How do class, ethnicity, gender, and politics interact? In what ways do they constitute everyday life among ethnic minorities? In "Getting By," Donald M. Nonini draws on three decades of research in the region of Penang state in northern West Malaysia, mainly in the city of Bukit Mertajam, to provide an ethnographic and historical account of the cultural politics of class conflict and state formation among Malaysians of Chinese descent. Countering triumphalist accounts of the capitalist Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, Nonini shows that the Chinese of Penang (as elsewhere) are riven by deep class divisions and that class issues and identities are omnipresent in everyday life. Nor are the common features of "Chinese culture" in Malaysia manifestations of some unchanging cultural essence. Rather, his long immersion in the city shows, they are the results of an interaction between Chinese-Malaysian practices in daily life and the processes of state formation-in particular, the ways in which Kuala Lumpur has defined different categories of citizens. Nonini's ethnography is based on semistructured interviews; participant observation of events, informal gatherings, and meetings; a commercial census; intensive reading of Chinese-language and English-language newspapers; the study of local Chinese-language sources; contemporary government archives; and numerous exchanges with residents.
"The book as a whole is an excellent and innovative ethnographic study of the male Chinese population of Bukit Mertajam. Its strength lies in the integration of detailed ethnographic field data into the wider framework of Chinese society. This is a book worth reading for students of Malaysian society, modern history and economic development."
Hans-Dieter Evers, SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia
"The book is full of deep insights and fascinating detail of the decades from 1978 to 2007 in this Chinese urban population... The span of fieldwork on which he bases his study provides a rich reflection on his own evolving ethnographic approach and his growing understanding of the ethnic and class politics and cultural styles performed over these years. It is a significant contribution to our und
Patrick Guinness, Australian National University, Asia Pacific Journal of Anthopology
"Getting By' offers a countervailing perspective by foregrounding a critical historical narrative of the processes of class and state formation of the Chinese in Malaysia... The outcome is a masterful historical ethnography of how disparate formative processes and everyday practices intersect and overlap with one another over time to produce diasporic Chinese citizenship in Malaysia. Nonini's ethn
