INDIVIDUAL PRESENTATION : THE LEGENDS OF SUDIRMAN

Name : Dato' Sudirman Bin Haji Arshad
Born : 25 May 1954
Place of Birth : Temerloh,Pahang,Malaysia
Died : 22 February 1992 ( Age 37 )

I'm sure that most of Malaysian knows Sudirman, one of legendary singer in Malaysia. His songs "Balik Kampung" and "31st August" always being played on air on Hari Raya Aidilfitri and National's Day. He likes to sing since he was a kid. He was known as the 'Singing Lawyer', the 'People's Singer' and the 'Elvis of Malaysia'.

Most of people surely doesn't know that Allahyarham Dato' Sudirman was an intelligentsia. He once got a scholarship to further his study in medicine, but he turned that down. He further his study in law instead and receive his degree from University of Malaya.

Allahyarham Dato' Sudirman than started his singing career. His unique voice was instantly recognizable every time one of his songs are played in local radio or television because he possess a clear piercing tenor with a surprising breadth of range and dynamic control especially at the extreme high end. This is the list of his albums:

1. Teriring Doa (1977)
2. Aku Penghiburmu (1978)
3. Perasaan (1979)
4. Anak Muda (1980)
5. Lagu Anak Desa (1980)
6. Lagu Dari Kota (1981)
7. Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star (1981)
8. Lagu Cinta (1982)
9. Abadi (1982)
10. Images (1983)
11. Orang Baru (1984)
12. Lagu Dari Sebuah Bilik (1984)
13. Kul It (1986)
14. Orang Kampung (1986)
15. Asia’s No. 1 Performer (1989)
16. Salam Terakhir (1992)
17. Sudirman - Jauh Di Sudut Hati (1992)
18. Sudirman - Balik Kampung (1993)
19. Sudirman - Setelah Kau Tiada (1995)

Sudirman also the 1st Malaysia singer who had been recognize as Asia's number one performer in 1989, before Siti Nurhaliza. He alse got the title "No. 1 Malaysian singer" by New Straits Times. Another awards that had been achieved by Allahyarham Dato' Sudirman:

1. Penghibur TV Terbaik, Anugerah Seri Angkasa, RTM 1978
2. "Malaysia's Singing Ambassador" MTDC 1985 ("To know Malaysia is to love Malaysia")
3. Persembahan Terbaik Anugerah Juara Lagu TV3 1987
4. Ahli Mangku Negara by Yang di-Pertuan Agong 1988
5. Penyanyi Lelaki Popular, Anugerah Bintang Popular Berita Harian 1989
6. Malaysia Guinness Awards
8. Ahli Mahkota Pahang by Sultan of Pahang 1990
9. Johan Mangku Negara by Yang di-Pertuan Agong 1992

Other than singing, he also acted in film called Kami which was released in 1982. He also hosted a television program called "Keluarga Bahagia SINGER" which had been sponsored by home appliance company called SINGER. Sudirman also quiet a businessman. Sudirman became Malaysia's first successful singer entrepreneur promoting Malaysia's most famous carbonated drink Sudi with business magazines and TV programs from Australia to Hong Kong featuring the drinks. Within six months, Sudi broke five per cent of the carbonated drink market. Later, Sudirman opened a franchise of Sudi Shoppe apparel and a Sudi restaurant. He was Malaysia's first singer to be on the cover of Malaysian Business and Asian Business magazine. He had a business office atop the UBN Shangrila Tower and Sri Hartamas. He also served as Vice President of the Singers, Musicians and Composers Association of Malaysia (PAPITA).

While singing at Butterworth, Sudirman suffered a stroke and collapsed on stage. His sister and Mohd Radzi Sheikh Ahmad announced that Sudirman's stroke was the result of a cerebrovascular disease. But Sudirman doesn't want anyone to visits him because he don't want his fans to be sad. He died at 4 a.m. on 22 February 1992 at the age of 37 in his sister’s (Datin Radiah) house in Kuala Lumpur. Hundreds took part in his funeral procession. First, his remains were sent to his hometown in Temerloh, Pahang. Later, he was laid to rest at Chengal Muslim Cemetery, Temerloh, near the graves of his parents.

Approaches to understanding ethnicity

Different approaches to understanding ethnicity have been used by different social scientists when trying to understand the nature of ethnicity as a factor in human life and society. Examples of such approaches are: primordialism, essentialism, perennialism, constructivism, modernism and instrumentalism.


• "Primordialism", holds that ethnicity has existed at all times of human history and that modern ethnic groups have historical continuity into the far past. For them, the idea of ethnicity is closely linked to the idea of nations and is rooted in the pre-Weber understanding of humanity as being divided into primordially existing groups rooted by kinship and biological heritage.

o "Essentialist primordialism" further holds that ethnicity is an a priori fact of human existence, that ethnicity precedes any human social interaction and that it is basically unchanged by it. This theory sees ethnic groups as natural, not just as historical. This understanding does not explain how and why nations and ethnic groups seemingly appear, disappear and often reappear through history. It also has problems dealing with the consequences of intermarriage, migration and colonization for the composition of modern day multi-ethnic societies.

o "Kinship primordialism" holds that ethnic communities are extensions of kinship units, basically being derived by kinship or clan ties where the choices of cultural signs (language, religion, traditions) are made exactly to show this biological affinity. In this way, the myths of common biological ancestry that are a defining feature of ethnic communities are to be understood as representing actual biological history. A problem with this view on ethnicity is that it is more often than not the case that mythic origins of specific ethnic groups directly contradict the known biological history of an ethnic community.

o "Geertz's primordialism", notably espoused by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, argues that humans in general attribute an overwhelming power to primordial human "givens" such as blood ties, language, territory, and cultural differences. In Geertz' opinion, ethnicity is not in itself primordial but humans perceive it as such because it is embedded in their experience of the world.


• "Perennialism" holds that ethnicity is ever changing, and that while the concept of ethnicity has existed at all times, ethnic groups are generally short lived before the ethnic boundaries realign in new patterns. The opposing perennialist view holds that while ethnicity and ethnic groupings has existed throughout history, they are not part of the natural order.

o "Perpetual perennialism" holds that specific ethnic groups have existed continuously throughout history.

o "Situational perennialism" holds that nations and ethnic groups emerge, change and vanish through the course of history. This view holds that the concept of ethnicity is basically a tool used by political groups to manipulate resources such as wealth, power, territory or status in their particular groups' interests. Accordingly, ethnicity emerges when it is relevant as means of furthering emergent collective interests and changes according to political changes in the society. Examples of a perennialist interpretation of ethnicity are also found in Barth,and Seidner who see ethnicity as ever-changing boundaries between groups of people established through ongoing social negotiation and interaction.

o "Instrumentalist perennialism", while seeing ethnicity primarily as a versatile tool that identified different ethnics groups and limits through time, explains ethnicity as a mechanism of social stratification, meaning that ethnicity is the basis for a hierarchical arrangement of individuals. According to Donald Noel, a sociologist who developed a theory on the origin of ethnic stratification, ethnic stratification is a "system of stratification wherein some relatively fixed group membership (e.g., race, religion, or nationality) is utilized as a major criterion for assigning social positions". Ethnic stratification is one of many different types of social stratification, including stratification based on socio-economic status, race, or gender. According to Donald Noel, ethnic stratification will emerge only when specific ethnic groups are brought into contact with one another, and only when those groups are characterized by a high degree of ethnocentrism, competition, and differential power. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own culture, and to downgrade all other groups outside one’s own culture. Some sociologists, such as Lawrence Bobo and Vincent Hutchings, say the origin of ethnic stratification lies in individual dispositions of ethnic prejudice, which relates to the theory of ethnocentrism. Continuing with Noel's theory, some degree of differential power must be present for the emergence of ethnic stratification. In other words, an inequality of power among ethnic groups means "they are of such unequal power that one is able to impose its will upon another".In addition to differential power, a degree of competition structured along ethnic lines is a prerequisite to ethnic stratification as well. The different ethnic groups must be competing for some common goal, such as power or influence, or a material interest, such as wealth or territory. Lawrence Bobo and Vincent Hutchings propose that competition is driven by self-interest and hostility, and results in inevitable stratification and conflict.


• "Constructivism" sees both primordialist and perennialist views as basically flawed, and rejects the notion of ethnicity as a basic human condition. It holds that ethnic groups are only products of human social interaction, maintained only in so far as they are maintained as valid social constructs in societies.

o "Modernist constructivism" correlates the emergence of ethnicity with the movement towards nationstates beginning in the early modern period. Proponents of this theory, such as Eric Hobsbawm, argue that ethnicity and notions of ethnic pride, such as nationalism, are purely modern inventions, appearing only in the modern period of world history. They hold that prior to this, ethnic homogeneity was not considered an ideal or necessary factor in the forging of large-scale societies.

"Ethnies" or ethnic categories

In order to avoid the problems of defining ethnic classification as labelling of others or as self-identification, it has been proposedto distinguish between concepts of "ethnic categories", "ethnic networks" and "ethnic communities" or "ethnies".

• An "ethnic category" is a category set up by outsiders, that is, those who are not themselves members of the category, and whose members are populations that are categorised by outsiders as being distinguished by attributes of a common name or emblem, a shared cultural element and a connection to a specific territory. But, members who are ascribed to ethnic categories do not themselves have any awareness of their belonging to a common, distinctive group.

• At the level of "ethnic networks", the group begins to have a sense of collectiveness, and at this level, common myths of origin and shared cultural and biological heritage begins to emerge, at least among the élites.

• At the level of "ethnies" or "ethnic communities", the members themselves have clear conceptions of being "a named human population with myths of common ancestry, shared historical memories, and one or more common elements of culture, including an association with a homeland, and some degree of solidarity, at least among the élites". That is, an ethnie is self-defined as a group, whereas ethnic categories are set up by outsiders whether or not their own members identify with the category given them.

• A "Situational Ethnicity" is an Ethnic identity that is chosen for the moment based on the social setting or situation.

Conceptual history of ethnicity

According to Thomas Hylland Eriksen, the study of ethnicity was dominated by two distinct debates until recently.

• One is between "primordialism" and "instrumentalism". In the primordialist view, the participant perceives ethnic ties collectively, as an externally given, even coercive, social bond. The instrumentalist approach, on the other hand, treats ethnicity primarily as an ad-hoc element of a political strategy, used as a resource for interest groups for achieving secondary goals such as, for instance, an increase in wealth, power or status. This debate is still an important point of reference in Political science, although most scholars' approaches fall between the two poles.

• The second debate is between "constructivism" and "essentialism". Constructivists view national and ethnic identities as the product of historical forces, often recent, even when the identities are presented as old. Essentialists view such identities as ontological categories defining social actors, and not the result of social action.

According to Eriksen, these debates have been superseded, especially in anthropology, by scholars' attempts to respond to increasingly politicised forms of self-representation by members of different ethnic groups and nations. This is in the context of debates over multiculturalism in countries, such as the United States and Canada, which have large immigrant populations from many different cultures, and post-colonialism in the Caribbean and South Asia.

Weber maintained that ethnic groups were künstlich (artificial, i.e. a social construct) because they were based on a subjective belief in shared Gemeinschaft (community). Secondly, this belief in shared Gemeinschaft did not create the group; the group created the belief. Third, group formation resulted from the drive to monopolise power and status. This was contrary to the prevailing naturalist belief of the time, which held that socio-cultural and behavioral differences between peoples stemmed from inherited traits and tendencies derived from common descent, then called "race".

Another influential theoretician of ethnicity was Fredrik Barth, whose "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries" from 1969 has been described as instrumental in spreading the usage of the term in social studies in the 1980s and 1990s. Barth went further than Weber in stressing the constructed nature of ethnicity. To Barth, ethnicity was perpetually negotiated and renegotiated by both external ascription and internal self-identification. Barth's view is that ethnic groups are not discontinuous cultural isolates, or logical a prioris to which people naturally belong. He wanted to part with anthropological notions of cultures as bounded entities, and ethnicity as primordialist bonds, replacing it with a focus on the interface between groups. "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries", therefore, is a focus on the interconnectedness of ethnic identities. Barth writes: "[...] categorical ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of mobility, contact and information, but do entail social processes of exclusion and incorporation whereby discrete categories are maintained despite changing participation and membership in the course of individual life histories."

In 1978, anthropologist Ronald Cohen claimed that the identification of "ethnic groups" in the usage of social scientists often reflected inaccurate labels more than indigenous realities:

... the named ethnic identities we accept, often unthinkingly, as basic givens in the literature are often arbitrarily, or even worse inaccurately, imposed.
In this way, he pointed to the fact that identification of an ethnic group by outsiders, e.g. anthropologists, may coincide with the self-identification of the members of that group. He also described that in the first decades of usage, the term ethnicity had often been used in lieu of older terms such as "cultural" or "tribal" when referring to smaller groups with shared cultural systems and shared heritage, but that "ethnicity" had the added value of being able to describe the commonalities between systems of group identity in both tribal and modern societies. Cohen also suggested that claims concerning "ethnic" identity (like earlier claims concerning "tribal" identity) are often colonialist practices and effects of the relations between colonized peoples and nation-states.

Social scientists have thus focused on how, when, and why different markers of ethnic identity become salient. Thus, anthropologist Joan Vincent observed that ethnic boundaries often have a mercurial character. Ronald Cohen concluded that ethnicity is "a series of nesting dichotomizations of inclusiveness and exclusiveness". He agrees with Joan Vincent's observation that (in Cohen's paraphrase) "Ethnicity ... can be narrowed or broadened in boundary terms in relation to the specific needs of political mobilization. This may be why descent is sometimes a marker of ethnicity, and sometimes not: which diacritic of ethnicity is salient depends on whether people are scaling ethnic boundaries up or down, and whether they are scaling them up or down depends generally on the political situation.

The Reality

The reality of world nowadays. Most of people doesn't realize that "racism" still exist in the shadow of their kindness. Why this kind of thing is happening nowadays? Have you ever wonder that maybe they trying to provoke and make us fight each other? Or maybe this is some kind of test to us because they interested in Islam? People have their own reason on doing things. But in order to do something, it is a proper manner to think wisely about people sensitivity. Try to respect others so that people will respect us. "PEACE NO WAR,SAY NO TO RACISM".

Once upon a time in Ethnic Relation Class...

One of activity we had done on previous class of Ethnic Relation course. We had been ask to search few words related to this course. The motive of this activity is to teach us a few things about what exactly that we have to learn in this course for this semester. This activity was done by partner.



The Partners.
1. Ikhwan and Syed Mohd Mokhlis (Kailan Ikan Masin)
2. Nazirul Afiq with Shahizad (Blog Kami Kacak)
3. Azlin with Aiman (Akal Serabut)
4. Hazwan with Faiz (Terompah Nenek Lawa)
5. Iskandar with Hafiz (Kailan Ikan Masin)

WATER OR COKE?

We all know that water is important but we've never
seen it written down like this before.



WATER
1. 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated.
(Likely applies to half world population.)

2. In 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so
weak that it is often mistaken for hunger.

3. Even MILD dehydration will slow down one's
metabolism as much as 3%.

4. One glass of water will shut down midnight
hunger pangs for almost 100% of the dieters
studied in a University of Washington
study.

5. Lack of water, the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue.

6. Preliminary research indicates that 8-10
glasses of water a day could significantly ease
back and joint pain for up to 80% of sufferers.

7. A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy
short-term memory, trouble with basic math, and
difficulty focusing on the computer screen or on a
printed page.

8. Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the
risk of colon cancer by 45%, plus it can slash the
risk of breast cancer by 79%, and one is 50%less
likely to develop bladder cancer. Are you drinking
the amount of water you should every day?


COKE
1. In many states (in the USA) the highway patrol
carries two gallons of Coke in the trunk to remove
blood from the highway after a car accident.

2. You can put a T-bone steak in a bowl of coke
and it will be gone in two days.

3. To clean a toilet: Pour a can of Coca-Cola into
the toilet bowl and let the "real thing" sit for
one hour, then flush clean. The citric acid in
Coke removes stains from vitreous china.

4. To remove rust spots from chrome car bumpers:
Rub the bumper with a rumpled-up piece of Reynolds
Wrap aluminum foil dipped in Coca-Cola.

5. To clean corrosion from car battery terminals:
Pour a can of Coca-Cola over the terminals to
bubble away the corrosion.

6. To loosen a rusted bolt: Applying a cloth
soaked in Coca-Cola to the rusted bolt for several
minutes.

7. To bake a moist ham: Empty a can of Coca-Cola
into the baking pan, wrap the ham in aluminum
foil, and bake. Thirty minutes before the ham is
finished, remove the foil, allowing the drippings
to mix with the Coke for a sumptuous brown gravy.

8. To remove grease from clothes: Empty a can of
coke into a load of greasy clothes, add detergent,
and run through a regular cycle. The Coca-Cola
will help loosen grease stains. It will also clean
road haze from your windshield.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION:
1. The active ingredient in Coke is phosphoric
acid. Its pH is 2.8. It will dissolve a nail in
about four days. Phosphoric acid also leaches
calcium from bones and is a major contributor to
the rising increase in osteoporosis.

2. To carry Coca-Cola syrup (the concentrate) the
commercial truck must use the Hazardous Material
place cards reserved for highly corrosive materials.

3. The distributors of coke have been using it to
clean the engines of their trucks for about 20 years!

Now the question is, would YOU like a glass of
water or coke??