Monographs, Books by Angela Marianne Kuga Thas
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Technical Reports by Angela Marianne Kuga Thas
Can ICTs help reduce poverty? After so many decades of development theory and practices, why is p... more Can ICTs help reduce poverty? After so many decades of development theory and practices, why is poverty on the rise? The first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) laid out an inadequate framework for gender, ICTs, and poverty reduction. This paper examines poverty from many different angles: from its definition to systemic causes of global poverty, as well as tools used to address poverty. It examines poverty measurements, indicators and political will within national and international contexts. It offers recommendations to facilitate a stronger gender perspective in poverty reduction, and in particular the application of ICTs toward this end.
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Journal Articles by Angela Marianne Kuga Thas
In this paper, I interrogate our understanding of social change in the telling of self-representa... more In this paper, I interrogate our understanding of social change in the telling of self-representational digital stories, stories that speak from the perspective of the storyteller and which centre on the “I”. There is a growing audible criticism of the value of these digital stories if distribution and outreach of such stories do not reach both wider and critical audiences. As a digital storytelling practitioner, I examine these criticisms and draw attention first to our understanding of storytelling, and second to our understanding of audiences within an ancient oral tradition of humankind. There is no doubt that the digital in digital storytelling allows for a global arena of possibilities. However, it is these very same global possibilities within the digital that have possibly forced a cursory value on storytelling by the most important audience among audiences—the marginalised "I" who struggles for political, social and economic attention. The existential self is severely talked down to for not going beyond that one digital story or those few friends and family members. In these instances, that potential to transform “power over” into “power with” and “power within” the storytellers quickly disintegrates. What happens instead is an expansion of the pool of judges of narratives, a predominant and more overt phenomenon in the field of human rights. What form the final narrative takes in any digital storytelling project is often shaped by the interests of these “mediators” who turn “judges of narratives” when they mould and package these stories to be more palatable to their specific audiences and consumption needs. The storyteller's sense of existential peril is in this way prolonged. These untoward developments beg us to ask the question, “what change then are self-representational digital stories meant to bring about?”
Change is too often seen as synonymous to "cause and effect". Drawing from interviews conducted with those who organise and conduct digital storytelling workshops within a human rights framework around the world, as well as those who have strived for social change through storytelling in Malaysia, I contend that there is no such causality. The "change" is in fact dialogic and in constant flux—between self and other, self and non-self and in being for self and the other—in that storyteller's struggle of regaining control over situations and circumstances she or he had little or no control over. For what is implied in self-representational stories is that the intended audience of such a digital story inherently must include and bring meaning to the “I”, the storyteller.
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Conference Papers and Proceedings by Angela Marianne Kuga Thas
This paper examines the rise in the politicisation of Islam in Malaysia and links it to the other... more This paper examines the rise in the politicisation of Islam in Malaysia and links it to the othering of the Malaysian Malay. It is my argument that both were “conquering” tools of Malaysia’s “Father of Modernisation”, Mahathir Mohamad, devised to win the support of the Malay Muslim majority in Malaysia.
The many awards bestowed on Mahathir obscure the fact that he was instrumental in the systematic erosion of the power and roles of state institutions, especially at the Federal government level. This includes the significant loss of the independence of the Malaysian judiciary. Whilst per capita income in Malaysia may well have increased eight times under his 22-year leadership, this paper asks why is it that the majority of the Malays remain the largest number among the poor and the more disenfranchised of ethnicities in the country? Why have Malay and Muslim women suffered such a rapid decreasing ability to access justice?
This paper examines existing research on the social and political changes Malaysia has experienced with Islamisation and under Mahathir’s rule, as well as studies on Malayness, Malay nationalism and Muslim Malay identity formation. The paper elaborates the othering of a majority people, the Malays in Malaysia, and how this othering has brought forth a fast-growing political power in the name of a supremacist Islam, a puritanical Sunni and Malay Islam. Specific events in the rise and rule of Mahathir as Malaysia’s then Prime Minister are reviewed, such as the banning of The Malay Dilemma, and the split in the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) in 1987. Also examined is the varying emphasis between Muslim and race, and how during Mahathir’s rule, that strong misogynist and patriarchal attitudes took hold in Malay Muslim consciousness, a colonising consciousness that is othering the perceived cultural and genetic “impurities” within the Malay.
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Book Chapters by Angela Marianne Kuga Thas
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Monographs, Books by Angela Marianne Kuga Thas
Technical Reports by Angela Marianne Kuga Thas
Journal Articles by Angela Marianne Kuga Thas
Change is too often seen as synonymous to "cause and effect". Drawing from interviews conducted with those who organise and conduct digital storytelling workshops within a human rights framework around the world, as well as those who have strived for social change through storytelling in Malaysia, I contend that there is no such causality. The "change" is in fact dialogic and in constant flux—between self and other, self and non-self and in being for self and the other—in that storyteller's struggle of regaining control over situations and circumstances she or he had little or no control over. For what is implied in self-representational stories is that the intended audience of such a digital story inherently must include and bring meaning to the “I”, the storyteller.
Conference Papers and Proceedings by Angela Marianne Kuga Thas
The many awards bestowed on Mahathir obscure the fact that he was instrumental in the systematic erosion of the power and roles of state institutions, especially at the Federal government level. This includes the significant loss of the independence of the Malaysian judiciary. Whilst per capita income in Malaysia may well have increased eight times under his 22-year leadership, this paper asks why is it that the majority of the Malays remain the largest number among the poor and the more disenfranchised of ethnicities in the country? Why have Malay and Muslim women suffered such a rapid decreasing ability to access justice?
This paper examines existing research on the social and political changes Malaysia has experienced with Islamisation and under Mahathir’s rule, as well as studies on Malayness, Malay nationalism and Muslim Malay identity formation. The paper elaborates the othering of a majority people, the Malays in Malaysia, and how this othering has brought forth a fast-growing political power in the name of a supremacist Islam, a puritanical Sunni and Malay Islam. Specific events in the rise and rule of Mahathir as Malaysia’s then Prime Minister are reviewed, such as the banning of The Malay Dilemma, and the split in the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) in 1987. Also examined is the varying emphasis between Muslim and race, and how during Mahathir’s rule, that strong misogynist and patriarchal attitudes took hold in Malay Muslim consciousness, a colonising consciousness that is othering the perceived cultural and genetic “impurities” within the Malay.
Book Chapters by Angela Marianne Kuga Thas
Change is too often seen as synonymous to "cause and effect". Drawing from interviews conducted with those who organise and conduct digital storytelling workshops within a human rights framework around the world, as well as those who have strived for social change through storytelling in Malaysia, I contend that there is no such causality. The "change" is in fact dialogic and in constant flux—between self and other, self and non-self and in being for self and the other—in that storyteller's struggle of regaining control over situations and circumstances she or he had little or no control over. For what is implied in self-representational stories is that the intended audience of such a digital story inherently must include and bring meaning to the “I”, the storyteller.
The many awards bestowed on Mahathir obscure the fact that he was instrumental in the systematic erosion of the power and roles of state institutions, especially at the Federal government level. This includes the significant loss of the independence of the Malaysian judiciary. Whilst per capita income in Malaysia may well have increased eight times under his 22-year leadership, this paper asks why is it that the majority of the Malays remain the largest number among the poor and the more disenfranchised of ethnicities in the country? Why have Malay and Muslim women suffered such a rapid decreasing ability to access justice?
This paper examines existing research on the social and political changes Malaysia has experienced with Islamisation and under Mahathir’s rule, as well as studies on Malayness, Malay nationalism and Muslim Malay identity formation. The paper elaborates the othering of a majority people, the Malays in Malaysia, and how this othering has brought forth a fast-growing political power in the name of a supremacist Islam, a puritanical Sunni and Malay Islam. Specific events in the rise and rule of Mahathir as Malaysia’s then Prime Minister are reviewed, such as the banning of The Malay Dilemma, and the split in the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) in 1987. Also examined is the varying emphasis between Muslim and race, and how during Mahathir’s rule, that strong misogynist and patriarchal attitudes took hold in Malay Muslim consciousness, a colonising consciousness that is othering the perceived cultural and genetic “impurities” within the Malay.