapore defence force.

First published in 1967. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.