Ethnic Orders: Social Categories and the Politics of Identity in the Malay World

 

Ethnicity is central to politics throughout the Malay world, but the meaning and significance of ethnicity—and of social categories like “Malay”—is contested, dynamic, and multifaceted. This talk was an overview of an ongoing book project, tentatively entitled Ethnic Orders, which adopts a comparative and historical perspective on Malayness as a social category. Drawing insights from the fields such as philosophy, history, and linguistic anthropology, and focusing closely on the politics of social status, Ethnic Orders introduces a "conventional theory of ethnicity" that makes sense of the diverse meanings and experiences of Malayness in Southeast Asia over the past 500 years. By thinking carefully about ethnicity in the Malay world, the talk introduced a fresh perspective on status and social categories that readily applies to contemporary debates about identity around the world.

 

 

Thomas Pepinsky is the Walter F. LaFeber Professor o Government and Director of the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell, and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brooking Institution. He studies comparative politics and political economy, with a focus on emerging market economies in Southeast Asia. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University in May 2007, and joined the Cornell faculty in 2008.