Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

A.B.SHAMSUL 91
It could be said that for the first four post-war decades, there was a steady
nurturing and maturing of scholarly interest and analytical sophistication in dealing
with various components of the new rich in Malaysia. From the mid-1980s
onwards, social scientific knowledge and analysis of the new rich, as understood
both by Robison and Goodman, and by Kahn, began to take shape in Malaysia, in
response to changing social reality (Mohd. Nor Nawawi 1985, 1991; Gomez 1990,
1991, 1994; Lee Oon Hean 1994; Kahn 1988—9; Stivens 1995a, 1995b;
Saravanamuttu 1989; Saravanamuttu and Maznah 1989). Indeed, commencing in
early 1996, there have been a number of research projects on the Malaysian
middle class conducted by groups of Malaysian social scientists, generously funded
by the government under the IRPA (Intensive Research Priority Areas) Research
and Development Program of the Ministry of Science and Environment, as well as
by foreign funding bodies.
What is both exciting and revealing in my present examination of the new rich in
Malaysia is the fact that it reminds me of the ‘old’ concept of the ‘new rich’ which
has existed in the popular realm of social life in Malaysia. The term Orang Kaya
Baru, which literally means ‘the new rich person’, was already in vogue when I was
at primary school in the mid-1950s. This was later confirmed by my field research
in the early 1980s when its usage was still commonplace, and by my recent
conversations with those of my parents’ generation. According to Hans Antlöv
(this volume), the term Orang Kaya Baru has also been around for some time in
his field research area of West Java, and is used in a popular manner, not unlike in
Malaysia. It has also been popular in West and North Sumatra, according to four
Indonesian researchers-cum-doctoral candidates at the National University of
Malaysia, who have been conducting field research in their regions of origin in
Sumatra on the theme of ‘politics and culture’. They kindly alerted me to the fact
that in the mid-1950s academic discourse on the Indonesian middle class was in
place, but was usually linked to an examination of the concept and community of
usahawan (entrepreneurs) (Van Der Kroef 1956).
Written or printed sources in Malaysia seem to suggest that the term Orang
Kaya Baru has been used since the early 1950s in daily conversation, vernacular
weeklies and dailies, movies, lyrics of songs, radio comedy shows, short stories,
election campaign speeches and pojok columns of local Malay newspapers. The
term is often alluded to in everyday conversation simply by its abbreviation, OKB.
It is used in the singular or the plural, because the word orang could refer to an
individual (for example, orang itu meaning ‘that person’) or a group of people (for
example, Orang Melayu meaning ‘the Malay people’; orang putih meaning ‘the
white people’), or else be used as a neutral descriptive term (for example, jadi
orang baik meaning ‘to become someone good’; orang alim meaning ‘religious
persons’).
There are two major explanations as to how the expression OKB came about in
the Malaysian context. The first ‘theory’ traces the origin of the concept to the
Malay feudal system; and the second one to the more subaltern circumstances and
contexts among the grassroots. In the former, it is argued that the formation of an