Micro-celebrity practices in Muslim-majority states in Southeast Asia

Abstract

ABSTRACT We have witnessed the growth and spread of celebrity culture worldwide, from A-list celebrities to ordinary individuals turned micro-celebrities. However, celebrity studies are still lacking in exploring celebrity culture in the global South that has recently seen growth in their micro-celebrities afforded by rising individualism, commodification, and social media penetration. This paper aims to address this gap by examining micro-celebrity practices in three Muslim-majority states in Southeast Asia, namely Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia. This paper reveals that celebrification and celebritization processes in these societies demonstrate context appropriation, adaptation, localization, and transcultural flow of celebrity culture. Through the examination of contextualized socio-cultural configurations brought by the micro-celebrities – namely rising local consciousness, development of new subjectivities, and young people’s self-mobilities – this paper contributes to the celebritization process, which goes beyond the individual celebrity to consider the nature of celebrity and its social and cultural embedding in the Muslim-majority Southeast Asian societies.