Kuala Lumpur is the postmodern city writ large. Here, cultures (Malay, Chinese, Indian, indigenous, western) collide, mix and re-emerge as a new synthesis. Past, present and future collapse onto a single landscape, inducing almost total disorientation and lack of direction.

Kuala Lumpur, like many Southeast Asian cities, has changed very significantly in the last two or three decades – expanding its size, and 'modernising' and 'globalising' its built environment. For many people these changes represent 'progress' and 'development'. This book, however, focuses on the more marginalised residents of Kuala Lumpur. Among others, it considers street hawkers and vendors, refugees, the urban poor, religious minorities and a sexuality rights group, and explores how their everyday lives have been adversely affected by these recent changes. The book shows how urban renewal, the law and ethno-religious nationalism can work against these groups in wanting to live and work in the capital city of Malaysia.

The Enlightenment theorists involved in the public/private debate exposed the logical fallacies of theology and the philosophical weaknesses of metaphysics but left little room for understanding contemporary modes of consumption. What does it mean to be a consumer in the early 21st century? Do modern markets provide real choices for consumers in neoliberal capitalist democracies? Or are consumers ironically slaves to their own patterns of consumption? Rejecting Habermas' conceptualizations in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1991), Rappa offers an examination of modernity and consumption with a non-Marxist, modernity-Resistance-theoretical frame (mRf). He argues that late modernity — the ethos, experience, and consciousness of global and technological transformation today — is not about the fusion of “public and private” spaces. Rather, modernity and consumption involves the deep penetration of private space by public space to the extent that private space becomes dependent, conditional, and decrepit. The “Private” has become contingent on the “Public”. Decisions about what to consume no longer reflect the mindful choices of private, interest-seeking, and wealth-maximizing individuals but reveal a new kind of public control through foundational images of success, failure, horror, violence, and hope.

Understanding the consumers’ trend in Malaysia is vital to meet the changing demands of the Malaysian market. Consumption in Malaysia: Meeting of New Changes serves an invaluable resource to academics, researchers, tertiary students, business practitioners and local and foreigner investors on understanding the changes happened and happening in consumerism of Malaysia. The authors provide a comprehensive and much-needed overview of the current consumption and marketing patterns on various business sectors at multicontext level to offer useful insights on how the consumers and the market in Malaysia are changing in both product and service sectors. This knowledge is important to guide the readers to understand, segment and recommend solutions to various changing and emerging markets. In general this is an important book for business people, policy makers and researchers seeking to understand the pattern and trend of changing markets in Malaysia. Keywords: Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penerbit Universiti Sains Malayia, Penerbit USM

This book surveys the growth and development of Islam in Malaysia from the eleventh to the twenty-first century, investigating how Islam has shaped the social lives, languages, cultures and politics of both Muslims and non-Muslims in one of the most populous Muslim regions in the world. Khairudin Aljunied shows how Muslims in Malaysia built upon the legacy of their pre-Islamic past while benefiting from Islamic ideas, values, and networks to found flourishing states and societies that have played an influential role in a globalizing world. He examines the movement of ideas, peoples, goods, technologies, arts, and cultures across into and out of Malaysia over the centuries. Interactions between Muslims and the local Malay population began as early as the eighth century, sustained by trade and the agency of Sufi as well as Arab, Indian, Persian, and Chinese scholars and missionaries. Aljunied looks at how Malay states and societies survived under colonial regimes that heightened racial and religious divisions, and how Muslims responded through violence as well as reformist movements. Although there have been tensions and skirmishes between Muslims and non-Muslims in Malaysia, they have learned in the main to co-exist harmoniously, creating a society comprising of a variety of distinct populations. This is the first book to provide a seamless account of the millennium-old venture of Islam in Malaysia.

Offers an examination of modernity and consumption with a non-Marxist, modernity-Resistance-theoretical frame (mRf).