Title: Spectres of Affinity: Ethnicity, Language, and Illegality in Contemporary Sabah<\/b><\/p>\n
Tentative Programme:<\/p>\n
A spectre is haunting the East Malaysian state of Sabah \u2014 the spectre of so-called \u201cillegal immigrants\u201d from Indonesia and the southern Philippines. An alliance of state forces and concerned citizens has coalesced to exorcise this spectre, launching integrated operations to \u201ccleanse Sabah of illegal immigrants\u201d (membersihkan Sabah daripada pendatang asing tanpa izin) (Borneo Today, 21 December 2016). However, and much like the spectre that haunted Marx\u2019s and Engels\u2019s Europe, the one haunting Sabah is omnipresent, constantly felt, yet frustratingly elusive. The elusiveness of this spectre stems from a practical challenge: as Malay-speaking Muslim members of the greater \u201cMalay race,\u201d Bugis immigrants from Indonesia and Suluk immigrants from the Philippines are difficult to distinguish from their co-ethnic counterparts in contemporary Sabah.<\/p>\n
Drawing upon ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork conducted between Indonesia and Sabah, I focus on the Bugis dimension of these ongoing developments, evaluating how qualitative similarities between Bugis Indonesians and Bugis Malaysians stymie the Malaysian state\u2019s efforts to police the former. I show how state agents and concerned citizens seek to police \u201cillegal Indonesians\u201d by attending to wrinkles of difference which distinguish these groups\u2019 habits of talk and comportment. So, too, I examine how \u2014 amidst intensifying state crackdowns on \u201cillegal immigrants\u201d \u2014 Bugis Indonesians and Bugis Malaysians are jointly reevaluating the qualities they are assumed to share in common, and are reckoning the various ways in which they are \u201cthe same, but different\u201d (sama tapi berbeza)<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Andrew M. Carruthers is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. A linguistic and sociocultural anthropologist specializing in Malay-speaking maritime Southeast Asia, he studies the relation between language, mobilities, and infrastructures as a source of insight into the ways people navigate shifting and potentially hazardous terrains in their everyday lives. His ethnographic fieldwork has centered on the Bugis \u2014 a mobile, seafaring people who have long irregularly migrated from Indonesia to nearby Malaysia \u201cin search of moreness.\u201d His current book manuscript evaluates the meaning and materiality of \u201cmoreness\u201d for this people in motion, foregrounding \u201cintensity\u201d as a mediating concept and object of analysis for ethnographic inquiry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Download programme book here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Title: Spectres of Affinity: Ethnicity, Language, and Illegality in Contemporary Sabah Tentative Programme: 09.45am-10.00am: Registration 10.00am-10.15am: Opening Remarks by Prof. Emeritus Dr. James T. Collins, …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3154,"template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_tribe_events_status":"","_tribe_events_status_reason":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[165,158,23],"tribe_events_cat":[45],"class_list":["post-3156","tribe_events","type-tribe_events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-andrew-carruthers","tag-ethnicity-and-language","tag-kita-discourse-series","tribe_events_cat-kita-discourse-series","cat_kita-discourse-series"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/kita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/3156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/kita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/kita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/tribe_events"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/kita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/kita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/3156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3158,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/kita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/3156\/revisions\/3158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/kita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/kita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/kita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3156"},{"taxonomy":"tribe_events_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/kita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events_cat?post=3156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nPresenter's Profile<\/b><\/span>