Communalism in a global age- The Malaysian Insider
September 8, 2011 — Contemporary wisdom has us believing that when the economy grows beyond a certain point and globalisation becomes the norm, there is a corresponding lowering of traditional barriers of ethnicity, religion, community and culture.
Economic development should lead to a more open, forward-looking society that is inclusive and egalitarian.
In actual fact, the shifts in mindset are more subtle and more continuous than discrete. Traditionally, communal identity was the primary determinant of a sense of self and the behaviour codes enjoined by the community or tribe were the default arbiters of most social interactions.
Social and faith affiliations at birth determined every aspect of life, whether it was where to live or work, who were counted as friends, what was eaten and drank, to who married who.
The current cacophony against the likes of Perkasa betrays a sense of indignation that just when Malaysia seemed to be on the brink of becoming a moderate, democratic, developed country, there are people who just don’t seem to get it and are hell bent on dragging the country back down into the quagmire of a race- and religion-based national discourse.
The problem with this approach is that it links economic change linearly with social change. If this was correct, we should be witnessing in tandem with economic growth a commensurate drop in conservatism of the extreme kind fuelled by communal tendencies.
We should be feeling the whiff of a more open, tolerant and flexible social structure, one that is shedding its inward-looking insularity.
But if anything, these voices are getting ever shriller, suspicion between communities and faiths in social settings is as strong as ever and there seem to be more pejorative terms for “other” Malaysian cultures than ever before.
Paradoxically though, people are more open and accepting than ever before of these “others” in certain situations, such as the workplace, in their interactions at the marketplace, in the entertainment arena, in the way they dress for the outside world, and in their schools and colleges.
What is happening is that contrary to popular discourse, we are actually raising higher and higher walls of communalism, but they are not between us and the world, they are between our private and public selves.
Today, the economic sphere and the opportunities that it has suddenly thrown open are forcing us to leave our prejudices at home if we are to partake of these opportunities. But we have not abandoned these attitudes entirely; we have just shifted them behind walls, where only like-minded people sharing the same communal attributes are welcome. The explosive growth of community-based television on Astro and that of global economic news media are two sides of the same coin.
The blink and you miss the rate of change in the economy has a very small relation to how traditional social structure changes. While economic change is often disruptive and discrete, social change is almost always cautious, continuous and slow. The real social change has come about in our ability to expand the arenas of both our private and public selves to accommodate changes imposed on us. Where earlier restraint characterised our social selves entirely, today we are more strident and confident in our private communal identity as well as in our public cosmopolitan identity.
While at one level the wall dividing these identities has become stronger, there are significant ways in which the secular nature of the economic discourse is wearing away at communal structures. It is precisely because of these inroads that the walls get built ever higher. If one person changes religion through proselytisation, the penalties for all the others multiply.
To conclude, if the current economic trajectory becomes a permanent feature, expect social change, but slowly and incrementally, rather than at the pace of economic change.
Economic development should lead to a more open, forward-looking society that is inclusive and egalitarian.
In actual fact, the shifts in mindset are more subtle and more continuous than discrete. Traditionally, communal identity was the primary determinant of a sense of self and the behaviour codes enjoined by the community or tribe were the default arbiters of most social interactions.
Social and faith affiliations at birth determined every aspect of life, whether it was where to live or work, who were counted as friends, what was eaten and drank, to who married who.
The current cacophony against the likes of Perkasa betrays a sense of indignation that just when Malaysia seemed to be on the brink of becoming a moderate, democratic, developed country, there are people who just don’t seem to get it and are hell bent on dragging the country back down into the quagmire of a race- and religion-based national discourse.
The problem with this approach is that it links economic change linearly with social change. If this was correct, we should be witnessing in tandem with economic growth a commensurate drop in conservatism of the extreme kind fuelled by communal tendencies.
We should be feeling the whiff of a more open, tolerant and flexible social structure, one that is shedding its inward-looking insularity.
But if anything, these voices are getting ever shriller, suspicion between communities and faiths in social settings is as strong as ever and there seem to be more pejorative terms for “other” Malaysian cultures than ever before.
Paradoxically though, people are more open and accepting than ever before of these “others” in certain situations, such as the workplace, in their interactions at the marketplace, in the entertainment arena, in the way they dress for the outside world, and in their schools and colleges.
What is happening is that contrary to popular discourse, we are actually raising higher and higher walls of communalism, but they are not between us and the world, they are between our private and public selves.
Today, the economic sphere and the opportunities that it has suddenly thrown open are forcing us to leave our prejudices at home if we are to partake of these opportunities. But we have not abandoned these attitudes entirely; we have just shifted them behind walls, where only like-minded people sharing the same communal attributes are welcome. The explosive growth of community-based television on Astro and that of global economic news media are two sides of the same coin.
The blink and you miss the rate of change in the economy has a very small relation to how traditional social structure changes. While economic change is often disruptive and discrete, social change is almost always cautious, continuous and slow. The real social change has come about in our ability to expand the arenas of both our private and public selves to accommodate changes imposed on us. Where earlier restraint characterised our social selves entirely, today we are more strident and confident in our private communal identity as well as in our public cosmopolitan identity.
While at one level the wall dividing these identities has become stronger, there are significant ways in which the secular nature of the economic discourse is wearing away at communal structures. It is precisely because of these inroads that the walls get built ever higher. If one person changes religion through proselytisation, the penalties for all the others multiply.
To conclude, if the current economic trajectory becomes a permanent feature, expect social change, but slowly and incrementally, rather than at the pace of economic change.
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