Asylum blues: Staff attitudes towards psychiatric nursing in Sarawak, East Malaysia

This paper draws upon findings from an ethnographic study of psychiatric service users in a psychiatric institution in Sarawak, East Malaysia. Findings focus primarily on the accounts of nursing staff in relation to attitudes towards psychiatric work and patients. These indicate that despite a rhetoric of decentralized services, a custodial \u27asylum\u27 model continues to influence the care of patients at many levels. Negative professional attitudes towards patients lead to issues of both moral and physical containment. However, an associated attitude of stigma and prejudice towards mental illness impacts upon how attractive a career in psychiatric nursing is perceived to be by respondents, subject to gender differentials

Applying an Indigenous methodology to a North–South, cross-cultural collaboration: successes and remaining challenges

This article represents our collective reflexivity in the process of applying an Indigenous methodology in a North–South, cross-cultural collaboration, funded through the British Government’s Global Challenges Research Fund. The projects’ aim was to bring together Bribri and Jakun leaders (from Costa Rica and Malaysia) for constructive dialogues about sustainable development. Specifically, we applied ulàpeitök (traditional form of Bribri collaboration and translates to lend [peitök] a hand), a concept of collaboration that honours family and community; we also used S-kṍpàkö, the Bribri word for conversation, a concept that translates to feeling the space around each other together. We analyse successes and challenges and elaborate on lessons learned including (a) how and why Indigenous collaboration and reciprocity should be understood before a project is planned or financed, (b) why western academic concepts of reciprocity (such as one-to-one exchanges) need to be decolonized to include Indigenous ways of relating to others, and (c) paying special attention to language in the co-writing of publications to avoid cultural misrepresentation. Our research can inform other North/South, Indigenous/non-Indigenous collaborations that aim to contribute to decolonizing research

Problematising international placements as a site of intercultural learning

This paper theorises some of the learning outcomes of a three-year project concerning student learning in international social work placements in Malaysia. The problematic issue of promoting cultural and intercultural competence through such placements is examined, where overlapping hegemonies are discussed in terms of isomorphism of social work models, that of the nation state, together with those relating to professional values and knowledge, and the tyrannies of received ideas. A critical discussion of cultural competence as the rationale for international placements is discussed in terms of the development of the graduating social worker as a self-reflexive practitioner. The development of sustainable international partnerships able to support student placement and the issue of non-symmetrical reciprocation, typical of wide socio-economic differentials across global regions, is additionally discussed

Loaded dice: Games playing and the gendered barriers of the academy

This paper explores the perceptions and experiences of women academics in the UK, participating in a small-scale qualitative study exploring career progression and encountered institutional obstacles. The accounts are considered in terms of both disadvantageous institutional strategies as well as interpersonal ones governing day-to-day working relationships. The findings contribute to a growing body of international research on gender constructions in the academy, where here both inhibiting and exclusionary barriers are examined in focus group discussions in terms of gendered constructions that are perceived to impact upon the career opportunities of women academics. Analysis of data encouraged the employment of a ludic construction in this critical exploration of games playing and ‘gamesmanship’ (a masculinised term); these being themes raised in the focus group discussions as representing blocks and challenges to women’s academic careers

Doing Public Sociology: Student perspectives of international placements

Here nine Bournemouth University undergraduate sociology students reflect on the international placements they undertook in January 2016 in welfare settings in Penang, Malaysia under the auspices of our partner, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). Placed in selected NGOs working at the ‘coalface’ of need, the agencies gave aptitude-testing demands of the students to rapidly adjust and cope with very different work expectations in an unfamiliar socio-cultural context, as described below

Development as Eradication: The Pillage of the Jakun ‘People’s Bank’ of Tasik Chini, Pahang, Malaysia

The political rhetoric of social and economic development in Malaysia is used as a dominant and largely unquestioned discourse to justify the industrialised exploitation of the traditional territories of the indigeneous people of West Malaysia. This paper explores social policy drivers in respect of findings from a condensed ethnography of the Jakun Orang Asli people of Tasik Chini in the State of Pahang. Tasik Chini provides an important example of a wider problem affecting many Orang Asli communities in Malaysia relating to industrial exploitation, but is a case of special interest in respect of its significance as a site of rich and unique biodiversity as well as being the home of one of only two freshwater lakes in West Malaysia. Notably, Tasik Chini is also a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, of which there are only two in Malaysia, and where the lake and surrounding forests have provided the Jakun villagers with abundant natural resources for subsistence, but now the area is badly eroded and polluted by the ravages of big business. This presents a serious dilemma for the Jakun concerning resisting the destruction of their traditional way of life or to comply with State agendas and collude with their loss of self-sufficiency and autonomy and in so doing raises important questions regarding national social policy drivers and the position and welfare of indigenous people in Malaysia