Cultural Positionings and Knowledge Production: Moving Within and Between Malaysia and Australia

Abstract

In this chapter, I discuss cultural differences and the politics of knowledge production as played out through four significant moments in my academic journey. I trace my educational and research pathway from my schooling, university and teaching days within the highly ethnicized, stratified and political Malaysian system to my doctoral and postdoctoral work in an Australian university researching gender, ethnicity and education vis-a-vis the experiences of Malay-Muslim, Chinese and Indian young women in Malaysia. Malaysian ethnic politics involving the ethnic groups of Malay-Muslims, Chinese and Indians position me as a Malaysian-Indian in ways that both privilege and disadvantage me. I also consider my current positionings living and working as a university senior lecturer in Australia. The ways in which I am required to (re)negotiate my insider-outsider positionings within these different educational and cultural spaces are also discussed. The discourses and representations of Malaysian and Australian inform each other, and respond to the cultural and education milieus in which they are situated. This chapter sheds important light on the complex ways in which identity practices, both formal and informal shape knowledge production and educational practices.