Text

E-book (Re)presenting Brunei Darussalam : A Sociology of the Everyday

---

Penilaian

---

As one of the few remaining absolute monarchies to persist in an age of modern nation-states, it is fairly unsurprising that quite a few scholars (from the perspec-tive of ‘outsiders’) have turned their attention to the efficacy of a monarchical state (Krause and Krause 1988; Leake 1989; Braighlinn 1992; Gunn 1997;Naimah 2002; Schottmann 2006; Lindsey and Steiner 2016; Müller 2017). This has produced a tendency to focus variously on the ruling national ideology of Malay Islamic monarchy (Melayu Islam Beraja) as the lynchpin of social cohesion that commands the support of the sultanate’s subjects, the challenges of the Islamisation process, or economic issues associated with tradition, modernisation and globalisation. Yet apart from its natural resource wealth and Malay Islamic monarchy, the everyday life of this microstate remains relatively unfamiliar to the outside world. Despite several selec-tive ethnographic studies and collective thesis contributions from students at Univer-siti Brunei Darussalam (UBD), as detailed by Anthony Walker (2010), the ways in which its contemporary everyday plays out are little documented (see Maxwell 1980, 1996; Chi et al. 1994;Kershaw 2000; Pudarno 2004; Fanselow 2014; Mahirah and Lian 2020; King and Knudsen 2021). Indeed, when we think and talk about Brunei, so much of what we think we know sociologically about it, its people and places has often been refracted inadvertently through layers of knowledge production entangled with colonial era discourse and its broad and ready use of classification and categories (see Noakes 1950; Leach 1950). As Victor T. King (2021) remarks, ‘many Borneo specialists have tended to conform to the boundaries that had been set by the colonial powers’. It is a legacy of colonial rule and governance that has not infrequently influenced the lenses of social scientists working on both Sarawak and Brunei. There are notable contemporary exceptions and things are changing, but a not insignificant amount of what has been produced, circulated and given credence to is enmeshed in intellectual traditions and political legacies of that past.1 And for the editors at least, one of the consequences of this process of epistemological sedimentation and entanglement is that, to varying degrees, a rather essentialised view of local groups and communities has emerged and gained purchase (for notable exceptions on Brunei, see Maxwell 2001; Yabit 2004; Siti Norkhalbi 2005; Kershaw 2010; Asiyah 2015, 2016; Fatimah and Najib 2015; Pudarno 2016; Tassim 2018; Noor Hasharina and Yong 2019; Awang et al. 2020; Asiyah and Nani Suryani 2021; King and Druce 2021a, 2021b;Ho and Deterding 2021; Ooi and King 2022). It is probably fair to say that past and present asymmetries in the production and consumption of knowledge have shaped consciously or unconsciously, the way we make sense of everyday life in this part of the world (see also Alatas 2000; Heryanto 2002; Zawawi 2008, 2017). As such, the intent of our volume is not to denigrate the quality of past scholarship on Brunei (far from it), but rather to unsettle the genealogies of previous preoccupations and positionalities relative to the study of contemporary Brunei.

---

Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

-

No. Panggil

305.5955 ANU r

Penerbit

Singapore : Springer Nature., 2023

Deskripsi Fisik

362 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9789811960598

Klasifikasi

305.5955

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

Social Groups in Brunei Darussalam

Info Detail Spesifik

-

Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

-

Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

Komentar

---

Anda harus masuk sebelum memberikan komentar