MPW 2133 MALAYSIAN STUDIES

CULTURES
SITY JUAEIRIAH BINTI SAMSUDIN ATHIRAH BINTI AMER HAMZAH INTAN ELLINA BINTI NORAZMI SITI AISHAH BINTI MOHAMAD ZAMBERI NURUL AQILAH BINTI MOHD JIMMY WONG NUR NATASHA BINTI KAMAL NUR HANIE BINTI ZAMRI NUR SYAKIRAH BINTI KAMARUZAMAN CHE FATIN HUMAIRA BINTI CHE YUSUF FATINAH BINTI MANGSOR NURUL FARIHAH BINTI MOHD ZULKEFLE ADIBAH HANI BINTI AZIT TUAN NORAZIHA BINTI TUAN ZAKARIA INTRODUCTION
In order to full fill our requirement for taking the Malaysian Studies, we need to conduct a survey and prepare a report according to the survey. This survey is relating to the perception and expectation on the

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livelihood of living in Malaysia, a case study of Perak. The topics for the survey will be divided according to the department as follows, Civil Engineering (Economy), Mechanical Engineering Engineering (Culture), Petroleum Geosciences (Education), Chemical (Career), Electrical

Engineering (Values) and ICT & IS (Social). Each group will be consisting of 10 to 15 members and the survey will be conducted in the area of Perak states. Thus, as a Chemical Engineering student, our group needs to conduct a survey according to the culture. Culture is a way of life that developed and owned jointly by a group of people and handed down from generation to generation. It is made up of several elements of religion, politics, buildings and works of customs, language, clothing, art. Some understanding of of the

the culture is associated with arts and entertainment as part

cultural aspects, but the purpose of culture is even broader. Now we have the influence of Western culture. It is not only emitted from different basis, but much against the culture of polite society has ever existed in the priority values and good ethics. Even though all cultures can be studied, but not all culture is learned. In addition, for the survey purposes, some requirement needed to be filled and answered by the respondents. They just need to choose the answers by selecting one number from one to five which mean from strongly agree to strongly disagree for each question. As surveyors, we also need to full fill the criteria while conducting the survey. The respondents must be the Perakian under 40 years. We need to know their marital status and also the gender. Besides, we also need to do a survey on their preferable language that had been used to communicate and also their nation with religion. We also need to survey on their higher education and career with their income. Their location and type of internet access also need to be survey. All of the factors listed can give an influence to the culture in a group of people. This can be observed after we are completing our survey.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Culture has to be one of the most popular topics, yet analytically hard to be quantified. Thus, it gets relegated to the soft stuff because there is little evidence-based research supporting how to create a viable culture and what a good culture is. The culture actually is the self-evident to the observer and participant. Culture is a shared set of norms. David Caldwell, Professor of management at Santa Clara University had said:

culture

as

shared

understanding

of

assumptions

and

expectations among an organization's members, and it is reflected in the policies, vision and goals of that organization.

The exact definition and concept of culture is still arguable. In 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Besides that, many also relate culture to distinction of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture, an integrated pattern of human understanding, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning or even the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group. Georg individuals Simmel(1971) through the referred agency of culture to "the forms cultivation which of

external

have

been objectified in the course of history"( 'Simmel: On individuality and social forms' Chicago University Press, 1971:6.). However, some even relates culture with civilization like described by Velkley (2002):

The "term "culture," which originally meant the cultivation of the soul or mind, acquires most of its later modern meanings in the writings of the eighteenth-century German thinkers, who on various levels developing Rousseau's criticism of modern liberalism and Enlightenment. Thus a contrast between "culture" and "civilization" is usually implied in these authors, even when not expressed as such. Two primary meanings of culture emerge from this period: culture as the folk-spirit having a unique identity, and culture as cultivation of inwardness or free individuality. The first meaning is predominant in our current use of the term "culture," although the second still plays a large role in what we think culture should achieve, namely the full "expression" of the unique of "authentic" self.

Whereas, the anthropological approach tends to examine the relational and subjective nature of culture in the form of cultural traits like language, religion, customs and pigmentation, which suggest the fluid and contextual meaning of culture (Tonkin, Mc Donald and Chapman in Hutchinson and Smith, 1996). Tylor, in 1874 described culture in the following way: "Culture is that or civilization, complex taken which in its wide ethnographic sense, whole includes

knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." Moreover, the connection between culture and language has been noted as far back as the classical period and probably long before. The fact that different groups speak different, unintelligible languages is often considered more tangible evidence for cultural differences than other less obvious cultural traits. Language and culture then both emerged as a means of using symbols to construct social identity and maintain coherence within a social group too large to rely exclusively on pre-human ways of building community such as for example grooming. Since

language and culture are both in essence symbolic systems, twentieth century cultural theorists have applied the methods of analyzing language developed in the science of linguistics to also analyze culture. Different people and different cultures use different words. Men and women also use words differently; even when trying to say similar things. A community's ways of speaking or signing are a part of the community's culture, just as other shared practices are. Language use is a way of establishing and displaying group identity. In addition, ways of speaking function not only to facilitate communication, but also to identify the social position of the speaker. Linguists call different ways of speaking language varieties, socioculturally a term that encompasses Linguistic geographically well anthropologists or as and defined dialects as

the jargons or styles of subcultures.

sociologists of language define communicative style as the ways that language is used and understood within a particular culture (Clancy, Patricia, 1986). Next, cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. These forces are related to both social structures and natural events, and are involved in the perpetuation of cultural ideas and practices within current structures, which themselves are subject to change. Meanwhile, cultures are also externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce or inhibitsocial shifts and changes in cultural practices. War or competition over resources may impact technological development or social dynamics. Additionally, cultural ideas may transfer from one society to another, through diffusion or acculturation. In diffusion, the form of something (though not necessarily its meaning) moves from one culture to another. For example, Roti Canai, in Malaysia, seemed exotic when introduced into United State.

Individuals have been known to react quite differently to the same situations according to their cultural background and general experience. Therefore, to understand the behavior of people, some knowledge of the influence of cultural norms and values is necessary. It is because, sometimes the culture values imply as a general guide for some set of activities and behavior rules for the people. The culture tradition to a certain individual adheres as a historical entity, which the one that carries with a great powers of socialization and predestination. predict the birth of the baby. Thus, there are a lot of factors that may affect the clarity of a culture. This paper will explain the reason of certain culture changes and mainly analyze on the perception and expectation on the livelihood of living in Malaysia, specifally Perak in term of the culture issues. For example;

GATHERING DATA, RESULT AND DISCUSSION

Question 1 Government has implenmented programs that successfully create ascoiety that often understand about each other cultures.

Result: Response 1 2 3 4 5 Disagreed) Number of Respondent 10 23 13 3 1

(Strongly Agreed) (Agreed) (Neutral) (Disagreed) (Strongly

Figure 1

Based on the bar graph figure 1, out of 50 respondents, 23 of them agreed and 10 people were strongly agreed about this statement. However, another 3 respondent were disagreed and 1 person was strongly disagreed with the statement. The remaining of the respondents were at neutral stage where they were actually not sure whether the programme run by government is successfully accomplished in order to make Malaysia citizen especially in Perak know about each other culture. After done some research and analysis regarding this matter, most of the respondent agreed on this statement which means the government does implement a few of programmes in relation to culture for Malaysian to understand each other culture. One of them is 1 Malaysia which is an on-going political programme designed by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib bin Tun Razak on September 16, 2010. Basically this programme objective is to emphasize ethnic harmony and national unity among Malaysian citizen. By doing this programme, he is determining to unite all races in Malaysia to become one. In other word, all ethnics in Malaysia understand and support each other culture in order to make a peaceful country.

Moreover, there is another cultural programme which has been implemented by the government such as colours of Malaysia which not only to show the world about Malaysian unique culture but still to expose it to the citizen so that they have the knowledge about other ethnics culture too. Furthermore, Deepavali government frequently Gawai Day do a festival , programmes such as Hari Raya celebration, Chinese New Year celebration, celebration, celebration Christmas celebration and others to ensure that all citizen in Malaysia will at least can picture other culture by joining this celebration and festival. Rather than doing a research or reading cultural books, citizen can experience the actual culture of other ethnics in Malaysia by participating in their ceremony or festival. Thus it will give society deeper understanding of other cultures instead of their culture only. On the other hand, culture also can be related to the attires. For example, lately government has implemented the Batik Wear or Festival Batik Malaysia to show Malay traditional attire and uphold one of the cultural heritages. By execute this programme, most of non-Malay such as Chinese, Indian, Christian and others can understand and appreciate Malay culture (for example) because they were wearing the Batik clothes in certain conjunction and event to support this programme lead by government. In conclusion for question one, majority of the respondents agreed that government has implemented programmes that successfully create a society which understood about each other culture despite of their own culture. Some of the respondents also gave a feedback that government has to keep implement these kind of programmes so that our society will have more understanding about each other culture.

Question 2 The development of Peraks state still maintains the identity of historical building for their citizens.

Graph 2: The amount of respondents agrees with this survey question. From this graph, the highest result is agree, followed by natural, strongly agree, disagree and strongly disagree. Besides, these are some comments from respondents. (After translations): 1. Perak state has the new design of their buildings nowadays. 2. There still have Kellies Castles at Batu Gajah. 3. Some examples like Kellies Castles and Pasir Salak. 4. Yes, Perak still maintains their historical places for visitors. 5. Yes, for examples in Pekan Lama at Ipoh and also Pekan Lama at Tronoh. Based on real situation and research, Perak still have several building that retains their old design to maintain the historical value on it. Kellies Castle at Batu Gajah is the best examples of historical place which have a great attraction on tourists to know more about its history. This building keep the design from its early construction and people still can observe the unique design of this castle nowadays.

Figure 1: Kellies Castle as one of the historical place that maintains the identity of its building.

Besides the castle, Perak also have a historical design of rail station that still being used by people nowadays, which is Ipoh Rail Station located at Jalan Panglima Bukit Gantang Wahab. British build the first railway system in Perak and this become the first rail station in Malaya to transport tin

ore. This is the reason why Perak government still maintains this buildings design.

Figure 2: Ipoh Rail Station that maintains the identity of its building. The main reason why people quite disagree about this question because most of the respondents live at countryside and they not much care about the development of Perak state in terms of building construction. Majority of them just making research on the internet rather than going to that historical building to observe it by their own. Besides, the respondents maybe have low education level and not much know what actually government do in order to maintain the historical value on their state. Question 3

Influence on the external culture that has become more critical affected the social lifestyle of local citizen. Based on the survey taken by this group member on 50 random respondents all around Perak state has result in the following tabulation of data. Points of agreement 1 2 3 29 10 4

Number of Respondents

4 3

5 4

From the data above, the points 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 represent strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree and strongly disagree respectively. Besides that, a bar chart is plotted to show clearly the result of the survey. The graph is plotted as below.

Graph 3: Bar chart graph showing the respondents response on the given question.

From the graph, it is clearly shown that 29 out of 50 respondents strongly agreed on the statement which saying that external culture influences the social lifestyle of local citizen. This huge number of respondents exceeds the half amount of total respondents that answered the question. Factors that affecting this result are probably due to the highest education received by the respondents, hometown of the respondents, career achievement of the respondents and last but not least the way they reach the internet connection. Going to the first factor which is the level education received by the respondents, it supports that as people going further in their education which sometimes bring them to the oversea, their lifestyle can be affected by the external culture there. For an example, in United States that apply

the western culture, their culture is very different from our culture. The way they speak, dressing and their lifestyle can cause the students who studied abroad there to be influenced by it. Thus, when they came back to Malaysia, their hometown, they brought back the lifestyle they been living there. And because of that, our country social issue has become worsen and this need to be put into major consideration before it is too late. The second factor that leads to the high number of agreement in the survey is due to the hometown of the respondents. This affect the social issue as it affect the way the respondent are being exposed to bad social lifestyle. For an example, the social issue in Kuala Lumpur, the capital state of Malaysia is in critical level compared to places that is far from the city. When people live as close together as they do in urban settlements, some social problems will eventually occur. Differences between social classes and pressure from the environment may cause social disorder. People often get problems when they feel that they are socially incompetent or that they have failed to realize their dreams, when they feel isolated or just happen to know the wrong people. For instance, social problems occur when people are drawn into the swamp of drugs. Moreover, poverty is a significant cause of crime, hopelessness and feelings of hatred towards the wealthy people in the city. Thus, this clearly proven that the places you lived affected your social lifestyle. The third factor that contributed in high number of agreement is the career achievement. As one achieved high level in their career development, they tend change their lifestyle accordingly. For an example, people who works in a department that need social interacting has the social lifestyle that is more independent and free. This social interacting seldom connected them with external cultures, which can eventually affecting them. Whereas, for those people whom their job field works only circulate around small scale of workspace, their social lifestyle would be different.

External culture also affecting the local social issue in the way people nowadays achieved their internet connection. As the internet connection nowadays are easily being connected, people who used it or the internet users can freely roaming through the internet and surfing some website that may not be as decent as it should be. For an example, teenagers especially boys, they like to go to porn website and this will eventually lead to social problem when they tend to seek it physically. As a result, sexual harassment may occur in school, office and as well as other public places. To conclude for this part, external culture does give major impact in local social issue. This statement had been supported by 58% of the respondents that answered the questionnaire. Thus, serious attention should be given in this area, as we cannot let this external culture from causing more serious social problem among the citizen.

Question 4 Governments effort on sustaining the tradisional culture of Perak for the youth has been implemented.

After did the survey on 50 villagers for the attached question above, we tabulated the result in table below. Point of agreement Respondents 1 4 2 19 3 17 4 9 5 1

Points of agreement are represented by the number from 1-5; strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree and strongly disagree. The graph then was plotted according to the data above.

Figure 4 From the graph, we can analyse that most of the respondents agree with point number 2, which is agree. This shows that, government did take the step on keeping the identity of Perak among the youth since the youth is the leader to-be. Plus, the youth is the most influenced by the surrounding, the development and external culture. From our point of view, the governments target is youth because we believed that youth is the right person to be teached on Peraks culture since they are the one who will be leading the next generation and they are the perfect target for the sustainability of Perak tradisionals culture. In addition, we believed that youth has been selected to accomplish the mission of sustaining traditional culture because young peoples idealism consists to a large

extent of reality-testing for consistency, or sincerity in the older generation and the culture they live in is loosing many things that are important. Moving on, from the respondents reaction, we can see that the effort that has been done by the government is such a big and meaningfull event since most of the citizen or respondents aware about the efforts on keeping the culture. This proved because from the data obtained, the number of respondents that vote for point 3, which is neutral, is closed to the highest point of agreement, 19. Nevertheless, the factor that might contributed to their awareness on the governments effort probably because the event had been handled in such a small town. From our survey form, we observed that most of the respondents are coming from small town, which is the villagers number is perhaps not more than 30 per kilometer, and that is why they are aware about what is going on around them. In spite of that, 20% of the respondents did not agree about the question that had been asked. They felt that there is nothing that has been done by the government in order to keep the tradisional culture of Perak. As a conclusion, we can see that there is an effort done by the government in order to preserve the Perak traditional culture from dissappearing as the development is on track. Besides that, it is important for the villagers to be aware of what is happening around them so that they are not being updated.

Question 5 Cultural and recreational clubs in Perak state have been receiving help and support from the Perak states Government. From the survey conducted to the local residents in Perak regarding this statement, out of 50 respondents, the outcomes obtained were as follow: Response 1 2 3 4 5 Number of Respondents 7 15 22 3 3

(Strongly Agreed) (Agreed) (Neutral) (Disagreed) (Strongly Disagreed)

Based on the local peoples response, most of them gave a neutral response towards the statement being discussed in this part which means they neither agree nor disagree when we were asking about the Perak state governments support towards the cultural and recreational clubs in

Perak. What can be understood from here is that the local people itself were not aware of the cultural and recreational activities being arranged by any local clubs or associations either due to peoples ignorance or due to lack of promotion by the clubs themselves. Some of the respondents feedbacks saying that these clubs are not very active in reaching out to the public and the local people were not able to get close and learn about the clubs administration and organization. Thus, the local people cannot judge whether the clubs are being supported by the government or otherwise. In addition, some of the respondents gave another point of view whereby they can see that the government does support and provides funds to these clubs but they do not see how does the clubs maintain and improve their administration even after being supported by the government. The local people were anticipating more efforts from the clubs to utilize the sources that they had in promoting the cultural and heritage of Perak state. Moving on, we can see from the graph that apart from being neutral, quite a large number of respondents showed a positive feedback by responding that they agreed or strongly disagreed towards the subject of matter. This means that the local people can see for themselves that the Perak state government had given some help and support to the local cultural and recreational clubs in Perak. Among the clubs which existed in Perak are Persatuan Kesenian Sanggar Teras Pusaka, Persatuan Penulis dan Peminat Sastera Perak, Kelab Sukan dan Rekreasi Pejabat Tanah dan Galian Negeri Perak Darul Ridzuan, Badan Bangsawan Seri Perak Darul Ridzuan, and others. There is also the Majlis Kebudayaan Negeri Perak (MKN). Under MKN there is Badan Budaya Perak and this is administered under the Jabatan Kebudayaan Kesenian dan Warisan Negeri Perak. Furthermore, during the Annual General Meeting of MKN in 2009, the meeting was officiated by Exco Kebudayaan, Kesenian, Belia dan Sukan Negeri Perak himself, Yang Berhormat Zainol Fadzi Paharuddin. These are among the strong evidences which can be seen by the local

people

that

the

government

does

give

its

support

towards

the

development of historical and cultural developments of Perak state. This is important as the local people feel that Perak contains many cultural and historical values that need to be commercialized with the aid of the clubs mentioned before along with the support from the central government itself. This is important to monitor the development of cultural activities within Perak and to anticipate any potential opportunities for the future. Nevertheless, there is still a small amount of the local people which disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement being questioned here. They felt that the government was not giving enough support and attention towards the cultural and recreational clubs in Perak. From their point of view, these cultural clubs were like a stand-alone entity which is totally separated from the government administration in Perak and they arrange activities and programs by their own means of financial source such as membership fee or any other ways of generating the clubs own economies. From further research, it is true that there are clubs which were not being supported by the government. This is due to the clubs own administration and policies whereby they are align with what the governments focuses are or not. If they do not have the same line of agreement, most probably the government will not be interested in helping or supporting the clubs activities. In conclusion, we can see that the cultural and recreational clubs activities in Perak are generally supported by the Perak states government in order to preserve the historical value of the rich cultural diversities existed in Perak currently. The support can be in terms of financial aid or other supports in conducting any cultural or recreational activities within Perak. Nevertheless, in order for the government to consider in outsourcing its help to the local clubs and societies, the club itself must have a coherent views and objectives with the government policy.

CONCLUSION
Throughout our survey from five questionnaires and data, we can make a conclusion that majority of the respondents agreed that government has implemented programmes that successfully create a society which understood about each other culture despite of their own culture. Besides, about the development of Perak state in terms of building construction, there are efforts from government in order to maintain the historical value on this state. Furthermore, we also can observe that external culture does give major impact in local social issue. We can also see that there is an effort done by the government in order to preserve the Perak traditional culture from disappearing as the development is on track. Lastly, we can see that the cultural and recreational clubs activities in Perak are generally supported by the Perak states government in order to preserve the historical value of the rich cultural diversities existed in Perak currently. We have made some analysis and observations from the survey data. Firstly, the ranges of ages that we have been selecting are between 18 to 40 years old. The most preferable and selected ages are from 31 to 40 years old and majority of them were women. Most of them were married and for the age below 20 years, they were still single. The main

languages that had been used to communicate are Bahasa Malaysia followed by Mandarin and Tamil. This is due to the majority of our respondents are Malays. Thus, all of them are Islam. Majority of our respondents only have high education until Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM). Their monthly incomes were less than RM 1500 and most of our respondents were women, majority of them were working as full time housewives. Besides, our respondents mainly come from countryside. Only some of them were from the town. Most of them prefer to use the broadband as the option to access an internet. In addition, there are also some response or feedback that we have received from our respondent regarding to the questionnaires. Most of them are giving respond to question number one and two. For question number one, majority of them were agreed with it. In their opinion, Peraks state has held a lot of programes such as Malam Seni dan Kebudayaan that can gather all races. They also can live together as a neighbor in their village although from different races and religion. Besides, for the question two, most of them agreed that the historical building is still maintain such as Kellies Castle, Pasir Salak, Pekan Lama at Ipoh and Tronoh. However, there still has comments that disagree with this statement because a new building now a days are in a modern design. Even though there are some negative feedback that we have received while conducting the survey, based on our observation and survey, most of the citizen still can live and stay together in harmony.

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1. Kroeber, A. L. and C. Kluckhohn, 1952. Culture: A Critical Review of

Concepts and Definitions.

2. Velkley, Richard (2002). "The Tension in the Beautiful: On Culture

and Civilization in Rousseau and German Philosophy". Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question. The University of Chicago Press. pp. 1130
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5. Tylor, E.B. 1874. Primitive culture: researches into the development

of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom.

6. Levine, Donald (ed) 'Simmel: On individuality and social forms'

Chicago University Press, 1971. p6.

7. Abdul Razak Kamaruddin, Kamarulzaman Kamaruddin, December

2009. Malay culture and consumer decision-making styles: an investigation on religious and ethnic dimensions.