This simulating new reading of constructions of ethnicity in Malaysia and Singapore is an important contribution to understanding the powerful linkages between ethnicity, religious reform, identity and nationalism in multi-ethnic Southeast Asia.

Looking at the past from an anthropological perspective, this book deploys and analyses a variety of anthropological concepts to understand the history of Cocos Malay society. Around 400 Cocos Malays reside on their remote Indian Ocean atoll, the Cocos Islands. Possessing a unique culture and dialect, they could be considered Australia's oldest Muslim and oldest Malay group. Yet their society only developed over the past two centuries. In the early 1800s, a European gathered about one hundred slaves from around Southeast Asia. After settling on Cocos, a dynasty of rulers tried to distinguish themselves as European kings. Under them, the Southeast Asians in the group toiled in the export of coconuts. But despite this, these Southeast Asians influenced and intermarried with the rulers. As a result, a Eurasian society developed. The Cocos Malays were initially implicated in Southeast Asian and wider Indian Ocean trade and communication networks. Later, this connectivity intensified through technologies such as telegraph cable and the Internet. This book uses the history of the Cocos Malays to explore questions of broader interest to anthropologists, such as how concepts from the overlap of history and anthropology ‘unlock’ the history of societies; how we can usefully combine the ‘indigenous’ concepts like “kerajaan” with internationally accepted concepts like class; and what is obscured when we use the concepts from the anthropology-history crossover to understand the past.

The book is based on original research on the entrepreneurial leaders in the Malay community and on the author's own participation in Malay business ventures. Sloane draws on her experience of working in Wall Street to analyse the ironies and contradictions in both the prevailing Western, Asian and Malay definitions of entrepreneurship and the 'heroes' of competing styles of capitalism.

Just who are ‘the Malays’? This provocative study posesthe question and considers how and why the answers have changedover time, and from one region to another. Anthony Milner developsa sustained argument about ethnicity and identity in an historical,‘Malay’ context. The Malays is a comprehensiveexamination of the origins and development of Malay identity,ethnicity, and consciousness over the past five centuries. Covers the political, economic, and cultural development of theMalays Explores the Malay presence in Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia,Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and South Africa, as well as themodern Malay show-state of Malaysia Offers diplomatic speculation about ways Malay ethnicity willdevelop and be challenged in the future

This book presents an in-depth linguistic description of one Papuan Malay variety, based on sixteen hours of recordings of spontaneous narratives and conversations between Papuan Malay speakers. ‘Papuan Malay’ refers to the easternmost varieties of Malay (Austronesian). They are spoken in the coastal areas of West Papua, the western part of the island of New Guinea. The variety described here is spoken along West Papua’s northeast coast. Papuan Malay is the language of wider communication and the first or second language for an ever-increasing number of people of the area. While Papuan Malay is not officially recognized and therefore not used in formal government or educational settings or for religious preaching, it is used in all other domains, including unofficial use in formal settings, and, to some extent, in the public media. After a general introduction to the language, its setting, and history, this grammar discusses the following topics, building up from smaller grammatical constituents to larger ones: phonology, word formation, noun and prepositional phrases, verbal and nonverbal clauses, non-declarative clauses, and conjunctions and constituent combining. Of special interest to linguists, typologists, and Malay specialists are the following in-depth analyses and descriptions: affixation and its productivity across domains of language choice, reduplication and its gesamtbedeutung, personal pronouns and their adnominal uses, demonstratives and locatives and their extended uses, and adnominal possessive relations and their non- canonical uses. This study provides a point of comparison for further studies in other (Papuan) Malay varieties and a starting point for Papuan Malay language development efforts.

General study of Malaysia - covers historical and geographical aspects, population, ethnic groups, languages, social structure, religion, living conditions, education, culture and mass media, politics and government, international relations, the economic structure, agriculture and industry, trade, the armed forces, the administration of justice, etc. Bibliography pp. 399 to 432, flow charts, glossary, maps and statistical tables.

"The Malay population makes up Singapore's three largest ethnic groups. This book provides an analysis of the debates on religion, politics and citizenship of Malay Muslims in contemporary Singapore. Comprehensively and convincingly argued, the author examines their disadvantaged circumstances in the fields of politics, education, social mobility, and freedom of religious expression."--Publisher's description.