Culture And Culture In Malaysia

Culture is the mankind’s way of life. History and culture plays a vital role in the national development process in the country.(Vale,1992) Malaysia formed as a multi-racial country which Malays, Chinese and Indian are the three main ethnic groups. Hence of the different groups practicing on their own different religion and living culture, Malaysian community is very unique. As a multiethnic country, the development of national culture identity obliges a more careful and sensitive planning in cultivating the Malaysian’s culture. These planning must summarize the virtuous and noble values in strengthening the multi races in Malaysia.

Nationalistic idea is common since Malaysia was attempting towards independence and its spirit become even stronger when Malaysia having declare of independence in 1957. In the aim of showing Malaysia as a free country compare to the colonialization , leaders at the time tried to make a symbol to represent the nation. According to the Foster(1990), “Architecture is about people and the quality of life.” This statement has stated that architecture is an effective way in showing national identity of Malaysia as it is able to tell the context of Malaysia and the way of Malaysian live. However, one of the strategies was to modify the façade of public building so that local culture and national identity can easily speak out. (Wan,2000)

In the 1970’s, Malaysia was primarily geared towards the achievement of economic growth. Though Malaysia’s economic and social progress grow rapidly at that moment, it lead to the economic disproportion between the two largest ethnic groups which are Malays and Chinese. It has became a tension among Malays and Chinese due to the Chinese community benefitted more from the coun...

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...uding architecture. Due to the over emphasized Malays culture, it did not get positive responses from other ethnics. Therefore, it still considered a period of malaysianisation during the policy’s time. Nowadays, we can still see those architecture which reflected to the cultural policy and became an ego in showing the Malay culture. Hence, architecture is used as a landmark of a country as its able to tell the history and background of a place and the culture of people living in the area. It traced the real evidence of civilization in the country over the times. In this case, architecture is used to form the national identity all together to show Malaysia as a multi-ethnic with multi cultures that makes it well-known in the world. Hence, the assimilation of all races is important for national integration thereby affecting the prospects of development of the country.