Media and nation building: how the Iban became Malaysian.

Book Title:-

MEDIA AND NATION BUILDING:
How the Iban became Malaysian
by John Postil
About the author:-
John Postill is a Research Fellow at the University of Bremen. He is currently studying e-government and ethnicity in Malaysia. Trained as an anthropologist at University College London, he has published a range of articles on the anthropology of media, with special reference to Malaysian Borneo.Genre:Political Science.

This book explores, for the first time, this relationship by means of a paradigmatic case of successful nation building: Malaysia. Based on extended fieldwork and historical research, the author follows the diffusion, adoption, and social uses of media among the Iban of Sarawak, in Malaysian Borneo and demonstrates the wide-ranging process of nation building that has accompanied the Iban adoption of radio, clocks, print media, and television. In less than four decades, Iban longhouses ('villages under one roof') have become media organizations shaped by the official ideology of Malaysia, a country hastily formed in 1963 by conjoining four disparate territories.
"The book excellently traces the development of both print and electronic media, which are central in making the Iban Malaysian ... [It] contributes much to our understanding of the complex process of change that has occurred among the Ibans."   ·  Asian Anthropology

“This book offers an open challenge to the relations between the media and nation-building, based on Postill’s fieldwork in Iban society, and I believe that his setting of key questions is unerring and precise… Postill is astute in successfully uncovering an untouched point in Iban studies, as well as media studies.”   ·  Asian Journal of Social Science