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Student Activism in Malaysia: Crucible, Mirror, Sideshow. By Meredith L. Weiss.

Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Southeast Asia Program,
Cornell University, 2011. x, 302 pp. \$46.95 (cloth); \$23.95 (paper).
Cheong Soon Gan
The Journal of Asian Studies / Volume 72 / Issue 03 / August 2013, pp 752 - 753
DOI: 10.1017/S0021911813001058, Published online: 19 September 2013

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0021911813001058

How to cite this article:
Cheong Soon Gan (2013). The Journal of Asian Studies, 72, pp 752-753 doi:10.1017/
S0021911813001058
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752

The Journal of Asian Studies

Student Activism in Malaysia: Crucible, Mirror, Sideshow. By MEREDITH L.
WEISS. Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Southeast Asia
Program, Cornell University, 2011. x, 302 pp. $46.95 (cloth); $23.95 (paper).
doi:10.1017/S0021911813001058

In Student Activism in Malaysia, Meredith Weiss seeks to explore student political

activism on university campuses as a distinctive genre of social movement, and . . . to
examine the political impacts and externalities of student activism in Malaysia (p. 3).
In the process, she fills a critical gap in Malaysian history and offers a useful approach
to understanding similar movements in Southeast Asia.
Weiss begins her study with a careful consideration of the category of student,
which, in the context of political activism, mainly refers to university students.
However, membership in the category goes beyond enrollment in a tertiary institution;
a student in this sense is one with an embedded sense of collective agency (p. 3).
Student activism takes place within a campus ecologya unique physical and social
environment that structures the flow of ideas, the nature of collaboration, and the
forms of organization in ways that produce a distinct form of youth or social movement.
Weiss argues, convincingly, that the Malaysian case adds to the broader scholarship of
social movements because student activism there is broad and diverse; has to grapple
with persistent ethno-religious cleavages; has developed in distinct phases, therefore
lending itself to fruitful comparisons; and has spanned a manageable time frame.
The following chapters describe five periods of student activism from the 1950s until
the present. These include a pre-independence phase (before 1957); the early years of
self-rule (195766); the peak of student activism in Malaysia from 1967 to 1974, a
period that coincided with widespread and epoch-making student protests across the
world; the governments vigorous response to these protests from 1975 to 1998, in
which the state successfully curbed the wings of student activists through a sustained
policy of intellectual containment; and, finally, the tentative revitalization of campus activism since the late 1990s, and the states swift response to any possibility of a resurgent
student movement. The details of these successive phases are sourced from a wide range
of primary materials, an exhaustive reading of secondary scholarship, as well as interviews
with many key participants of the various phases of activism. Weiss cautions that oral
history can favor those willing to speak on the record, but she mitigates any potential
imbalance by contextualizing these memories with published records and expertly
deploying them when the written archive is silent.
This comprehensive narrative of student political activism is significant in itself, and
justifies the project, as it fills an important gap in Malaysian history. Yet this history also
illuminates the broader narrative of a nascent postcolonial state grappling with the
growing pains of nationalism and the meaning of the nation. The issues that preoccupy,
unite (or divide), and drive student activism forwardclass, language, economic opportunity, and, above all, ethnicity and religionare those that have gripped the nation since
the hoisting of a flag and the singing of an anthem in 1957. By weaving the two narratives
together, Weiss clearly shows the significance of student activism in driving the debate
over the soul and shape of the nation. At the same time, this is not solely a national
study: Weiss also consistently situates her subject within the Southeast Asian context,
comparing Malaysia to the more robust student activists and movements of Thailand
and Indonesia to draw out nuances in objectives, organization, and outcomes.
Weisss disciplined focus on the political dimensions of student activismhow students interpret their political status, choose their targets, find allies, build legitimacy, get
riled up, decide when to act, mobilize others, whether allies or opponents (p. 33)is

Book ReviewsSoutheast Asia

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admirable in the breadth of its coverage, but there are other aspects of student mobilization that are not overtly political but have significant political impact, and these warrant
more study. For instance, during the period after the heyday of student activism, the governments relative success in intellectual containment forced certain Chinese and Indian
groups to devote more energy to safer, nonreligious parapolitical outlets (p. 216). A
more sustained examination of, say, New Era College students or the University of
Malaya Chinese Language Societys nonpolitical cultural activities would have provided
an interesting counterweight to Weisss thorough treatment of the PBMUM (University
of Malaya Malay Language Society). Another aspect worth exploring is the impact of
non-student-organized events (particularly films, plays, talks, and other performances)
on the campus ecology that fashioned activism. For instance, the University of
Malayas Experimental Theatre witnessed many of these events through the years, including Kee Thuan Chyes searing political satire, 1984 Here and Now, which premiered on
campus in 1985 to much excitement among students, due in no small part to nightly
speculation about whether the police would shut the performance down.
These are less critiques of Student Activism in Malaysia but more an identification of
paths that build on Weisss important work. Readers interested in Malaysian and Southeast Asian studies, as well as social movements, will be indebted to her theoretically
informed and historically expansive treatment of student political activism in Malaysia.
CHEONG SOON GAN
University of Wisconsin-Superior
cheongsoon@gmail.com