1
of
1
Reform and Nation-Building
Essays on Socio-Political Transformation in Malaysia
Series: Asia Shorts
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still
learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Summary
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$4999
Unit price
/
Unavailable
AVAILABLE WITH SUPPLIER
Ships from our Auckland warehouse within 3-4 weeks
Found a better price? Request a price match
Reform and Nation-Building
$4999
Unit price
/
Unavailable
Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
This book will appeal to readers interested in Malaysian politics, contemporary Southeast Asian affairs, and socio-political reform. It is well-suited for students, academics, policy-makers, and anyone seeking a nuanced understanding of the challenges and hopes shaping Malaysia’s nation-building efforts today.
Sharifah Munirah Alatas discusses the modern political situation of Malaysia in a series of short essays
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
The Malaysian people have endured decades of economic decline, identity politics, and socio-political uncertainty. The country has also experienced a decline in international credibility due to the 1MDB corruption scandal of global proportions.
Since obtaining independence in 1957, Malaysia has had two historic general elections, the first in 2018 (GE14), and the second in 2022 (GE15). GE14 brought the reformist Pakatan Harapan government into power. After the previous Barisan Nasional administration had dominated Malaysian politics for 61 years, it was obvious the people could no longer tolerate the deteriorating conditions in the country. However, due to both internal and external machinations, the Pakatan Harapan administration collapsed 22 months later.
Subsequently, more than 2 years of socio-political instability ensued, exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, lockdowns, economic hardships, the kleptocracy trials of Najib Razak, and increasing ethnic polarisation and identity politics. After GE15 in November 2022, there was renewed hope for Malaysians. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Pakatan Harapan again leads a new coalition government (dubbed the "unity" government).
Reform and Nation-Building by Sharifah Munirah Alatas discusses these developments in a series of short essays. She highlights the peoples' hopes for crucial reforms and their lingering despair for what seems unattainable. Alatas focuses mainly on the meteoric rise in corruption, identity politics, and what she considers the dismal failure of the nation's public universities. She questions the future of the nation but hopes for a revolutionary change in leadership attitudes.
Series: Asia Shorts
View all-
Murakami Haruki on Film
Murakami Haruki on Film offers a timely look at the cinematic adaptations of Japanese writer Murakami Haruki's fiction over the past forty years. Films based on Murakami's work, including Tony Takitani (2004), Norwegian Wood (2010), Burning (2018), Drive My Car (2022), and many more, manifest a contradictory impulse to faithfully capture the author's literary worlds while expanding and developing these...Paperback$3399Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Who Is the Asianist? – The Politics of Representation in Asian Studies
Who Is the Asianist? reconsiders the past, present, and future of Asian Studies through the lens of positionality, questions of authority, and an analysis of race with an emphasis on Blackness in Asia. From self-reflective essays on being a Black Asianist to the Black Lives Matter movement in Papua New Guinea, Japan, and Viet Nam, scholars grapple with the global...Paperback$4799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Global Anti-Asian Racism
Global Anti-Asian Racism, particularly in the guise of Yellow Peril, has endured for centuries around the world. In Europe and the Americas, Asian immigrants and refugees were, and are, treated as threats to national security. Yellow Peril and anti-Asian racism is also found in Africa, Australia, and in Asian nations as well. Wherever Asian immigrants and refugees found themselves, anti-Asian...Paperback$4599Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Japan on American TV – Screaming Samurai Join Anime Clubs in the Land of the Lost
Japan on American TV explores political, economic, and cultural issues underlying depictions of Japan on U.S. television comedies and the programs they inspired. Since the 1950s, U.S. television programs have taken the role of "curators" of Japan, displaying and explaining selected aspects for viewers. Beliefs in U.S. hegemony over Japan underpin this curation process. Japan on American TV takes a...Paperback$4799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Freedom Undone
What happens when liberal constitutional institutions are undone? Can freedom survive the loss of separation of powers with the associated legal and political accountability? The Chinese Communist Party has been at the forefront in its disdain for liberal institutions and promoting illiberal alternatives. This disdain placed Hong Kong people on the frontlines of the global struggle for freedom. Since its...Paperback$5699Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Reform and Nation-Building
The Malaysian people have endured decades of economic decline, identity politics, and socio-political uncertainty. The country has also experienced a decline in international credibility due to the 1MDB corruption scandal of global proportions. Since obtaining independence in 1957, Malaysia has had two historic general elections, the first in 2018 (GE14), and the second in 2022 (GE15). GE14 brought the reformist...Paperback$4999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
The Transpacific Flow
What happens when a US cultural institution is imported to China, the purported chief rival of the United States in the twenty-first century? The first book-length account of university-based creative writing programs in China, The Transpacific Flow reveals how Chinese intellectuals adapt American-style writing programs, such as the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the International Writing Program at Chinese universities, to...Paperback$4199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
The War for Chinese Talent in America
To overcome their "brain drain," some developing countries employ the "Diaspora Option," encouraging their overseas nationals to use the knowledge they gained abroad to help their motherland. Since the mid-1990s, China's party/state has vigorously used an extensive array of programs and incentives to persuade ethnic Chinese living in America to transfer their technological knowhow back home. Many Chinese working abroad...Paperback$4999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Praised by Wang Gungwu of the National University of Singapore, these essays offer a hopeful affirmation of Malaysia’s nation-building ideals despite current challenges. Reviewers commend Alatas’s clear and critical analysis of obstructive forces such as corruption, sectarian identity politics, and an education system lacking clear purpose. Her deeply felt reflections resonate as calls for urgent and thoughtful reform, making this collection a compelling and important read for those interested in Malaysia’s political and social future.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781952636424
Publisher: Association for Asian Studies
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 26 December 2023
Country: United States
Imprint: Association for Asian Studies
Audience: Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Width: 152.0mm
Height: 229.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 224
About the Author
S. Munirah Alatas, Ph.D. is a former Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Indonesian International Islamic University (UIII, Jakarta). In March 2023, she retired from a career in Strategic Studies and International Relations at the National University of Malaysia (UKM). Munirah’s doctorate and MA degrees are from Columbia University, and her BA is from the University of Oregon. Her scholarly interests and writings focus on decolonial thought, geopolitics, foreign policy, non-Western International Relations theory, and autonomous social science traditions.
Munirah also speaks regularly in public fora and writes in her media columns, on Malaysian politics, civil society, good governance, higher education reform and the future direction of universities.
More from Politics & Current Affairs
View all-
One Last Question, Prime Minister
From Muldoon to Luxon, untold stories from the House of Parliament Barry Soper has spent close to five decades questioning New Zealand's prime ministers.From the imposing, larger-than-life characters of Rob Muldoon and David Lange, to the golden age of Helen Clark and John Key, and the post-Covid era of Jacinda Ardern and the 'Chrises', Soper's insight and nose for a...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips tomorrow -
New ReleaseRegime Change
From the two reporters who have covered him more closely than perhaps anyone else over the past decade comes this definitive portrait of Donald Trump in the White House and the first year of his second presidency. Based on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented reporting from deep within the administration’s most closely guarded rooms, Regime Change takes the reader into...Paperback$3299Elsewhere:$4299Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips tomorrow -
New ReleaseA Different Kind of Power
#1 New Zealand bestseller #1 Amazon bestseller #2 Audible bestseller #3 New York Times bestseller #3 Sunday Times bestseller #4 Australian bestseller From the former prime minister of New Zealand, then the world’s youngest female head of government and just the second to give birth in office, comes a deeply personal memoir chronicling her extraordinary rise and offering inspiration to...Paperback$3200Elsewhere:$4000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips tomorrow -
Ockham WinnerA Different Kind of Power
What if we could redefine leadership? What if kindness came first? Jacinda Ardern grew up the daughter of a police officer in small-town New Zealand, but as the 40th Prime Minister of her country, she commanded global respect for her empathetic leadership that put people first. This is the remarkable story of how a Mormon girl plagued by self-doubt made...Hardback$4799Elsewhere:$5999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips tomorrow -
Signed CopyGo Hard or Go Home
From the front bench to rock bottom: Go Hard or Go Home is Kiri Allan's fearless memoir of ambition, disruption and survival in NZ politics and beyond. Kiri Allan's six-year political career spanned some of the most challenging times in recent history. Events a government might encounter once in a generation stacked up: a terrorist attack, a volcanic eruption, destructive and deadly...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$4000Unit price /UnavailableOut 4 Aug 2026Pre-order -
New ReleaseSuicidal Empathy
The bestselling author of The Parasitic Mind shows why empathy in politics leads to civilizational collapse. What happens when a society elevates victimhood to a virtue and decides that punishment is cruel? You get the disease Dr. Gad Saad calls suicidal empathy. And the West may be terminally infected. In his new book, Suicidal Empathy, Saad unleashes a blistering critique...Paperback$3099Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips tomorrow -
New Release
The Day After: How to Wield Power in a Post-Trump World
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Shameless, Brian Tyler Cohen explores how Republicans have abused power, how Democrats have refused to exercise power when they held it, and how progressives should wield power if they are fortunate enough to win a free and fair election in a post-Trump world. The Day After: How to Wield Power in...Paperback$3099Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips tomorrow -
Careless People
Shocking and darkly funny, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to the decisions that are shaping our world and the people who make them. Welcome to Facebook. Sarah Wynn-Williams, a young diplomat from New Zealand, pitched for her dream job. She saw Facebook's potential and knew it could change the world for the better. But, when she got there...Paperback$2800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips tomorrow -
Discipline
Silence is complicity, but how do we confront the cost of speaking up? Sydney, May 2021. Ashraf is an academic whose career and personal life are in freefall. Hannah is a young journalist struggling to honour the voices of her community. When a Year 12 Al-Bayinnah College student is arrested for protesting a university's ties to an Israeli weapons manufacturer,...Paperback$4000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips tomorrow -
Shattered Lands
'A sparkling debut by an outstanding young historian' – PETER FRANKOPAN 'This book is a revelation … both original and important' – MISHAL HUSAIN A history of modern South Asia told through five partitions that reshaped it. As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and...Paperback$3699Elsewhere:$4500Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips tomorrow -
The Handmaid's Tale
The bestselling dystopian classic that became a cultural phenomenon and inspired an award-winning TV series. THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER Go back to where it all began with the dystopian novel behind the award-winning TV series. 'As relevant today as it was when Atwood wrote it.' Guardian I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no...Paperback$2000Elsewhere:$2400Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips tomorrow -
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
'A howl from the heart of our age' — Richard Flanagan 'A unique and urgently needed book.' — Naomi Klein 'A powerful, uncomfortable but thought-provoking read.' — Dua Lipa 'Clear, elegant and devastatingly truthful... Read this shatteringly honest book.' — Max Porter From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad, an urgent and necessary reckoning with what it means to...Paperback$3100Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips tomorrow
Why buy from us?
Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!
Service & Delivery
Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.
Auckland Bookstore
We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.
Our Gifting Service
Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.
