Building South-North Dialogue: A Country Report on Contemporary Globalization Research in Malaysia
Koo Yew Lie, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
Introduction
This paper provides an expanded overview of the nature and status of globalization research in relation to the Malaysian context, building on last year's paper. The paper discusses the key concerns of major research institutes and centres on globalization studies in Malaysia. These concerns focus on current discourses in development, higher education (HE), national and global citizenship, sustainable peace, cultural globalization, knowledge production through information and communication technologies (ICTs), and the environment. The research institutes reported on here are mostly government-funded research institutes that tend to undertake work in basic, applied, and policy research related directly and indirectly to globalization. The analytic content of this paper focuses on keywords identified as crucial in the understanding and experience(s) of globalization in Malaysia. In line with Appadurai's (1996) view on alternative ways of building alternative knowledge(s) about globalization, the paper offers image-based and popular representations of the keywords from civil society, the popular press, and politicians. It also examines these keywords as they are apprehended in Malaysian scholarship.
Important Institutes, Observatories and Research Centres in Malaysia
The research institutes covered in the presentation include IKMAS, IPPTN, CenPRIS, and ISIS. Much of the brief descriptions presented here are derived from information presented on the organizations' websites in July 2008.
Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), Malaysia
The Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS) was established in 1995. It is a social science research and reference centre at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The Institute conducts research, post-graduate teaching, and other academic activities. IKMAS is devoted to Malaysian and International Studies within the framework of globalization and social transformation.
IKMAS conducts research within the theme of "Globalization and Human Diversity: Challenges and Choices of Participation." Given the dominance of neo-liberal globalization, IKMAS' research thrust is on the following:
- income distribution, poverty, and social safety nets;
- trade liberalization, governance, and competitiveness;
- regionalization and regionalism (Northeast and Southeast Asia);
- citizenship, choices, and participation: the electoral system in Malaysia;
- rethinking the issue of nation and state: transnational movements and competing notions of community with a focus on ethnicity, religion, gender, class, culture, and region.
IKMAS conducts research on Malaysia in the globalizing world and the impacts of its interaction with the outside world. The impacts explored include the processes of social inequality (for example, economic differentiation and competition), as well as processes that impact on class, ethnicity, gender, politics, and identity.
IKMAS focuses on the multiple dimensions of globalization (for example, inequalities, competitiveness, responses to globalization including regionalism, homogenization and differentiation, as well as science and technology) as they impact on the international community and regions, especially Northeast and Southeast Asia. The institute also undertakes research on impacts of globalization in societies and states, alongside the responses of these societies and states to the phenomena.
National Higher Education Research Institute, Malaysia
Institut Penyelidikan Pendidikan Tinggi Negara (IPPTN) or the National Higher Education Research Institute was established by the National Council for Higher Education (MPTN) in 1997 as a platform for research and policy-making in Malaysia. The institute undertakes a wide range of research on issues, challenges, problems, and strategies related to developing public and private institutions of higher learning as centres of excellence in education in Malaysia. Insofar as globalization affects higher education policy and practice, this institution is concerned with aspects such as internationalization, the changing academic profession, employability, regionalism, and governance. In this regard, Morshidi Sirat (2006) states "in my adopted discipline of higher education policy research, globalization is loosely interpreted as a socio-economic and technological process, which tends to blur or diminish geopolitical borders and national systems." Further, the Institute aims to enhance and expand research efforts in all aspects of higher education, including research on policies, curriculum, governance, human resources, and infrastructure.
Centre for Policy Research and International Studies (CenPRIS), Malaysia
CenPRIS is a public policy and international studies research centre, established in 2007 at the Universiti Sains Malaysia. Policy-related research focuses on public-private sector collaboration, socio-political development, and rural modernization, while international research themes include globalization and regionalism, global international reform, international political economy, and cultural, communication, and ethnic studies. There are of course overlapping research themes that give researchers opportunities to conduct research in international studies that examine policy implications.
The Noordin Sopiee Chair in Global Studies is located at CenPRIS. The current theme of the Chair is "The Role of Religion in a Globalizing World." The renowned Malaysian public intellectual, Dr Chandra Muzaffar, is the first holder of the Noordin Sopiee Chair in Global Studies.
Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), Malaysia
ISIS is an independent, non-profit organization established in 1983 under Malaysia's Company Act 1965 as a Company Limited by Guarantee. ISIS Malaysia is engaged in a wide range of activities focusing on objective and independent policy research and fostering dialogue and debate between the public sector, the private sector, and academia. In general, its programs target five central areas of national interest:
ISIS research is extensive but the focus is on issues across Asia Pacific including Southeast Asia. The research is not only interested in regions but sub-regions. They are interested in globalization in terms of development, international economics, and the creation of a new world order.
Keywords
This section identifies five keywords considered important to understanding and experiencing globalization in Malaysia. I will provide a short justification of why they are considered key or central words. At the same time, I will suggest compelling readings by Malaysian scholars which are associated with one or more of these keywords. The keywords I have selected are: marketization of universities, class relations, capturing globalization, global and domestic justice, and globalized knowledge production.
Table 1 summarizes the reasons they were chosen.
Table 1: Keywords: Selection Criteria
| Marketization of universities | Class relations | Capturing globalization | Global and domestic justice | Globalized knowledge production |
| Digitized sources available (mainly in English) | √ | √ | √ | √ | √ |
| Access to research university websites | √ | √ | √ | √ | √ |
| My position on the margins | √ | √ | √ | | |
| Commitment to language and culture in the shaping of consciousness of globalization | √ | √ | √ | √ | √ |
My choice is constructed largely from my own particular situation as a Malaysian scholar in Language and Literacy Studies in Education and as someone working from the margins in globalization studies. My area of specialization is in applied linguistics in multilingual/ multicultural contexts. Hence I have to limit myself to those areas and topics that I can understand and relate to as a social science and humanities researcher. The other determining aspect of my consciousness of these keywords is what was accessible on websites (primarily English websites which I can access and read easily, as English is still my primary language of meaning-making although I have a strong academic literacy in Bahasa Malaysia (BM)/the Malay language as well). I have been able to access some Mandarin websites with the help of my research assistant who is trilingual in BM, English, and Mandarin. Keywords were also identified based on the availability of print resources and my commitment to issues such as enhancing peace and social justice in Higher Education, capturing globalization, and transforming class relations through equitable education and multilingual policies (Koo 2007a; 2007b; 2008a; 2008b; Koo and Lick 2007).
Other influential factors in the identification of keywords — for example, the inclusion of areas of current research and areas of interest of leading scholars at IPPTN and the Centre of Higher Education Research at the University of Science — are due to my being an associate fellow there. I am therefore familiar with the research work conducted in relation to globalization. Other reasons for my choices include my previous association with IKMAS. As an academic working within the same university I have attended their seminars on globalization. The organizations I have looked at have digitized their publications and resources, mostly in English and Bahasa Malaysia with the funds that come with their status as high profile research universities. Given the current interest in Malaysia in its research universities becoming top-ranked globally, emphasis has been placed on digitization of knowledge.
At the same time, given my interest in culture and meaning-making, and having identified the keywords from academic institutions, I examined the multilingual and multimodal (Kress 2005) — the pluriliterate — dimensions of texts in multilingual and global contexts (Koo 2007a) found on academic sites as well as in non-academic blogs and popular media sites. Multilinguality and multimodality are modes of meaning-making which are valuable sources of understanding what the academic and the non-academic speech communities (e.g., civil society and the rakyat/citizen) make of the global imperative. Dr. Lim Teck Ghee, a former Malaysian academic and UN political economist, argues that non-mainstream meaning-makers do not have access to the huge funding amounts given to particular institutions and individuals because of what he sees to be political and social patronage given to some privileged gatekeepers, academics, and administrators (Malaysiakini.com, 12 September 2008).
I compared the keywords found in academic institutions with those in popular sites in areas to which I can relate or understand, such as internationalization, peace, and access and equity issues. I tended to steer away from less familiar domains like political economy and regionalism although these are important areas of study. In other words, my choice of keywords is situated and constructed in relation to my place as a researcher who is interested in and committed to certain issues.
Leading Malaysian Scholars in Globalization Studies
In this section, I have included key quotations and excerpts from the leading scholars in relation to the keywords.
Scholar 1: Morshidi Sirat of National Higher Education Research Institute (IPPTN), Malaysia
On the issue of globalization and higher education in Malaysia, Morshidi Sirat (2006) has commented that globalization is a "process" or "a fact of the contemporary world." As a process, globalization is a heightened tendency towards interaction and interdependencies of socio-economic and technological factors, which drastically changes our lives and economic spaces. As a fact of the contemporary world, globalization is "the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole." He goes on to state that "in my adopted discipline of higher education policy research, globalization is loosely interpreted as a socio-economic and technological process, which tends to blur or diminish geopolitical borders and national systems. I associate this process with heightened competition among providers of tertiary education in Malaysia and Asia-Pacific. An important element of this competition arose from the penetration of transnational education service providers in the Malaysian tertiary education landscape. Policy-makers in Malaysia commonly conflate globalization and internationalization together. It is difficult to impress upon policy-makers that these two terms should not be interchangeably used and that globalization is a process impacting internationalization. Jane Knight's statement that 'internationalization is changing the world of education and globalization is changing the world of internationalization' (updated definition of internationalization, International Higher Education, Number 33 Fall 2003: 2) made my task of explaining to policy-makers the distinction between globalization and internationalization much easier."
Morshidi Sirat also observes that "globalization clearly presents new opportunities, challenges and risks for tertiary education, for Malaysia in the next five years, the government's strategic objective to turn the country into a regional education hub by fully endorsing and implementing an action plan suggests that globalization will impact further the Malaysian tertiary education sector. Transnational higher education providers will become dominant in the tertiary education landscape with trade in education services as an important national economic policy objective. In this scenario, regulating the quality of programs and provision of education services will be a daunting task. In the absence of regulations, there is the danger that Malaysian tertiary education would drift into some new 'market-oriented format' with serious consequences for quality and equity."
Scholar 2: Abdul Rahman Embong of Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), Malaysia
Scholar 3: Norani Othman, Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), Malaysia
Scholar 4: Chandra Muzaffar, Centre for Policy Research and International Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia
Scholar 5: Shamsul Amri Baharuddin
Summary and Keyword Analysis
While there is obviously theoretical and field research being conducted on marketization of universities, class relations, capturing globalization, global and domestic justice, and globalized knowledge production, there are certain gaps in the research related to globalization studies. The work has been made difficult by the lack of reliable and substantive data on higher education. Tierney (2008, 32), for example, has advised HE stakeholders in Malaysia to provide substantive and reliable data about consumer participation and organizational performance in place of "data that more frequently than not turned out be often contradictory and confusing." "The need for the collection of systematic and verifiable data speaks to three critical issues. First, without trustworthy data a nation has no way of knowing who is participating in tertiary education and who is not. Such a point is important for a country concerned about educational equity for all citizens. It is likely, for example, that some sectors of a society have greater educational opportunities than others. Without an awareness of why different sectors are participating at a lower rate than others the country cannot create policies that increase participation among all constituencies." It would be strategic for authorities like the Ministry of Higher Education of Malaysia to provide research funding which encourages the collection of systematic and triangulated baseline data for descriptive and applied research in HE and in globalization studies with palpable outcomes for individuals and society.
The next section is a continuation of the South-North Dialogue of last year about alternative ways of understanding and representing knowledge and experience of globalization. Here I will identify image-based representations and/or non-academic expressions (from the public, from the media, from politicians) of the keywords as an aspect of globalization.
The Socio-lingual Context: The Pluriliterate Designers of Plurilingual and Multimodal Texts
Plurilingual designers of meaning are those who draw on a variety of language codes, styles, genres, and registers to communicate their meanings. Kress (2003; 2005) views this use of multilingual codes as design; he argues that language codes act together with the visual, the gestural, the kinesthetic, and the tactile. He sees this as multimodal design of meaning.
The texts which I analyze here are designed by multilingual and pluricultural Malaysians of two ethnicities, the majority Malays and the minority Chinese. From their plurilinugal and multimodal designs, one may infer that these designers of texts are middle-class, at least bilingual, well-educated and Internet literate.
Malaysia is a country comprising many ethnic groups including the dominant ethnic Malays, Chinese, and Indians. In percentage terms, the Chinese population here is greater than in other multiethnic countries except for Singapore. Constituting close to 30 percent of Malaysia's population, Malaysian Chinese (MC) form the largest proportion of ethnic Chinese outside of mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore (Lee and Tan 2000). In 1991, the Chinese in Malaysia numbered 4.9 million or 28.3 percent of the country's total enumerated population of 18.9 million (Department of Statistics 1995).
Generally, tertiary-educated Malaysians of Malay ethnicity are bilingual or multilingual with literacy in at least two language codes, many language styles, and a repertoire of genres and registers. For example, a graduate is likely to have academic literacies in standard language codes such as Bahasa Malaysia and English at least. Of course, he/she would also be academically literate in an area of specialization at the degree level. At the same time, the Malays like all other meaning-makers would have acquired vernacular literacies necessary for the affirmation of particular cultural identities for their everyday life worlds (Highmore 2002). Here "life world" is understood in terms of Gee's definition (1996, 181) "that space where people can claim to know things without basing that claim on access to specialized or professional discourses with their special methods for producing knowledge."
Educated Chinese Malaysians are likely to be multilingual and have a repertoire of language codes, styles, and genres. Their multilingualism is partly the consequence of formal political language and cultural politics promulgated after the New Economic Policy (New Development Policy or NDP). In his early days as leader, Dr. Mahathir, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, discursively cast Chinese ethnicity in outgroup terms but with the NDP and Dr. Mathathir's increasingly international and global outlook, the MC community was recast as one of us in the nation, a mutual partner to develop a Malaysian People (Ooi 2001). Within the same frame of expansionist economic liberalization policies, both English and Mandarin were nationalized and were increasingly accepted as languages for formal learning. This has in fact led to the radical change in language policy in 2002 where English became the medium of instruction for science and technology in schools and universities. It should be noted that English is seen by the government to be a utilitarian literacy for economic and scientific progress and Mandarin for regional business affiliations and networks.
The following is an abstract written in a blog by a Malaysian Malay blogger.
"Sosialiskanan" by Rausyanfikir
Seorang pemuda yang percaya kepada perjuangan menegakkan keadilan menentang golongan kapitalis dan penjajah zaman baru melalui pendekatan sosialisme dan berpaksikan akidah perjuangan Islam. Merupakan aktivis sosial, pemikir polisi alternatif, penulis amatur dan juga penceramah bebas.Sedang melakukan penyelidikan dalam subjek post colonial (neo-colonialism), post modernism, critical theory. Sedang cuba memahami realiti zaman moden dengan menelaah karya-karya intelektual Barat untuk disaringkan (islamisasi,desekularisasi) agar dapat dimanfaatkan dalam perjuangan Islam di Malaysia. Juga merupakan kolumnis ruangan Siswa dalam akhbar Siasah.Hubungi saya di [email protected]"
Rausyanfikir (not his real name) is a Malaysian blogger probably of Malay ethnicity who writes mainly in Malay and designs multimodally in English. Using both image and the word, he positions himself as "someone who believes in social justice, resisting capitalists and neo colonization." A social activist, alternative policy thinker, amateur writer, and freelance speaker, he is currently doing research on
post-colonialism (neo-colonialism), postmodernism, and critical theory.
The picture in Figure 1 is found on the first page of his blog. This image and the text around it relates to the keyword "capturing globalization." The images in Figure 2a and 2b relate to "marketization of universities" and the image in Figure 3 pertains to "class relations."
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| Figure 1a: Capturing Globalization |
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| Figure 2a: Marketization of Universities |
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| Figure 2b: Marketization of Universities |
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| Figure 3: Class Relations |
The following text was also found on Rausyan's website:
Socialism and Islam: Collaboration to Resist Cruelty of Capitalism (translation)
Golongan kapitalis tidak kenal anda 'siapa', tetapi kenal anda 'apa'.
Translation: The Capitalist does not know 'who' you are, but 'what' you are.
Analysis of Rausyanfikir's Text
Rausyanfikir designs his meaning in terms of multiple language codes and modalities. Here, he uses primarily Bahasa Malaysia and English in a hybrid style of writing involving popular writing with an economics register (references to capitalism, Marxism) to appeal to a multilingual and multimodal/media audience who may be Muslim in their beliefs.
As for multimodality, he is using borrowed visual images (e.g., Figure 3). Note that his images have descriptors that are in English and captions in Bahasa Malaysia. It is important also to note that he translates or interculturally mediates some of his multimodal texts (for example, the one about free trade agreements or FTAs) with the TAG line in Bahasa Malaysia. He depicts as the FTA as "a new form of colonialism." Here, his multimodal design is challenging the discourse of FTAs as a US hegemonic force. His audience, although assumed to be predominantly Bahasa reader,s are also assumed to be simultaneously multilingual and multimodal, able to connect to images sourced from the Internet, some of which are from left-wing and socialist discourses and reframed. In summary, one can see Rausyanfikir constructing a discourse that reveals his multiple affiliatons, simultaneously Malay, Islamic, and socialist in line with his blog profile.
Malaysian Chinese Texts by Plurilingual Designers
Figure 4 and Figure 5 each offer an example of plurilingual text.
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| Figure 4: Sample Pluriliterate Text: Figment of Globalization |
Translation: The fundamental of advocating globalization is an open flow of legislation which is hoped that it would bring progress and development, through the integration of resources. This is true, but the forces of integration are not done on a fair scale; it is about market competition which is inequitable in the first place. Extreme globalization would mean a single market, people of all countries will have a unified global price. As many countries have lifted the tariff restrictions, it is hoped that competition would bring a better product quality; globalization is supposed to be a blessing for consumers. However, a competitive market would imply the full application of the powerful vs. marginalized mechanism. Products which fail to attract consumers will be forced to withdraw from the market. There would only be profits when there is production. At first glance globalization seems to promote the interests of consumers, but it is also the nightmare of all marginalized producers.
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| Figure 5: Sample Pluriliterate Text: Globalization and Identities |
Translation: People often think that globalization not only dilutes the identity of different socio-cultural groups, it also provides opportunity for allowing the hegemonic culture to marginalize the less dominant cultures. However, one thing is being overlooked: globalization has expanded the human contact with each other, but in the process of this interaction, it also discovered the differences among them, or is forcing people to find their differences. In today's world, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur, the consumption patterns of young people are close to unprecedented, but in this high degree of similarity, people are curious to find out differences in each other. Thus, consumption and rapid economic integration does not undermine cultural identity, as John Tomlinson argues, globalization has in fact produced cultural consensus and multiplies it. The challenge of globalization is not only in the performance of hegemonic and marginal cultures, but it has also opened up room for the imagination and possibilities of identity on cultural common grounds.
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Notes
1.
Aku janji is a legally binding document that all Malaysian academics, as civil servants, have to sign as a pledge of loyalty to the Malaysian Government. It is generally understood by the Malaysian academic community, including academic associations and NGOs, to be a document which challenges academic and intellectual autonomy and tends to constrain critical thinking and independent thought. It is generally viewed as restricting the freedom of academics to articulate views freely and independently.