Dakwah and Minah Karan; Class formation and ideological conflict in Malay society
Year: 1991
Type: article
Abstract: Industrialization in Malaysia has been accompanied by protracted ideo logical struggles to construct a new version of Malay identity based on Islam and to moralize the state, which mediates the Malay community's relations with the market. These struggles originate from contradictions within the Malay middle class in regard to its relations with the state and with market forces. The regulation of market forces and protection sought from the state entails intensification of bureaucratic control over the Malays. From the Malay perspective, the increased control and authority is legitimate to the extent that the state acts to promote moral (Islamic) ends. Hegemonic and critical discourses mediate the contradictions ex perienced by the Malay middle class. The Malay middle class, both the bureaucratic and the entrepreneurial sections, is an appendage of a capitalist state and is engaged in a struggle between realization of moral values through Islamization and development of a high-technology, market-oriented economy. The anti-secular bureau cratic section of the middle class seeks to capture the state administrative machinery and thereby direct it to serve Islamic ends. The anti-secular Malay critics demand a state that acts strictly in accordance with Islamic moral values. In its interventionist, directive role as the engine of capitalist
Author: Susan E. Ackerman
Language: Dutch
Topic: Asian Studies and History
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W2010305798