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20 results

  • Rethinking the causes of Islamisation: Ontological (in)security, postcoloniality, and Islam in Malaysia

  • Nicholas Chan
  • Journal:
    Journal of Southeast Asian Studies / Volume 54 / Issue 3 / October 2023
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    20 September 2023, pp. 419-449
    Print publication:
    October 2023

  • Theories about state-led Islamisation tend to attribute the phenomenon to domestic dynamics, such as political competition, institutional co-optation, and changing social norms. When exogenous factors are considered, they usually refer to imported ideologies. Moreover, Islamisation is often depicted as a firm rejection of the West. This article seeks to complicate those explanations. Using insights from the ontological security literature in International Relations, I argue that Malaysia's state-led Islamisation cannot be understood comprehensively without looking at macro-historical factors, particularly Malaysia's postcoloniality and its elites’ perception of the global order. Instead of being a manifestation of anti-West sentiments, I argue that the initial receptivity towards Islamisation by Malaysia's largely secular ethnonationalist elites constitutes a quest for recognition within an international order within which the Muslim identity is racialised and stigmatised. This is most obvious in Mahathir Mohamad's ideas on Islam, in that his calling for a developmentalist Islam has as its (imagined) respondent the stigmatising ‘West’. I argue that the forms of Islamisation undertaken during the Mahathir administration reflected this drive to catch up with the West while simultaneously securing recognition for Islam; and that such a leitmotif persisted even into the post-September 11, post-Barisan Nasional world.

  • ‘Human Rights…But for the Majority’: The Appropriation and Subversion of the Human Rights Agenda by Right-Wing NGOs in Malaysia

  • Nicholas Chan
  • Journal:
    TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia / Volume 12 / Issue 1 / May 2024
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    24 April 2023, pp. 1-26
    • Article
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  • Scholarly treatments of the human rights agenda tend to posit civil society organisations (CSOs) as its defender and the state and mainstream political actors as its violators. Even when raising the problem of an ‘uncivil society’, the literature labels these CSOs as reactive and hostile to the human rights agenda they perceive as ‘Western’ and ‘foreign’. I argue that these treatments of the issue overlook another phenomenon: the emergence of CSOs that adopted the language of human rights and participated in its formal processes yet subtly redefined, subverted, and undermined the core commitments of the human rights agenda. This paper discusses such developments by referencing right-wing non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Malaysia that redefined the parameters of the human rights agenda to undercut state commitments to protect religious freedom, sexuality rights, and gender minorities. Through actor and discourse tracing, this paper illustrates how right-wing Islamist NGOs employed a novel two-pronged strategy that no longer openly repudiated the human rights agenda but continued to erode, eviscerate, and reformulate its contents and principles. The first prong involved institutional measures of ‘getting in’ to gain legitimacy by participating as a stakeholder within local and international human rights processes. The second prong encompassed social strategies of ‘pushing out’, whereby actors and their networks mobilised populist pressure to expose, ostracise, and subvert established human rights norms, institutions, and actors.

  • 9 - Electoral Politics and the Malaysian Chinese Association in Johor

  • Edited by Francis E. Hutchinson, Serina Rahman
  • Book:
    Johor
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    24 November 2020
    Print publication:
    01 September 2020, pp 238-264

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    Until the shocking results in the 14th General Elections (GE-14) that saw the longruling Barisan Nasional (BN) being defeated in parliament and most states by the opposition coalition, Pakatan Harapan (PH) Johor was always regarded as BN's electoral bastion. Historically, Johor has the highest number of parliamentary seats contested and won by the two largest BN parties, namely the ethnic Malay-Muslimbased United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and its Chinese partner, the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA). With a mixed racial make-up (60 per cent bumiputra, 33 per cent Chinese, and 7 per cent Indian), clear urban-rural divides, an influential royal house, and a growing and relatively industrialized economy (Hutchinson 2018, p. 2; van Grunsven and Hutchinson 2016), Johor is often deemed to be the bell-wether of BN's support, or rather, its “jewel in the political crown” (Reme Ahmad and Cheong 2017).

    UMNO's strength in and dependence on Johor as its point of origin, a forging ground for leaders, and base of support has been convincingly documented (Hutchinson 2015b, 2018; Funston 1980). Yet, the same cannot be said for the MCA. The party's relative resilience in Johor, despite its notable decline from 2008 to 2018, remains unexplored. Its resilience can be seen from the fact that Johor MCA managed to hold onto most of its seats in the 2008 elections despite BN as a whole suffered massive losses nationwide. The importance of Johor can also be intimated from the fact that most MCA presidents are in some way connected to Johor—some for the fact that they are Johor-born (Neo Yee Pan, Chua Soi Lek); some for standing for office in the state (Lee San Choon, Ling Liong Sik); and almost all—with the exception of Tan Siew Sin, Tan Koon Swan, and Liow Tiong Lai, for having at some point of time been appointed chairman of the MCA Johor State Liaison Committee.

    This chapter examines the MCA's electoral performance in Johor in relation to its history, Malaysia's national politics in general, the state's changing socio-economic landscape, and most importantly, the unique ethnic-pooling formula that worked in the MCA's favour. It argues that the MCA's fate in Johor, while at first secured by its local Chinese networks and affiliations, was soon undermined by the party's changing membership structure and the party's progressive loss of influence within BN, especially vis-à-vis UMNO.

  • Electoral Politics and the Malaysian Chinese Association in Johor

  • Hock Guan Lee, Nicholas Chan
  • Book:
    Electoral Politics and the Malaysian Chinese Association in Johor
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 March 2019
    Print publication:
    07 December 2018, pp vii-viii

  • Summary

    Executive Summary

  • • Like the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) was known for having its bastion in Johor, with the state containing the highest number of parliamentary seats contested and won by the party.

  • • Two features of the MCA stand out: (1) its relative resilience in that its near elimination in other states since 2008 did not occur in Johor until the recent 14th General Elections, and (2) that most MCA presidents had some connections to Johor, either as having been born in Johor, contested in a Johor constituency, been chairman of the Johor state liaison committee, or a combination of three.

  • • Although historical institutional linkages such as the New Villages and the Chinese guilds and associations (CGAs) gave the MCA a strong footing in Johor initially, changing political and socioeconomic circumstances gradually eroded the party's support among the Johorean Chinese.

  • • As it began to lose appeal as an individual party, the MCA Johor had to depend on a strategy of mixed voter pooling so that the significant loss of support from the Chinese could be compensated for by the Malay electorate that was until recently highly supportive of the Barisan Nasional (BN).

  • • The strategic dependence of the MCA on the UMNO was rendered void when the latter was defeated in the state. As it stands, the revival of the party's standing both within Johor and nationally is far from certain.

  • Foreword

  • Hock Guan Lee, Nicholas Chan
  • Book:
    Electoral Politics and the Malaysian Chinese Association in Johor
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 March 2019
    Print publication:
    07 December 2018, pp v-vi

  • Summary

    The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

    The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

    The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

Electoral Politics and the Malaysian Chinese Association in Johor
  • Hock Guan Lee, Nicholas Chan
  • Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 March 2019
    Print publication:
    07 December 2018
  • Like the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) was known for having its bastion in Johor, with the state containing the highest number of parliamentary seats contested and won by the party. Two features of the MCA stand out: (1) its relative resilience in that its near elimination in other states since 2008 did not occur in Johor until the recent 14th General Elections, and (2) that most MCA presidents had some connections to Johor, either as having been born in Johor, contested in a Johor constituency, been chairman of the Johor state liaison committee, or a combination of three. Although historical institutional linkages such as the New Villages and the Chinese guilds and associations (CGAs) gave the MCA a strong footing in Johor initially, changing political and socioeconomic circumstances gradually eroded the part's support among the Johorean Chinese. As it began to lose appeal as an individual party, the MCA Johor had to depend on a strategy of mixed voter pooling so that the significant loss of support from the Chinese could be compensated for by the Malay electorate that was until recently highly supportive of the Barisan Nasional (BN). The strategic dependence of the MCA on the UMNO was rendered void when the latter was defeated in the state. As it stands, the revival of the part's standing both within Johor and nationally is far from certain.

  • Electoral Politics and the Malaysian Chinese Association in Johor

  • Hock Guan Lee, Nicholas Chan
  • Book:
    Electoral Politics and the Malaysian Chinese Association in Johor
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 March 2019
    Print publication:
    07 December 2018, pp 1-32

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Until the shocking results in the 14th General Elections (GE-14) in 2018 that saw the long-ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) being defeated by the opposition coalition, Pakatan Harapan (PH) in parliament and in most states, Johor was always regarded as BN's electoral bastion. Johor has the highest number of parliamentary seats contested and historically won by the two largest BN parties, the ethnic Malay-Muslim-based United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and its Chinese partner, the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA). With a mixed racial make-up (60 per cent Bumiputera, 33 per cent Chinese, and 7 per cent Indian), clear urban–rural divides, an influential royal house, and a growing and relatively industrialized economy (Hutchinson 2018, p. 2; van Grunsven and Hutchinson 2016), Johor is often deemed to be the bell-wether of BN's support, or rather, its “jewel in the political crown”.

    UMNO's strength in and dependence on Johor as its point of origin, a forging ground for leaders, and base of support has been convincingly documented (Hutchinson 2015b; 2018; Funston 1980). Yet, the same cannot be said for the MCA. The party's relative resilience in Johor, albeit amidst a notable decline from 2008 to 2018, remains unexplored. Its resilience can be seen from the fact that Johor MCA managed to hold onto most of its seats in the 2008 elections despite BN as a whole suffering massive losses nationwide. The importance of Johor can also be intimated from the fact that most MCA presidents are in some way connected to Johor — some for the fact that they are Johor-born (Neo Yee Pan, Chua Soi Lek); some for standing for office in the state (Lee San Choon and Ling Liong Sik); and almost all, with the exception of Tan Siew Sin, Tan Koon Swan, and Liow Tiong Lai, for having at some point of time been appointed Chairman of the MCA Johor State Liaison Committee.

    This paper examines the MCA's electoral performance in Johor in relation to its history, Malaysia's national politics in general, the state's changing socioeconomic landscape, and most importantly, the unique ethnic-pooling formula that ultimately worked in the MCA's favour.

  • MYOPIC POLICIES FOR NON-PREEMPTIVE SCHEDULING OF JOBS WITH DECAYING VALUE

  • Neal Master, Carri W. Chan, Nicholas Bambos
  • Journal:
    Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences / Volume 32 / Issue 1 / January 2018
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    28 November 2016, pp. 1-36
    • Article
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  • In many scheduling applications, minimizing delays is of high importance. One adverse effect of such delays is that the reward for completion of a job may decay over time. Indeed in healthcare settings, delays in access to care can result in worse outcomes, such as an increase in mortality risk. Motivated by managing hospital operations in disaster scenarios, as well as other applications in perishable inventory control and information services, we consider non-preemptive scheduling of jobs whose internal value decays over time. Because solving for the optimal scheduling policy is computationally intractable, we focus our attention on the performance of three intuitive heuristics: (1) a policy which maximizes the expected immediate reward, (2) a policy which maximizes the expected immediate reward rate, and (3) a policy which prioritizes jobs with imminent deadlines. We provide performance guarantees for all three policies and show that many of these performance bounds are tight. In addition, we provide numerical experiments and simulations to compare how the policies perform in a variety of scenarios. Our theoretical and numerical results allow us to establish rules-of-thumb for applying these heuristics in a variety of situations, including patient scheduling scenarios.

  • Phylogenetic variation in hind-limb bone scaling of flightless theropods

  • Nicholas R. Chan
  • Journal:
    Paleobiology / Volume 43 / Issue 1 / February 2017
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    24 November 2016, pp. 129-143

  • The robusticity of the weight-bearing limbs of large terrestrial animals is expected to increase at a more rapid rate than in their smaller relatives. This scaling has been hypothesized to allow large species to maintain stresses in the limb bones that are similar to those seen in smaller ones. Curvilinear scaling has previously been found in mammals and nonavian theropods but has not been demonstrated in birds. In this study, polynomial regressions of leg-bone length and circumference in terrestrial flightless birds were carried out to test for a relationship similar to that seen in nonavian theropods. Flightless birds exhibit curvilinear scaling, with the femora of large taxa becoming thicker relative to length at a greater rate than in smaller taxa. Evidence was found for nonlinear scaling in the leg bones of nonavian theropods. However, unlike in avians, there is also phylogenetic variation between taxonomic groups, with tyrannosaur leg bones in particular scaling differently than other groups. Phylogenetically corrected quadratic regressions and separate analyses of taxonomic groupings found little phylogenetic variation in flightless birds. It is suggested here that the nonlinear scaling seen in avian femora is due to the need to maintain the position of the knee under a more anterior center of mass, thereby restricting femoral length. The femur of nonavian theropods is not so constrained, with greater variability of the linear scaling relationships between clades. Phylogenetic variation in limb-bone scaling may broaden the errors for mass-predictive scaling equations based on limb-bone measurements of nonavian theropods.

  • Climate Contributions and the Paris Agreement: Fairness and Equity in a Bottom-Up Architecture

  • Nicholas Chan
  • Journal:
    Ethics & International Affairs / Volume 30 / Issue 3 / Fall 2016
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    12 September 2016, pp. 291-301
    • Article
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  • One of the chief aspects of last December's landmark Paris Agreement on climate change was the acceptance of the notion that all states would make a “contribution” to the global effort to address climate change. These voluntary, nationally determined, non-binding pledges are the most visible feature of the reorientation of the international climate regime away from its previous emphasis on “top-down” international coordination, and toward a “bottom-up” architecture that provides greater national flexibility in order to induce broader participation. At the same time, however, the agreement to keep the rise in average global temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius indicates that there is a limit to the quantity of carbon that can be emitted to meet this temperature goal, raising the challenge of how to apportion this carbon “budget” among states. Can a fair distribution of the carbon budget be achieved amid voluntary contributions? This paper first discusses the tension between the top-down distribution that a carbon budget approach generally implies, and the bottom-up institutional elements of the new climate architecture. Second, it reviews the alternative ways in which considerations of fairness have been integrated into the design of the Paris Agreement, and the rise of “national circumstances” as the context for fairness. Finally, this paper points to the increased role for normative argumentation in this bottom-up world, where new norms embedded in the Paris Agreement, especially relating to increases in national ambition, take on greater importance in efforts to achieve an equitable response to climate change.

  • Scenes of Execution: Spectatorship, Political Responsibility, and State Killing in American Film

  • Austin Sarat, Madeline Chan, Maia Cole, Melissa Lang, Nicholas Schcolnik, Jasjaap Sidhu, Nica Siegel
  • Journal:
    Law & Social Inquiry / Volume 39 / Issue 3 / Summer 2014
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    27 December 2018, pp. 690-719
    Print publication:
    Summer 2014

  • For as long as there have been motion pictures, scenes of execution have appeared in American film. This article examines those scenes over the course of the twentieth century and suggests that spectatorship, and what it means to watch, is central to scenes of execution in film. We are interested less in the intentions and politics of a filmmaker and more in what those scenes offer viewers. We argue that three central motifs of spectatorship characterized death penalty films during the more than 100‐year period that we studied. First, viewers are often positioned as members of an audience and many scenes of execution are presented in a highly theatrical fashion and, as a result, the line between spectatorship and witnessing is blurred. Second, in many scenes of execution viewers are brought “backstage” and provided chilling, intimate views of the machinery of death, privileged views unavailable outside of film. The third motif shifts the positioning of the viewer such that we stand in the shoes of those who are to be executed. We conclude by asking whether and how scenes of execution in American film provoke in viewers an awareness of the political responsibility inherent in their identities as democratic citizens in a killing state.

  • Quasi-single Crystal Semiconductors on Glass Substrates Through Biaxially Oriented Buffer Layers

  • Toh-Ming Lu, Huafang Li, Churamani Gaire, Nicholas LiCausi, Tzu Liang Chan, Ishwara Bhat, Shengbai Zhang, Gwo Ching Wang
  • Journal:
    MRS Online Proceedings Library Archive / Volume 1268 / 2010
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 February 2011, 1268-EE03-06
    Print publication:
    2010

  • High efficiency photovoltaic devices are normally fabricated on single crystalline substrates. These single crystalline substrates are expensive and volume production for widespread usage has not been realistic. To date, large volume production of solar cells is on less expensive non-crystalline substrates such as glass. Typically the films grown on glass are polycrystalline with less than ideal efficiency. It was proposed that a dramatic gain in the efficiency may be achieved if one uses a biaxially oriented buffer layer on glass to grow biaxial semiconductor films to fabricate solar devices compared to that of films grown directly on glass. Biaxial films are not exactly single crystal but have strongly preferred crystallographic orientations in both the out-of-plane and in-plane directions. Typically the misorientation between grains can be small (within a few degrees) and may possess low carrier recombination rate. In this paper we shall discuss growth techniques that would allow one to produce biaxial buffer layers on glass. A specific strategy using an atomic shadowing mechanism in an oblique angle deposition configuration that allows one to grow biaxial buffer layers such as CaF2 on glass substrate will be discussed in detail. Results of heteroepitaxy of semiconductor materials such as CdTe and Ge on these biaxial buffer/glass substrates characterized by x-ray pole figure, reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) pole figure and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) will be presented.

  • Apolipoprotein E genotype and lifetime cognitive decline

  • Nicholas A. Kozauer, Michelle M. Mielke, Gary Kwun Chuen Chan, George W. Rebok, Constantine G. Lyketsos
  • Journal:
    International Psychogeriatrics / Volume 20 / Issue 1 / February 2008
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 February 2008, pp. 109-123

  • Objective: The relationship of apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype to lifetime cognitive decline was examined over 22 years in a large community-based population study.

    Method: The sample for the present study was derived from follow-up of a probability sample of the adult household residents of East Baltimore. From the Baltimore cohort of the Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study, genotype data were collected on 818 participants at the study's fourth wave between 2003 and 2004. Participants were administered the Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE) at all four study waves. Three tests of verbal learning – immediate recall, delayed recall, and word recognition – were completed at waves 3 and 4. The 659 participants for whom genetic data were available had also completed cognitive testing at all time points. Test scores and changes in these scores were examined by APOE genotype group (x/x or 4/x) in younger and older subcohorts defined by age at wave 4 (< or ≥ age 65).

    Results: Cross-sectional wave 4 scores on all four cognitive tasks were lower in APOEε4 carriers when compared to non-carriers. In longitudinal univariate models ε4 carriers in the younger cohort demonstrated a greater annual rate of decline on a delayed recall task and MMSE. After adjusting for covariates only the decline in the delayed recall task was significant.

    Conclusion: We report an association between APOE genotype and decline in delayed recall and possibly MMSE over this extended time period limited to younger individuals. The lack of an association between APOE and decline in older individuals is likely to be the result of survival bias. Although a clear association exists between APOE genotype and cognitive decline or dementia in late life, these findings suggest that over the lifespan the relationship between APOE and cognitive decline is more complicated.