Susan Leong | Curtin University (original) (raw)
Books by Susan Leong
In the four decades or so since its invention, the internet has become pivotal to how many so... more In the four decades or so since its invention, the internet has become pivotal to how many societies function, influencing how individual citizens interact with and respond to their governments. Within Southeast Asia, while most governments subscribe to the belief that new media technological advancement improves their nation’s socio-economic conditions, they also worry about its cultural and political effects. This book examines how this set of dynamics operates through its study of new media in contemporary Malaysian society.
Using the social imaginary framework and adopting a socio-historical approach, the book explains the varied understandings of new media as a continuing process wherein individuals and their societies operate in tandem to create, negotiate and enact the meaning ascribed to concepts and ideas. In doing so, it also highlights the importance of non-users to national technological policies.
Through its examination of the ideation and development of Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor mega project to-date and reference to the seminal socio-political events of 2007-2012 including the 2008 General Elections, Bersih and Hindraf rallies, this book provides a clear explanation for new media’s prominence in the multi-ethnic and majority Islamic society of Malaysia today. It is of interest to academics working in the field of Media and Internet Studies and Southeast Asian Politics.
"One of the most celebrated qualities of the Internet is its enabling of simultaneity and multipl... more "One of the most celebrated qualities of the Internet is its enabling of simultaneity and multiplicity. By allowing users to open as many windows into the world as they (and their computers) can withstand, the Internet is understood to have brought places and cultures together on a scale and in a manner unprecedented. Yet, while the Internet has enabled many to reconnect with cultures and places long distanced and/or lost, it has also led to the belief that these reconnections are established with little correspondent cost to existent ties of belonging.
In this paper, I focus on the dilemma multiple belongings engender for the ties of national belonging and question the sanguinity of multiple belongings as practised online. In particular, I use Lefebvre's notion of lived space to unpack the problems and contradictions of what has been called 'Greater China' for the ethnic Chinese minority in nations like Malaysia, Singapore and Australia."
Papers by Susan Leong
On 2 January 2014, members of the Selangor Islamic Affairs Department (JAIS Jabatan Agama Islam S... more On 2 January 2014, members of the Selangor Islamic Affairs Department (JAIS Jabatan Agama Islam Selangor) confiscated 321 Malay-and Ibanlanguage Bibles from the premises of the Bible Society of Malaysia (Gomez 2014). The raid follows on from the Court of Appeal ruling a few months earlier in October 2013 that the ‘usage of the word Allah is not integral to the Christian faith’ (Anbalagan 2014). It was reasoned that allowing the use of ‘Allah’ to denote God in the Bahasa Malaysia (Malay) section of the Catholic publication,Herald, would ‘cause confusion in the community’, and the court upheld the home..
This report was conducted between 2016-2017 with the support of the Australia-China Council. The ... more This report was conducted between 2016-2017 with the support of the Australia-China Council. The objective was to study how the cultural fluency of Australian-Chinese professionals and business migrants can contribute to export success. The term "cultural fluency" here refers to the ability to act as intermediaries and translators. In the report, we occasionally use the term "translator-intermediary" to convey the sense implied by our respondents. We refer to registered businesses in this report: the report does not include the category of "daigou", the individual shopper who sends products back to China, although we do note in passing that the activities of these individuals does make a contribution to the Australia-China trade environment. Migrants from mainland China comprise the second largest source of business migrants. Added to this is the high intake of tertiary students, many of whom will seek permanent residency or return to China with an inte...
Research on diaspora has long been dominated by approaches that centre on displacement, relocatio... more Research on diaspora has long been dominated by approaches that centre on displacement, relocation, mixed identities, cultural hybridity, loss, yearning and disaffection. In this paper, I outline a fresh conceptual framework, franchise nation, which approaches the study of diaspora from the perspective of the state. What this framework allows is the study of the processes that states employ to woo, nurture and engage their diasporas so as to extend their sovereignty extra-territorially, ie. statecraft. The franchise nation concept draws on the notion of cultural expediency and complements two approaches that dominate the study of statecraft today: soft power and nation branding. However, the point of this is not, to borrow Gayatri Spivak’s words, to be either pro or anti-sovereign but rather to stay awake to how sovereignty is “invoked, extended, deterritorialised, aggregated, [and] abrogated” (2007). Far from suggesting the imminent arrival of a post-national period, the intention ...
Reformed in 2012, Australia’s business migration program was reduced from a confusing array of 13... more Reformed in 2012, Australia’s business migration program was reduced from a confusing array of 13 visa subclasses to three, then, four when the Investor Retirement visa was later added. This chapter examines the case of 188V provisional business migrants from China to Western Australia, who generally have four years to work towards and apply for permanent residence. Split into a two-step process, the lengthy transition from temporary to permanent residence means that return to China is an ever-present possibility for 188V migrants. Given that reports on Chinese migration cite security—the surety that comes with strong rule of law, reliable food sources, environmental safety and a sound education—as the main motivations that drive migrants to trade a Chinese home for another, their provisional status places 188V migrants in a quandary. This chapter argues that such incertitude gives rise to a sense of conditional belonging, to which provisional business migrants respond with everyday acts and practices enacted via social media. Seemingly ubiquitous across Chinese-speaking societies, Chinese social media allow 188V migrants to transnationalize some part of the many forms of capital they possess to effect in Australia. Drawing on interviews with current 188V migrants to Western Australia, this chapter seeks to understand how they use the connectivity afforded by Chinese social media to aid in their grasp and navigation of the different economic, socio-cultural and political spaces of Australia vis-à-vis China. It also sheds light on the everyday strategies and practices they develop in the lived experience of conditional belonging
Article in The Conversation on 22 March 2017.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr has said Australia needs to “know Asia” in order to prosper, writes Sus... more Foreign Minister Bob Carr has said Australia needs to “know Asia” in order to prosper, writes Susan Leong and Catherine Gomes for The Conversation. . Delivering a speech to the Asia Society on behalf of Prime Minister Julia Gillard in New York he argued that “we’ll need Asia-literate policies and Asia-capable people”. Ken Henry, who heads the Asian century taskforce, has also argued that Australians should, from their earliest years, acquire the cultural and linguistic literacy to “operate more effectively in an Asian-centred world”. So how do we prepare Australians who attend universities today for this new world? A large decline in the uptake of Asian language courses has prompted some experts and public figures to argue for a greater emphasis on studying languages. Without a fluent population they argue, we can’t reach Australia’s full potential in the Asian century. But while learning a foreign language undoubtedly improves one’s cultural awareness, it represents only one part o...
This book examines China’s digital economy and its reach into the Asia-Pacific region, focusing o... more This book examines China’s digital economy and its reach into the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. It shows how the Asia-Pacific region with an existing large Chinese diaspora is seen as a ‘cultural landing pad’ for Chinese content and ideas. In addition to these regional investigations, the authors trace China’s growing technological status as an innovative nation through four policy approaches: culture+, industry+, Internet+ and platform+. Other + characterizations include intelligent+ and social+. These + characterizations show how China is rejuvenating, drawing technological knowhow from the region, and adding to its cultural power. Drawing on the political economy of the media, industry analysis, platform studies and cultural policy studies, the book shows that China's commercial digital platforms are increasingly recognized outside China and can disseminate Chinese culture more effectively than government-supported media. The authors provide a comprehensive analysis of how Chinese cultural and creative industries became digital, as well as investigating the key players and the leading platforms including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, TikTok, Baidu, iQiyi and Meituan. The book argues that China’s commercial digital platforms are increasingly recognized outside China and in many cases can disseminate Chinese culture more effectively than government-supported media, although this does not necessarily translate into influence. The sites chosen suggest that there is widespread ambivalence to China’s political messaging combined with an uneven reception of its popular culture. The book provides a critique of Western bias in soft power metrics and draws on empirical data to provide alternative readings. The authors also analyse in detail Beijing’s changing policies towards the governance of culture, Internet technologies and digital platforms. The book illustrates how Chinese cultural power is extending overseas and the challenges of Chinese platforms, products and services in overcoming stereotyping and ‘threat’ perceptions.
Thesis Eleven, 2016
This article focuses on urban space and heritage. Our aim is to understand how ordinary streets i... more This article focuses on urban space and heritage. Our aim is to understand how ordinary streets in Perth respond to urban change and how much these urban streets represent Western Australia’s heritage. The intention is to eschew the dominant branding of WA as Australia’s mining state and shift the spotlight so that in addition to the economic and material, light is also shed on the socio-cultural in the everyday and the vernacular. This project uses Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis approach to explore a contrapuntal reading of heritage that disrupts the deserving, dominant and fixed histories of High Road in Willetton and High Street in Fremantle. Amid the tides of migration, commerce, and cultures, heritage facades on High Street Fremantle appear singular and fixed, whereas multiple cultures have been extracted for sale on High Road. Superficially High Road seems diverse, but the overarching impulse across both sites is commerce – ‘Business as usual’ reigns.
In the four decades or so since its invention, the internet has become pivotal to how many so... more In the four decades or so since its invention, the internet has become pivotal to how many societies function, influencing how individual citizens interact with and respond to their governments. Within Southeast Asia, while most governments subscribe to the belief that new media technological advancement improves their nation’s socio-economic conditions, they also worry about its cultural and political effects. This book examines how this set of dynamics operates through its study of new media in contemporary Malaysian society.
Using the social imaginary framework and adopting a socio-historical approach, the book explains the varied understandings of new media as a continuing process wherein individuals and their societies operate in tandem to create, negotiate and enact the meaning ascribed to concepts and ideas. In doing so, it also highlights the importance of non-users to national technological policies.
Through its examination of the ideation and development of Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor mega project to-date and reference to the seminal socio-political events of 2007-2012 including the 2008 General Elections, Bersih and Hindraf rallies, this book provides a clear explanation for new media’s prominence in the multi-ethnic and majority Islamic society of Malaysia today. It is of interest to academics working in the field of Media and Internet Studies and Southeast Asian Politics.
"One of the most celebrated qualities of the Internet is its enabling of simultaneity and multipl... more "One of the most celebrated qualities of the Internet is its enabling of simultaneity and multiplicity. By allowing users to open as many windows into the world as they (and their computers) can withstand, the Internet is understood to have brought places and cultures together on a scale and in a manner unprecedented. Yet, while the Internet has enabled many to reconnect with cultures and places long distanced and/or lost, it has also led to the belief that these reconnections are established with little correspondent cost to existent ties of belonging.
In this paper, I focus on the dilemma multiple belongings engender for the ties of national belonging and question the sanguinity of multiple belongings as practised online. In particular, I use Lefebvre's notion of lived space to unpack the problems and contradictions of what has been called 'Greater China' for the ethnic Chinese minority in nations like Malaysia, Singapore and Australia."
On 2 January 2014, members of the Selangor Islamic Affairs Department (JAIS Jabatan Agama Islam S... more On 2 January 2014, members of the Selangor Islamic Affairs Department (JAIS Jabatan Agama Islam Selangor) confiscated 321 Malay-and Ibanlanguage Bibles from the premises of the Bible Society of Malaysia (Gomez 2014). The raid follows on from the Court of Appeal ruling a few months earlier in October 2013 that the ‘usage of the word Allah is not integral to the Christian faith’ (Anbalagan 2014). It was reasoned that allowing the use of ‘Allah’ to denote God in the Bahasa Malaysia (Malay) section of the Catholic publication,Herald, would ‘cause confusion in the community’, and the court upheld the home..
This report was conducted between 2016-2017 with the support of the Australia-China Council. The ... more This report was conducted between 2016-2017 with the support of the Australia-China Council. The objective was to study how the cultural fluency of Australian-Chinese professionals and business migrants can contribute to export success. The term "cultural fluency" here refers to the ability to act as intermediaries and translators. In the report, we occasionally use the term "translator-intermediary" to convey the sense implied by our respondents. We refer to registered businesses in this report: the report does not include the category of "daigou", the individual shopper who sends products back to China, although we do note in passing that the activities of these individuals does make a contribution to the Australia-China trade environment. Migrants from mainland China comprise the second largest source of business migrants. Added to this is the high intake of tertiary students, many of whom will seek permanent residency or return to China with an inte...
Research on diaspora has long been dominated by approaches that centre on displacement, relocatio... more Research on diaspora has long been dominated by approaches that centre on displacement, relocation, mixed identities, cultural hybridity, loss, yearning and disaffection. In this paper, I outline a fresh conceptual framework, franchise nation, which approaches the study of diaspora from the perspective of the state. What this framework allows is the study of the processes that states employ to woo, nurture and engage their diasporas so as to extend their sovereignty extra-territorially, ie. statecraft. The franchise nation concept draws on the notion of cultural expediency and complements two approaches that dominate the study of statecraft today: soft power and nation branding. However, the point of this is not, to borrow Gayatri Spivak’s words, to be either pro or anti-sovereign but rather to stay awake to how sovereignty is “invoked, extended, deterritorialised, aggregated, [and] abrogated” (2007). Far from suggesting the imminent arrival of a post-national period, the intention ...
Reformed in 2012, Australia’s business migration program was reduced from a confusing array of 13... more Reformed in 2012, Australia’s business migration program was reduced from a confusing array of 13 visa subclasses to three, then, four when the Investor Retirement visa was later added. This chapter examines the case of 188V provisional business migrants from China to Western Australia, who generally have four years to work towards and apply for permanent residence. Split into a two-step process, the lengthy transition from temporary to permanent residence means that return to China is an ever-present possibility for 188V migrants. Given that reports on Chinese migration cite security—the surety that comes with strong rule of law, reliable food sources, environmental safety and a sound education—as the main motivations that drive migrants to trade a Chinese home for another, their provisional status places 188V migrants in a quandary. This chapter argues that such incertitude gives rise to a sense of conditional belonging, to which provisional business migrants respond with everyday acts and practices enacted via social media. Seemingly ubiquitous across Chinese-speaking societies, Chinese social media allow 188V migrants to transnationalize some part of the many forms of capital they possess to effect in Australia. Drawing on interviews with current 188V migrants to Western Australia, this chapter seeks to understand how they use the connectivity afforded by Chinese social media to aid in their grasp and navigation of the different economic, socio-cultural and political spaces of Australia vis-à-vis China. It also sheds light on the everyday strategies and practices they develop in the lived experience of conditional belonging
Article in The Conversation on 22 March 2017.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr has said Australia needs to “know Asia” in order to prosper, writes Sus... more Foreign Minister Bob Carr has said Australia needs to “know Asia” in order to prosper, writes Susan Leong and Catherine Gomes for The Conversation. . Delivering a speech to the Asia Society on behalf of Prime Minister Julia Gillard in New York he argued that “we’ll need Asia-literate policies and Asia-capable people”. Ken Henry, who heads the Asian century taskforce, has also argued that Australians should, from their earliest years, acquire the cultural and linguistic literacy to “operate more effectively in an Asian-centred world”. So how do we prepare Australians who attend universities today for this new world? A large decline in the uptake of Asian language courses has prompted some experts and public figures to argue for a greater emphasis on studying languages. Without a fluent population they argue, we can’t reach Australia’s full potential in the Asian century. But while learning a foreign language undoubtedly improves one’s cultural awareness, it represents only one part o...
This book examines China’s digital economy and its reach into the Asia-Pacific region, focusing o... more This book examines China’s digital economy and its reach into the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. It shows how the Asia-Pacific region with an existing large Chinese diaspora is seen as a ‘cultural landing pad’ for Chinese content and ideas. In addition to these regional investigations, the authors trace China’s growing technological status as an innovative nation through four policy approaches: culture+, industry+, Internet+ and platform+. Other + characterizations include intelligent+ and social+. These + characterizations show how China is rejuvenating, drawing technological knowhow from the region, and adding to its cultural power. Drawing on the political economy of the media, industry analysis, platform studies and cultural policy studies, the book shows that China's commercial digital platforms are increasingly recognized outside China and can disseminate Chinese culture more effectively than government-supported media. The authors provide a comprehensive analysis of how Chinese cultural and creative industries became digital, as well as investigating the key players and the leading platforms including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, TikTok, Baidu, iQiyi and Meituan. The book argues that China’s commercial digital platforms are increasingly recognized outside China and in many cases can disseminate Chinese culture more effectively than government-supported media, although this does not necessarily translate into influence. The sites chosen suggest that there is widespread ambivalence to China’s political messaging combined with an uneven reception of its popular culture. The book provides a critique of Western bias in soft power metrics and draws on empirical data to provide alternative readings. The authors also analyse in detail Beijing’s changing policies towards the governance of culture, Internet technologies and digital platforms. The book illustrates how Chinese cultural power is extending overseas and the challenges of Chinese platforms, products and services in overcoming stereotyping and ‘threat’ perceptions.
Thesis Eleven, 2016
This article focuses on urban space and heritage. Our aim is to understand how ordinary streets i... more This article focuses on urban space and heritage. Our aim is to understand how ordinary streets in Perth respond to urban change and how much these urban streets represent Western Australia’s heritage. The intention is to eschew the dominant branding of WA as Australia’s mining state and shift the spotlight so that in addition to the economic and material, light is also shed on the socio-cultural in the everyday and the vernacular. This project uses Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis approach to explore a contrapuntal reading of heritage that disrupts the deserving, dominant and fixed histories of High Road in Willetton and High Street in Fremantle. Amid the tides of migration, commerce, and cultures, heritage facades on High Street Fremantle appear singular and fixed, whereas multiple cultures have been extracted for sale on High Road. Superficially High Road seems diverse, but the overarching impulse across both sites is commerce – ‘Business as usual’ reigns.
Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture, 2015
ABSTRACT
New Media & Society, 2009
Spatial representations, metaphors and imaginaries (cyberspace, web pages) have been the mainstay... more Spatial representations, metaphors and imaginaries (cyberspace, web pages) have been the mainstay of internet research for a long time. Instead of repeating these themes, this article seeks to answer the question of how we might understand the concept of time in relation to internet research. After a brief excursus on the general history of the concept, this article proposes three different approaches to the conceptualization of internet time. The common thread underlying all the approaches is the notion of time as an assemblage of elements such as technical artefacts, social relations and metaphors. By drawing out time in this way, the article addresses the challenge of thinking of internet time as coexistence, a clash of fluxes, metaphors, lived experiences and assemblages. In other words, this article proposes a way to articulate internet time as a multiplicity.
Continuum, 2009
In this paper, I extend the notion of franchise nations, borrowed from Neal Stephenson's cyberpun... more In this paper, I extend the notion of franchise nations, borrowed from Neal Stephenson's cyberpunk novel Snow Crash (1993), in order to employ it as a device for thinking about the future of the nation. I argue the concept to be particularly well suited for such contemplation because of its sound grounding in the historical intermesh of economic, political and cultural motivations intrinsic to the concept as well as lived experience of the nation. I illustrate this very briefly by casting (mainland) China as the master franchisor and the overseas Chinese as franchisees. Specifically, I discuss the media events concerning China that took place during 2008, such as the protests and counter-protests that occurred at various legs of the Olympic Torch Relay, the Sichuan earthquake of 12 May and the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics on 8 August, and reactions to these happenings from overseas Chinese located variously in Australia, Canada and the United States. I argue that employing the notion of franchise nations lays bare the commercial and political instrumentalism behind the promotion and courtship of diasporas by home nations but, crucially, also aids in the understanding of the reciprocal processes by which franchisees are fashioned out of these communities. Finally, I suggest that, aside from China, franchise nations may also be a useful approach for thinking about how nations like India and Singapore are expanded, exported and explained into the future. Dial 1-800-Nation The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a threering binder-its DNA-xerox it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a left-turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines. (Stephenson 1993, 178
… and Global Citizenship: Refereed Proceedings of the …, 2009
Her thesis, Social Imaginaries: a Working Model for Analysing the Internet's Wider Implications f... more Her thesis, Social Imaginaries: a Working Model for Analysing the Internet's Wider Implications for the Internet, was completed in 2008. Susan's current research interests include the implications of new media for Asian and Australian imaginaries, the notion of the lived and the inclusion of Internet non-users. Her latest project focuses on the development of the franchise nation concept, with specific reference to the Chinese and Indian diasporas.
In place of, or alongside paradigms such as "the net generation", we suggest that the full implic... more In place of, or alongside paradigms such as "the net generation", we suggest that the full implications of the Internet might be productively analysed using a broader framework, that of social imaginaries. First used by Cornelius Castoriadis and more recently by Charles Taylor, the social imaginary, as applied here, is the loosely co-ordinated body of significations that enable our social acts and practices by making sense of them.