The arts community in Malaysia has been affected in many ways by the state’s desire to homogenize and essentialize ethnicity internally, whilst displaying pluralist ideals externally. There are two levels to the debate, one which is orientated towards the global, where the state employs a multicultural tourism imagery, whilst the other is a localized debate mainly informed by reactionary conservatism and state institutions. Concurrently, the arts community employs, uses and deploys global institutions and regional activism to counteract, validate or co-opt state mechanisms of control. Art forms such as mak yong have been pulled into a political tussle over ownership and power to demarcate what is or should be Islamic, Malay or Malaysian. As a result, practitioners and activists collide with the state’s apparatus and its agents.
Akbarzadeh, S. ( 2006) ‘General Introduction’, in S. Akbarzadeh (ed.) Islam And globalization: Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies, pp. 1-14. London: Routledge.
2.
Althusser, L. ( 1971) ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’ , in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, pp. 121-73. London : Verso.
3.
Barber, B.R. ( 1995) Jihad vs. McWorld. New York: Times Books.
4.
Barnard, T.P. ( 2004) Contesting Malayness: Malay Identity across Boundaries. SingaporeSingapore University Press.
5.
Bauman, G. ( 1997) ‘Dominant and Demotic Discourses of Culture: Their Relevance to Multi-ethnic Alliances’, in P. Werbner and T. Modood (eds) Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-racism, pp. 209-25. London: Zed Books .
6.
Beng, T.S. ( 2002) ‘Dissonant Voices: Contesting Control through Alternative Media in Malaysia’ [http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/mpi/Activities/Media%20Practice%20Spring%202002/Dissonant%20Voices.htm].
7.
Bernama (2006) ‘Rais Seeks To Revive Utusan Melayu In New Push For Jawi’, Bernama , 11 February [http://bernama.com.my/bernama/v3/news_lite.php?id=179847].
8.
Chan, D. ( 2006) ‘Magazine Spreads its Wings’, The Star, 3 August, p. 19.
9.
Fadzil, F. ( 2006) ‘Mak Yong: A Jihad Protected from the Outside, Banned from the Inside’, Kakiseni, 14 March [http://www.kakiseni.com/articles/features/MDgzNQ.html].
10.
Gramsci, A., Q. Hoare and G. Nowell-Smith ( 1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci . London: Lawrence and Wishart.
11.
Hoffstaedter, G. ( 2006) ‘Faith, Plurality and Freedom’, Kakiseni, 30. November [http://www.kakiseni.com/articles/reviews/MTAwMA.html ].
12.
Hoffstaedter, G. ( 2008a) ‘Representing Culture in Malaysian Cultural Theme Parks: Tensions and Contradictions’, Anthropological Forum18(2): 139-60.
13.
Hoffstaedter, G. ( 2008b) ‘Muslim Malay Identity Formation and its Articulation in Penisular Malaysia: An Ethnographic Study in Identity Politics’, Unpublished Ph.D thesis, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Australia.
14.
Ibrahim, Z. ( 2003a) ‘Popular Culture - the "State of the Art"’ [http://prome.snu.ac.kr/~anthropo/iccs/board/ezboard.cgi?db=pds&action=down&dbf=138&ftype=file&file=ZawawiIbrahim_PopularCultureDiscourse.doc].
15.
Ibrahim, Z. ( 2003b) ‘The Search for a "New Cinema" in Post-colonial Malaysia: The Films of U-Wei Bin Haji Saari as Counter-Narrations of National Identity’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies4(1): 145-54.
16.
Kahn, J.S. ( 2001) Modernity and Exclusion. London: Sage.
17.
Kahn, J.S. ( 2006) Other Malays: Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in the Modern Malay World. SingaporeSingapore University Press.
18.
Kapferer, B. ( 1988) Legends of People, Myths of State: Violence, Intolerance, and Political Culture in Sri Lanka and Australia. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
19.
Kessler, C.S. ( 1992) ‘Archaism and Modernity: Contemporary Malay Political Culture’, in J.S. Kahn and F. Kok-Wah Loh (eds) Fragmented Vision: Culture and Politics in Contemporary Malaysia, pp. 133-57. Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press.
20.
Khalid, S. and F. Baharom ( 2003) ‘Infusing local heritage into Islamic art’ [http://allmalaysia.info/news/story.asp?file=/2003/10/3/state/6355676&sec=miTravel ].
21.
Khoo, G.C. ( 2006) Reclaiming Adat: Contemporary Malaysian Film and Literature . Vancouver: UBC Press.
22.
Mandal, S. ( 2001) ‘Boundaries and Beyond: Whither the Cultural Bases for Political Community in Malaysia?’, in R.W. Hefner (ed.) The Politics of Multiculturalism: Pluralism and Citizenship in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, pp. 141-64. Honolulu : University of Hawai’i Press.
23.
Mandal, S. ( 2003) ‘Creativity in Protest: Arts Workers and the Recasting of Politics and Society in Indonesia and Malaysia’, in A. Heryanto and S. Mandal (eds) Challenging Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia: Comparing Indonesia and Malaysia, pp. 178-210. New York: RoutledgeCurzon.
24.
Mandal, S. ( 2004) ‘Transethnic Solidarities, Racialization and Social Equality’, in E.T. Gomez (ed.) The State of Malaysia: Ethnicity, Equity and Reform, pp. 49-78. London : Routledge.
25.
McKay, B. ( 2006) ‘Talk Is Action: Panic Buttons - Culture and Crisis in Malaysia and the Region: Analysing the Conditions within which We Are Forced to Endure’, Kakiseni, 15 June [ http://www.kakiseni.com/articles/features/MDg4Mg.html].
26.
Melaka Chief Minister’s Department ( 2004) Melaka Culture Club. Melaka: Melaka Tourism Promotion Unit.
27.
Noor, F.A. ( 2004) ‘Modernity, Islam and Tradition: The Struggle for the Heart and Soul of Art and Culture in Malaysia’, Contemporary Art from the Islamic World (9) [http://www.universes-in-universe.de/islam/eng/2004/09/noor/index.html ].
28.
Peletz, M.G. ( 1997) ‘Ordinary Muslims and Muslim Resurgents in Contemporary Malaysia’, in R.W. Hefner and P. Horvatich (eds) Islam in an Era of Nation-states: Politics and Religious Renewal in Muslim Southeast Asia, pp. 231-73. Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press.
29.
Prime Minister’s Department (2001) Eighth Malaysia Plan 2001-2005 [http://www.epu.jpm.my/new%20folder/development%20plan/RM8.htm ]
30.
Prystay, C. ( 2006) ‘Bit of Malay Culture is Now Vanishing under Muslim Rules’, The Wall Street Journal, 21 April [http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=7289].
Roff, W.R. ( 1983) ‘Whence Cometh the Law? Dog Saliva in Kelantan, 1937’, Comparative Studies in Society and History25(2): 323-38.
33.
Sardar, Z. ( 2000) The Consumption of Kuala Lumpur. London : Reaktion.
34.
Scott, J.C. ( 1998) Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed. London: Yale University Press.
35.
Shamsul, A.B. ( 1996) ‘Debating about Identity in Malaysia: A Discourse Analysis’, Southeast Asian Studies34(3): 476-99.
36.
Surin, J.A. ( 2006) ‘Rooted in Culture’, The Sun , 11 May [http://www.sun2surf.com/article.cfm?id=14087 ].
37.
Stauth, G. ( 2002) Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia: Indonesia and Malaysia in the Nineteen-Nineties. Bielefeld : Transcript Verlag.
38.
The Star (2006) ‘Save Kelantan heritage’, The Star, 13 February [ http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/4/10/nation/13917755&sec=nation ].
39.
Turner, V. ( 1980) ‘Social Dramas and Stories about Them’, Critical Inquiry (7): 141-68.
40.
Unesco (2008) ‘Eight new sites, from the Straits of Malacca, to Papua New Guinea and San Marino, added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List’ [http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/450].
41.
Willford, A. ( 2006) Cage of Freedom: Tamil Identity and the Ethnic Fetish in Malaysia. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
42.
Wong, J.H.L. ( 2004) ‘Rais: Stop "Arabising" Malay Culture’, The Star, 17 April [http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2004/4/17/nation/7779945&sec=nation ].
43.
Worden, N. ( 2003) ‘National Identity and Heritage Tourism in Melaka’ , Indonesia and the Malay World31(89): 31-43.
