Chapter Summary

THE FIRST FEW DECADES: A DISCOURSE ON CONFIDENCE

 The Introduction focuses on the Southeast Asia (SEA) under the lens of the
early Twentieth Century.
 During this time SEA was described as “a political culture of confidence in
self-definition.”
 Many Southeast Asian nations were clamoring for independence; gaining
inspiration from one another and fueled by the need to be free from foreign
political, economic, and social domination.
 The author then sheds a light on the history of colonialism in SEA, and how
because of this many of us were stripped of our cultural identity in favor of
emulating the “capitalistic” culture of the west.
 This influence then became the foundation of what we know as
globalization here in SEA, bringing with it a host of social issues that the
author tackles on in later chapters.
Key Notes and Terms:
 The author argues that a class system works in two opposing directions: (1) the
people emulate those in other (oftentimes higher) social classes in order to
reduce socioeconomic differences; (2) because of this, they instead increase
their socioeconomic differences due to their emulation of another social class.

 Conspicuous Consumption theory - describes and explains the practice by

consumers of using goods of a higher quality or in greater quantity than might be
considered necessary in practical terms.

THE “CLASSING” OF SOUTHEAST ASIA THROUGH STEREOTYPES

 The author talks about how the growth of SEA economies has led to radical
changes in how their national culture is viewed, depending on that nation’s
ability to provide employment to neighboring populations.
 An example given is the prejudices of Malaysians towards Indonesian
migrant workers. The author speaks at length of how due to overpopulation
many Indonesians migrate to Malaysia in order to find a better life, only to
be viewed as one of the many social ills plaguing the nation (of Malaysia).
 One such instance is how in times of retrenchment; Malaysians workers
have been dismissed due to the fact that they were paid higher wages than
 the Indonesian workers and often it is even argued that local and foreign
employers are even bounded by contracts to retain foreign workers but
Malaysian workers were not given the same benefit.
 Because of this, the author then states that class becomes a contributory
factor in the construction of the aforementioned prejudices (bogeyman)

A BOGEYMAN PSYCHOLOGY OF MISTRUST AND FEAR

 This part of the chapter focuses on how social prejudices against certain
cultures are created due to systemic issues brought about by how our
economy is designed.
 The author starts out by describing the ‘profile’ of the bogeyman, and how
these prejudices are enforced mainly upon the immigrants of their nation,
painting them as the enemy and making them into the scapegoat for many
of the societal issues faced by the higher-class citizens.
 For male immigrants the usual stereotype enforced is they are “stealing”
jobs and homes from natural citizens who need it, often ostracized due to
how different their culture is than what is considered the norm in that area.
 For female immigrants the prejudice comes in a sexual perspective rather
than a social one, as often they are seen as the poison that destroys a good
marriage. (In this case a good marriage is defined as the marriage between
two natural citizens.)
 The author goes on to explain how these prejudices benefit the business
community rather than the working class, as it allows them to use
immigrants as the scapegoat while actively exploiting them by making
them work for lower wages compared to natural born citizens.

A SOUTHEAST ASIAN NATION AS A BOGEY

 This section focuses on the complexities of these prejudices and how they are
transformed in the arena of international politics and national character.
 The example given by the author is when in 1996 the Prime minister of Singapore
made a statement that if they ceased to be productive and lose their competitive
edge in Asia, they may be forced to rejoin Malaysia. Against a background where
the dominant population of Singapore is Chinese and the dominant population of
Malaysia is Malay, the statement was tantamount to criticism of national integrity
and character.
  In Singapore the Malays are considered inferior due to the fact that many of the
Malays were lagging behind the Chinese in Singapore and because fifty-one
percent of the drug addicts in Singapore at the time were the Malays.
 In this context prejudices are used as a tactic in politics and business in order to
incentivize the working class into working harder and longer while using other
nations as a scapegoat by blaming a majority of the nation’s social issues on them.
(i.e., The immigrants coming from other nations)

KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION AND THE CORPORATIZATION OF CULTURE

 As Asia became more and more focused on the idea of globalization, they created
what was coined as the “Asian Renaissance”.
 Under this economic scenario, Asia started selling intellectual property and
ideological innovation (ideas, plans, etc.) as intellectual capital.
 As globalization became the main goal, society and culture needed to be
corporatized in order to meet the challenges of global competitiveness.
 Hence for many Asians, culture was stripped and replaced with the idea of
capitalism and globalization as Asia began to sell intellectual property in order to
meet the demands of globalization.
Key Notes:
This Global Vision was summarized as three optimistic ideas
1. Visionary Idealism – the emergence of an environmentally friendly
world, which has absorbed all cultures into one conglomerate that
also assimilates corporate consumerism into its ideals.
2. Asiatic cultural distinctiveness – the unique blend of patriarchy
with family stability and spiritualism that resides within Asia is
presented alongside the idea of putting aside individualism and
materialism for the common good of all. However, this seems
contradictory to the corporate culture that resides within Asia as
many of it is extremely Western in origin.
3. Economic Essentialism – Issues the Economy as an indicator of
Human and social development, by replacing the basic social
structures with so-called synergistic structures of workers and
producers who bring for the high levels of productivity.
FALTERING DRAGONS AND THE SLAUGHTERED TIGERS IN THE LAST
CENTURY
 The author goes into detail of the SEA fall during the economic crisis of 1997, and
how despite its efforts SEA was severely crippled due not only to its large amount
of debt, but also its over reliance on western ideas of production.
 As a result, while other parts of Asia are slowly engaging in the global competition
SEA will always struggle to compete.

AN “OVERSUPPLY OF HUMANITY” AND THE INCREASING CONCERN FOR

INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL IN POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
 The author begins the section by stating that the real generators of wealth during
this age (Age of information) will be the first class of “knowledge workers”.
 These Knowledge workers will then decide the fate of millions of production
workers at the expense of welfare and security of workers.
 As these knowledge workers increase their income, they will then become more
attracted to areas that allow them to increase their intellectual capital (like the
U.S.)
 At the same time, some of these knowledge workers will stay within their nations
to increase capital. As the nation’s population reaches 95 percent, the workers will
then be the ones to immigrate to countries that attract owners of intellectual
capital. This then creates a loop of systemic divide as for every single person who
becomes richer a million other workers struggle to get by.
 This in turn, the author predicts, will lead to a backlash of massive civil unrest and
disorder.

CONCLUSION
 SEA struggles with its identity, having been stripped of it in lieu of becoming more
globally competitive. Western ideals of capitalism has been ingrained into our very
system, and the only way for us to be free of it is by reestablishing our unique
character of upholding autonomy by entrusting people to know, think, criticize,
and act upon fundamental issues of societal transformation and development.