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Malaysia: Mahathirism, Hegemony and the New Opposition. By John Hilley. London & New York: Zed Books, 2001. 305pp.
John Hilley's book on Mahathir and the Malaysian leader's construction of a number of hegemonic identities in the course of his leadership of the country and the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) is a theoretically sophisticated and articulate rendition of Malaysian politics in the last two decades from a Gramscian perspective. The book is thoughtful, meticulously researched, and coherently delivered.
Divided into nine chapters and an appendix that clarifies the Gramscian terms used, the book takes the reader through the various forces that shaped Mahathir's early thinking on Malay motivations and inadequacies, including the early challenges that he had posed to Tunku Abdul Rahman (Malaysia's first prime minister) and UMNO. It then traces how Mahathir assumed political power in 1981 and set about the task of fashioning an all-inclusive Gramscian-styled hegemony that covered the political, ideological, and economic spheres. There is also a sophisticated treatment of what social forces and agencies were utilized to shape this hegemonic discourse and the challenges that the hegemony faced.
Mahathir's early motivations and vision are described as a reformist, growth-driven agenda conducive to modern Islamic thinking; one that would give impetus to bumiputera competitiveness and lift Malays out of their 'dependent' socio-economic condition" (p.50). The very early engines of bumiputera economic upliftment that had obtained from the New Economic Policy (NEP) "... was now being constrained by the reluctance of Malays and Malay capital to compete in a more open-market environment" (p.50). In response to this ethnic malaise, Mahathir utilized state capital and appropriated non-Malay capital as well to fashion a policy of rapid state-led growth (p. 51).
The new strategy of state-led growth, however, led to a number of contradictions. The first contradiction was to decouple Malay vested interests and the subsidy mentality from modernity and industrialization. This process involved a...