Census; colonialism; religious minorities; indigeneity; intersectionality; identity; ethno-nationalism
摘要
The British territories of greater Southeast Asia were administratively connected to London and Calcutta, and while local censuses show that these centres could exert some influence at the furthest peripheries of the Empire, a close analysis of the ways in which race and religion were approached in the classification of colonial subjects in Southeast Asia shows peculiarities specific to the region.
In this article I argue that the demographic and socio-political contexts of British Burma and Malaya (with references to Hong Kong) led to a framing of ‘race’ that challenged European ‘scientific’ definitions and embraced instead the interweaving of multiple aspects of an individual's identity, most prominently religion. This shift, potentially empowering as reflective of local understandings of belonging, and an improvement from the period's anthropometric framework, was to backfire, however. With the emergence of nationalism, majoritarian identities came to be homogenised in these ethno-religious intersectional communities, marginalising and excluding those who did not fit.
目次
Abstract 1 Keywords 1 ‘Race’ from London to Asia 3 Indigeneity and foreignness 7 The Muslims of Arakan 7 Maritime Southeast Asia 10 Intersectionality: the ethno-religious identity compound 12 Burmese are Buddhists 13 …and Malays are Muslims 15 Conclusions 16 Acknowledgements 18 Conflict of interest 18
