Envisioning the Malaysian Nation: Ethnic Nationalism or Corporate Capitalism?

Abstract

There seems to be little consensus to date on how globalization has affected nationalism. Nations, states and ideologies of nation and nation-state all seem to have been affected differently, and the outcome of the discussion is, so far, inconclusive. Globalization has not led to the dissolving of nationalism, and the dissolution of old national states has led to an upsurge of ethnic nationalisms of an unprecedented ferocity and virulence. Staunch chroniclers of the left like Eric Hobsbawm, who had invested hopes in the progressive capabilities of the modern national state, have expressed despair and incomprehension as the national states of the twentieth century have failed to fulfil their universalist modernist promise. In its wake, narrow nationalisms have re-emerged, demonstrating that backward- looking and narrow forms of identity have proved surprisingly durable, having persisted unharmed by capitalism and modernity. Ideologues of the right have claimed the victory as theirs, capitalizing on the demise of socialist states as vindication for the untrammelled adoption of far-right free-market ideologies as the blueprint for social action.

To see how administrative units could over time be conceived of as fatherlands … one has to look at the ways in which administrative organisations create meaning.

(Anderson, 1991)

Inventing traditions is essentially a process of formalization and ritualization, characterized by reference to the past, if only by imposing repetition.

(Hobsbawm, 1983)