Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Images and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Women, Mobility, and Malayness at the Border
- 2 Sambas as Place, Culture, and Identity
- 3 Traversing the Territorial Border for Work
- 4 Public Sector Women Challenging the Borders of Marginality
- 5 NGO Women Contesting the Borders of Marginality
- 6 Creating a Translocal Malay Borderscope
- 7 Mobility and the Reconstitution of Gender
- 8 Conclusion
- Glossary of Selected Foreign Words
- Appendix 1
- References
- Index
6 - Creating a Translocal Malay Borderscope
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Images and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Women, Mobility, and Malayness at the Border
- 2 Sambas as Place, Culture, and Identity
- 3 Traversing the Territorial Border for Work
- 4 Public Sector Women Challenging the Borders of Marginality
- 5 NGO Women Contesting the Borders of Marginality
- 6 Creating a Translocal Malay Borderscope
- 7 Mobility and the Reconstitution of Gender
- 8 Conclusion
- Glossary of Selected Foreign Words
- Appendix 1
- References
- Index
Summary
The Council of Malay Adat and Culture prepares Sambas to become a cultural centre of the Malay World
(MABMonline.org, Sambas)This chapter documents examples of women who are producers and entrepreneurs of Malay culture and how they contribute to the construction of Sambas Malayness. These women's activities involve multiple border crossings, all associated with the claim that Sambas Malay culture is related to, yet distinct from, other Malay societies in West Kalimantan and beyond. In this way, women cultural producers and entrepreneurs are directly involved in the negotiation of Sambas Malays’ identification with, and relationship to, wider cultural fields. The cultural borderscope that is the focus of this chapter is primarily translocal, and is most directly associated with performative and display-oriented cultural practices that are somewhat removed from the quotidian enactment of adat associated with the lifecycle rituals and norms of social intercourse discussed in Chapter Three. These translocal displays and performances of Sambas Malay traditional culture, or adat budaya, depend upon the mobility of both producers and products, and result in a representation of Sambas Malay culture as one of Indonesia's numerous adat budaya daerah (‘regional traditional cultures’) and/or as a specific expression of a wider dunia Melayu or alam Melayu (‘Malay world’). The translocal Malay identifications attached to Sambas Malay culture that develop as a result of women's participation in translocal cultural activities are nevertheless grounded in a perception of distinctively local—even inherited—artistic and cultural practices. Territory and place are still important, as women's identification with locally-grounded Sambas Malay cultural resources remains a source of pride.
The revival of interest in Sambas Malay adat (‘customs and traditions’), budaya (‘culture’), and seni (‘arts’) is one example of the widespread resurgence of local cultures and identities across contemporary Indonesia, including other ‘Malay’ areas (Acciaioli, 2007; Sakai, 2009; Long, 2013; van der Putten, 2011; van Klinken, 2007; Setywati, 2008). At the time of my fieldwork, this was evident in the recent publication of collections of Sambas Malay fables, folktales, royal histories, dances, and songs in book, CD, and DVD formats. Likewise, instruction in Sambas Malay language was being trialled at selected junior high schools as a component of the National Education Ministerial Regulation on Local Content in school curricula.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Cross-border MobilityWomen, Work and Malay Identity in Indonesia, pp. 165 - 198Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019