EDITORIAL, May 2021, by Ooi Kee Beng THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC has obliged us to rethink the personal, the present and the proximate. Shaken by the arresting of our ambitions, stirred by disruptions to our daily habits, and stumped in our reasoning by the pressing demands of public safety, each of us has had to reconsider … Continue reading
PENANG PROFILE: Anwar Fazal Ooi Kee Beng Penang Monthly, May, 2021 PENANG MONTHLY CONTINUES the conversation with Penang’s most prolific social activist, Dato’ Seri Dr. Anwar Fazal, on social activism, on having a positive mind-set, and on the importance of communication. [PART ONE was published in April 2021] Galactic Organising Can we talk about your use of ABC, … Continue reading
PENANG PROFILE: Anwar Fazal By OOI KEE BENG, Penang Monthly April 2021 A HEALTH PANDEMIC lays bare the bones of human society. So, if Covid-19 has not riled up your interest in how the world works, in how that world will now change, and in what your place in it will be in the future, … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, for THE EDGE MALAYSIA, 2 May 2021 “Soft Power”, the highly influential article written by Joseph Nye, published in Foreign Policy No. 80 in Autumn 1990, ends with the sentence: “The problem for U.S. power after the Cold War will be less the new challengers for hegemony than the new challenges … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng, in The Edge Malaysia, 28 March 2021 WHILE THE Covid-19 pandemic is sometimes portrayed as globalisation hitting a wall, it has at the same time raised public consciousness that globalization as a whole has gone beyond a point of no return. You see that paradox in how local remedies to the … Continue reading
[Author’s speech at the online Book Launch: Ooi Kee Beng: As Empires Fell. The Life and Times of Lee Hau-Shik, Malaya’s First Finance Minister (ISEAS Publishing 2020): 27 August 2020] OOI KEE BENG (Executive Director, Penang Institute; Senior Fellow, Jeffrey Cheah Institute for Southeast Asia, Sunway University, and; Visiting Senior Fellow, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, Editorial, Penang Monthly, February 2021 AS COVID-19 steadily dismantles the Old Normal, our uncertainties get more and more focused on basics. No longer do we worry as much about that continually postponed overseas trip as much as we do about whether we are allowed to exercise in the neighbourhood park. No … Continue reading
For The Edge Malaysia, 30 January, 2021 In times of political crisis, minds are moved to investigate fundamental concepts such as power and representation—and legitimacy, the shorthand for the relationship between these two terms. This bearing is more pertinent than ever during a pandemic. Our age—the era of the nation state—generally proffers two public arguments … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng, For The Edge Malaysia, 27 December 2020 – 2 January 2021 IN A CRISIS, especially one as globe-spanning as the Covid-19 pandemic, society gets defensive and social interactions become apprehensive. Outsiders are eyed suspiciously and parochial tendencies grow strong. The moral capacity of individuals is put to the test. The immediate … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG for The Edge Malaysia, November 30, 2020 Malaysia is a country where identity politics has been running rampant for decades and where multiple layers of “us-versus-them” awareness has drawn public attention away from commonalities and undermined the high degree of cultural integration evident in its peri-urban and urban population. Comprehensive politicisation … Continue reading
