Editorial, September 2011 By OOI KEE BENG THE BIGGEST trick that the nation-state concept has pulled on modern man is the proposal that there is an essential line between the external and the internal. Sovereignty over precisely demarcated physical territory is the underlying notion. It is here the nation-state is most easily understood. And so, … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng for Penang Monthly, July 8, 2010. A politician may point the way, but without competent and dedicated civil servants to do the work, not much gets done. This gets truer the more adventurous the politician’s goals are. So, when Dr Lim Chong Eu envisaged Penang as the production base for international … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng, in SARI 21 (2003), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. pp.57-75 [http://www.ukm.my/~penerbit/sari21-05.pdf] Abstract: As interest in Southeast Asia increases in tandem with the region’s economic development, and lately as a result of global tensions, Islam as cultural and political factor is now of such importance that the academic division of Southeast Asia into a … Continue reading