Reinventing Malaysia Relections on past and Future

JOMO K.S. (b. 1952) is a prominent Malaysian economist, and currently a Visiting Senior Fellow at Khazanah Research Institute, Visiting Fellow at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University, and Adjunct Professor at the International Islamic University, Malaysia.

JOHN G. BUTCHER teaches at the School of Asian and International Studies, Griffith University. He has written on British colonial society in Malaya and revenue farming in Southeast Asia and is completing an ecological history of the marine fisheries of Southeast Asia.

CHEAH BOON KHENG retired as a Professor of History at the Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang. He has written extensively on Malaysian social and political history, including Masked Comrades, Red Star Over Malaya and The Peasant Robbers of Kedah.

CHARLES HIRSCHMAN is Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington in Seattle. He teaches and conducts research in the areas of demography, race and ethnic inequality, and Southeast Asia. His publications include a book Ethnic and Social Stratification in Peninsular Malaysia (1975, American Sociological Association) and many articles and book chapters on Malaysia. He first came to Malaysia as an American Peace Corps Volunteer in 1965, and had lived for two years at Kampong Mengkuang in Baling, Kedah. Hirschman completed his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in 1972 and taught at Duke University (1972-81) and Cornell University (1981-87) before going to the University of Washington. He is currently conducting research on social and demographic change in Vietnam.

M. K. RAJAKUMAR is a medical doctor practicing in Kuala Lumpur. He was last Acting Chairman of the Labour Party of Malaya (LPM), President of the Malaysian Scientific Association, President of WONCA, the World Organisation of Family Doctors, and first Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences of Malaysia.

RUSTAM A. SANI was a Vice-President of Partai Rakyat Malaysia and was President-elect of the Malaysian Social Science Association before becoming a politician. He did post-graduate work at the University of Kent, Canterbury. and at Yale University. He is considered one of the Malaysia’s leading public intellectuals and has published extensively on politics, society, culture, statistics and poetry in both Malay and English.

JAMES C. SCOTT has several academic affiliations (Director, Program in Agrarian Studies and Professor of Political Science and Anthropology) at Yale University, reflecting the broad scope of and appreciation for his work He is the author of many celebrated volumes, most notably Political Ideology in Malaysia, The Moral Economy of the Peasantry, Weapons of the Weak. Domination and the Arts of Resijtance and Seeing Like Yhe State.

SYED HUSIN ALI was a Professor of Human Development and then of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Malaya and President of the Malaysian Social Science Association (MSSA) during the eighties, and has been President of the Partai Rakyat Malaysia (PRM) since 1990. Best known for his pioneering work on the Malay peasantry, inequality and leadership, he has written extensively on a variety of contemporary issues covering politics, society, culture and literature.

WANG GUNGWU is now the Chairman of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore and is a member of the Board of the Social Science Research Council. He was a Vice Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, as well as a Professor of History at the Australian National University and. prior to that, at the University of Malaya.