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Offers an examination of modernity and consumption with a non-Marxist, modernity-Resistance-theoretical frame (mRf).
The Enlightenment theorists involved in the public/private debate exposed the logical fallacies of theology and the philosophical weaknesses of metaphysics but left little room for understanding contemporary modes of consumption. What does it mean to be a consumer in the early 21st century? Do modern markets provide real choices for consumers in neoliberal capitalist democracies? Or are consumers ironically slaves to their own patterns of consumption? Rejecting Habermas' conceptualizations in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1991), Rappa offers an examination of modernity and consumption with a non-Marxist, modernity-Resistance-theoretical frame (mRf). He argues that late modernity — the ethos, experience, and consciousness of global and technological transformation today — is not about the fusion of “public and private” spaces. Rather, modernity and consumption involves the deep penetration of private space by public space to the extent that private space becomes dependent, conditional, and decrepit. The “Private” has become contingent on the “Public”. Decisions about what to consume no longer reflect the mindful choices of private, interest-seeking, and wealth-maximizing individuals but reveal a new kind of public control through foundational images of success, failure, horror, violence, and hope.
This original piece of research considers the ways in which modernity challenges and informs the language policies of various Southeast Asians nations. It combines theoretical arguments from policy studies, language policy and political theory, with quantitative figures where necessary. Succinctly and clearly written, this volume fills the research gap on the topic while bringing up to date the various political, social, and policy developments.
In the first edition, the themes of hope, optimism, and progress of neoliberalism were examined in Asia and America. The second edition, Globalization: Power, Authority, and Legitimacy in Late Modernity, analyses the new pessimism that has descended on the globalized world. The America that was once the bastion of hope, optimism and progress is now showing clear signs of a superpower in decline. The first sign of the American decline since 1941 in Pearl Harbor was the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City on 11 September 2001. The other signs are the Vietnamization of Iraq, a nuclear stand-off with North Korea, increasing trade imbalances with China and India, a stalemate with terrorists in Afghanistan, the challenge of European protectionism, a belligerent politics in the Middle East, overt American dependence on fossil fuels, and the mushrooming of various subprime crises into an escalating global recession. This second edition incorporates the latest developments in terms of culture, wealth and terrorism around the world and provides possible solutions to salvage the American Dream.
This volume brings together a collection of essays analysing the current scenario in South and Southeast Asia with respect to the position of minority groups. Based on an in-depth investigation of some of the lasting minority–majority conflicts of the post-colonial period in countries that often escape comparison, the articles are a rich and critical exposition of the social, economic, cultural and political dimensions of these struggles. The central question being addressed is that of community rights in the modern nation-state and how these are being understood by the two concerned parties and, where and when, thereof, a situation of conflict arose.
With respect to the developing and threshold economies, it is no longer the poor who are the only focus of media attention. Today, the new middle classes are about to take centre stage, too. With their lifestyles and attitudes, the new middle classes are considered to be both the products as well as the promoters of globalization. They are a highly heterogeneousgroup in socio-economicterms as well as in habits 1 and preferences, including their societal role as consumers and citizens. The ?rst wave of scholarly and political attention can be traced back to the mid-nineties. The focal point was surprise and unease about indubitable symptoms of consumerism which, until then had been seen as a characteristic of the richest western societies. However, since the nineties, consumerism has run rampant in - velopingcountriestoo.Thishasparticularlybeennotedwithrespecttotheemerging middle classes in South East Asia. The “will to consume seemed inexhaustible, and appetites insatiable. This rage to consume [...] was both celebrated and feared by political leadersand other social/moralgatekeepers,who beganto condemnthe p- cess as ‘Westernization’ and even ‘westoxi?cation”’ (Chua 2000: xii). Ever since, the debate about the lifestyles of the new middle classes and their role in society has gained momentum.
The making of modern Thailand is grounded in specific political institutions, Brahmanical tropes, and sacred Buddhist traditions stylized with Hindu rituals. Over and above these mysterious practices and ancient customs, modern Thailand is a product of the late Great Rama IX Bhumibol Adulyadej. Most Thai people have only known one King. Born in Europe and educated during World War II, Bhumibol was the son of a Harvard medical doctor who had a penchant for jazz music and fast cars. When he returned to Thailand in 1951 to assume his royal duties, he could hardly speak Thai but his French and German were remarkable. Bhumibol had inherited an impoverished country with nothing but a symbolic role as a figurehead monarch. He was surrounded by envious courtiers and royals from other families now sidelined by the rise of the Chakri. Scheming generals and authoritarian field marshals were emptying the Kingdom’s coffers. Using guile and wit, Bhumibol had turned the tide by 1973. He became the most powerful modern warlord in the history of the Kingdom. He survived attempted murder, crafty politicians, corrupt generals, sycophantic courtiers and impoverished masses. When he died on October 13 2016, Bhumibol was already the longest standing monarch in the world. King Bhumibol was deeply respected and well-liked by farang and locals alike. Despite his massive social and economic achievements many problems continue to plague the Kingdom. These are prostitution, human rights issues, pollution, corruption, cronyism in Chinese businesses, border conflicts with Cambodia, and the refugee problem. This book examines the role of Rama IX and the variegated set of problems that persist in life under the great white elephant and mango trees. Rappa draws from his primary research that includes interviews, surveys and first-hand observations of a remarkable kingdom and a uniquely remarkable king to reveal the internal security threats to democracy and civil society in the oldest Southeast Asian kingdom in late modernity.
In Unsettling Absences, Eric Thompson argues that urbanism is a cultural force unbound from the city and is a pervasive presence in the Malaysian countryside. Transported to rural communities, urbanism has motivated migration, transformed the social lives of rural inhabitants, and created a deep ambivalence about personal identity. This has left rural Malays feeling out of place in both the city and the village. Kuala Lumpur epitomises modernity, but rural Malays who move there are often marginalised in squatter settlements on its periphery. The kampung symbolises home and the locus of Malay identity, but schoolbooks and television have projected urbanism that marks rural life as backwards and marginal in a forward-looking nation into the kampung. The book challenges city-bound urban studies by locating urbanism in a wider world that extends outside of the city, and shows the conflicted realities of rural dwellers in an overwhelmingly urban world. As others have challenged the meaning of "modernity", Thompson challenges the meaning of "urban" while still recognising the powerful effects of an ideology of "urbanism". Unsettling Absences is a call to take seriously place-based identities and cultural geographies in a world where the urban/rural divide is dissolving in practice but in cultural terms remains as powerful as ever.