Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper is part of a broader project analyzing the politics of equitable development in Malaysia and Thailand. In this paper, I examine Malaysia's pursuit of equitable development and focus specifically on four sectors: rural development, health, education, and the fiscal system. I argue that Malaysia has succesfully pursued equitable development through the workings of an interventionist state and party.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: What role do moderate Islamic organizations play in promoting democratization in Malaysia and Indonesia? What is the difference between large, grassroots organizations and newer more urban-based NGO’s? Is one type of organization more effective than the other? This paper looks at the changing dynamics of moderate or progressive Islamic organizations in Malaysia and Indonesia. Some of these groups receive funding and assistance from US sources like the Asia Foundation or USAID. Moderate, progressive, or "liberal" Islamic groups suffer from being perceived as "good" Muslims by US policy makers. Given this inadvertent association, can these organizations effectively promote democracy and human rights to the larger population when that population is so critical and angry at the United States? In other words, are Indonesians and Malaysians more likely to turn away from moderate and progressive Islamic ideas because they may seem to be linked to a US agenda of building liberalism? This paper looks at organizations such as the Liberal Islam Network in Indonesia and Sisters in Islam in Malaysia, as well as others to try and understand the conflict between moderate or progressive Islamic groups and more conservative Islamic forces and to evaluate the role such moderate organizations play in advocating for greater protection of rights and liberties.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Scholars have pointed out that three major innovations have given the impetus to an ongoing transformation of our economic and social environment. These historical and technological changes were the swing of electronic industries to digital technology, the large-scale marketing of personal computers and the advent of the Internet. These three changes interacted to produce Information Communication Technology (ICT) convergence and the evolution of industrial society towards an "information society". Cheaper transmission of information via many more communication outlets as a result of convergence will mean that ICTs will be used in increasingly many other ways by governments, commercial systems and society that had previously not been possible. So, does this mean that with advent of the age of convergence, increases in the variety of ways the same information can be access will result in the reduction of the gap in the digital divide? This paper explores the extent of convergence in Malaysia and Singapore, two countries located in South East Asia and the nature of the digital divide in both countries.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study was an effort to examine the impact of receivers-involvement with the topic on the effects of health risk messages. It employed a 2 (low vs. high level of involvement with the topic) X 2 (physical vs. social threat) X 2 (within-subject pretest vs. posttest) X 4 (four countries) mixed repeated-measures design. Participants in the experiment were first pre-screened for their age and nationality. Pretest questionnaires were distributed to the participants recruited for the study. To qualify for the experiment, the participants had to be between the ages of 18 and 25, and they had to be citizens of Malaysia, Singapore, England, and the U.S., respectively. Of the 911 college students who participated in the pretest, a total of 700 students completed the experiment and posttest. Regardless of message condition, country, and time, participants with high level of involvement with the topic all reported greater perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived response efficacy, intention to use condoms, condom interpersonal impact, knowledge about gonorrhea scores, fear arousal, and perceived content learning, but lower scores for message reactance and defensive avoidance than participants with low level of involvement. Participants with high level of involvement with the topic also had greater increase in posttest scores for perceived susceptibility, perceived response efficacy, perceived self-efficacy, intention to use condoms, and condom self-control than participants with low level of involvement.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Feminist scholars have usefully offered explanations for why women?s social movements emerge, but rarely have they explored why the goals of these movements often remain out of reach. Building on a detailed analysis of Malaysia?s anti-gender violence movement, I pose the question why, in spite of decades of activism against gender violence, has gender violence not abated? The typical response of feminists is to focus on the embeddedness of masculinism ? where masculinist attitudes and behaviors that sanction and sustain gender-based violations such as rape and domestic violence are approached as intractable and potentially unchangeable. In the present study, I instead raise the possibility that feminist practices may have unintentionally contributed to the undermining of transformative change.Feminist analyses that explore a politics of inclusion and exclusion associated with women?s movements have had a tendency to center on criticizing the essentialization of ?women? and ?women?s interests? that often forms the basis of these movements, which has served to obscure attention to how gender intersects with other identity signifiers, such as ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and geographic location. In the course of two cycles of field research in Malaysia in 1997 and 2002, I confirmed that identity-based divisions among women in Malaysia persist, undermining the cohesiveness of activists within the anti-gender violence movement while also limiting how representative the movement is with respect to women within Malaysian society. But I also identified other lines of fracture that are associated with the movement that haven?t been adequately problematized to date ? including issue-based, resource-based, and gender-based divisions.In my proposed paper, while approaching these lines of fracture as inter-related, my analysis of Malaysia?s anti-gender violence movement will concentrate on problematizing gender-based divisions, in light of my contention that the most far reaching fault-line across feminist theories and feminist-inspired practices is that between ?women? and ?men.? Building on extensive interviews with Malaysian activists, I explore why the exclusion of men from the practices of women?s activists persists and the implications this exclusion has had for the (in)ability of activists to achieve their broad objective of ending men?s violence against women.