Kekal Abadi 23 (2) 2004

KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION, RESOURCE ACCUMULATIONMAINTENANCE AND ACCESS: A SOUTHEAST ASIAN EXPERIENCE

Shamsul A.B.·

Director of Institute of the Malay World Et Civilization (ATMA)Director of Institute of Occidental Studies (IKON)

Abstract

The general argument advanced since the advent of ICT globally is that it has made knowledgemore accessible to a wider public in super quick time. While this is true, it is also a fact that the wayknowledge is organized is still very much in the mould of nation-states because it is produced andreproduced as well as consumed in the said mould. This essay discusses how, despite the presenceof ICT, this still happens in the context of Southeast Asian studies, which is essentially a form ofknowledge in itself The challenges and contradictions this process has produced is discussed and

analyzed with examples from a Malaysian experience.

Abstrak

Sejak Teknologi Maklumat dan Komunikasi atau ICT diperkenalkan secara global, akses terhadapilmu pengetahuan telah berlaku dengan pantas kepada audien yang lebih luas. Biarpun ini benar,fakta juga membuktikan bahawa produksi dan reproduksi serta konsumpsi ilmu pengetahuan masihberlaku dalam acuan negara-bangsa. Esei ini membincangkan bagaimana Kajian Asia Tenggara,sebagai satu bentuk ilmu pengetahuan, masih dikongkong oleh ruang negara-bangsa dalam rantauberkenaan. Cabaran dan kontradiksi yang timbul dalam proses ini akan dibincangkan berdasarkan

pengalaman Malaysia.

Introduction

This essay is advancing an argumentthat although ICT has made knowledge ingeneral more accessible to a wider audiencein larger volume and quicker than everbefore, ironically, its production, especially, inthe field of social sciences and humanities, isincreasingly trapped in its 'divided ness'because it is organized usually within the'nation-state' thus giving rise to what couldbe called 'methodological nationalism', inwhich universal social issues are studied andelaborated in the micro-context of a nation-state, not as universal social issuesunimpeded by the physical and ideationalboundaries of historically and artificiallyconstructed nation-states .

We wish to present the case of'Southeast Asian Studies', as a form ofknowledge, and examine briefly how it hasbeen produced and reproduced, metho-dologically, as well as consumed incontemporary globalized context, hoping tocapture some of the contradictions andchallenges that it has to cope with a, ,~overcome, especially, in the context of ICT-based technologies of globalization. It hasimplications, too, in the area of resourceaccumulation and maintenance, especially, inthe organizational sphere, and a Malaysianexperience shall be presented to provide abrief empirical elaboration.

. Shamaul A.B., BA, MA (Malaya), PhD (Monash, Australia), is Professor of Social Anthropology and curre.ntlyDirector ofboth The Institute of the Malay World & Civilization (ATMA) and th,: newly established Institute of OCCidentalStudies(IKON) The N tl I U· 't f Malays'la (UKM) He researches, wntes and lectures, for the last 25 years on the theme• ' a lona ruverst yo' . . S th t A' H h bl' h d '.politics c It d . d I ment" with an empirical focus on ou eas sra. e as pu IS e extensively 10

, U ure an economic eve op , . ff' f h BBCE~glish and Mala . He is also a frequent social commentator on MalaYSiancurrent a airs or t e , ABC, CBNC, RadioSingapore I t y, I d M I ' TV3 RTM1 and NTV7, He also wntes for Far Eastern EconomiC Review (Hong

n ernauona an a aysren , f M I'd 'I' .Kong), Economic & Political Weekly (India), Asian Wall Street Journal and a number 0 a aysian al res and weeklies,

Kekel Abedi 23 (2) 2004

Analyzing Southeast Asia as aForm of Knowledge

Society is both real and imagined.It is real through face-to-face contact andimagined when the idea of its existence ismediated through mediums such as printedmaterials and electronic images, and, inparticular, ICT. Therefore, the term societyrefers simultaneously to a micro unit thatwe can observe and to a macro one thatwe can only partially engaged with. Wetherefore have observable 'societies' withina macro imagined 'society'. SoutheastAsia, like other regions in the world, ha~both (Reid 1993, Tarling 1992). However Itis the way that both of these compone~tshave been weaved into an enduringcomplex whole, which seemed to havemade Southeast Asia and SoutheastAsians thrive and survive even underadverse conditions, such as the recentfinancial-economic crisis, that has becomethe source of endless intellectual attractionand academic inquiry to both scholars andothers hence the birth, growth andflourishing of Southeast Asian studies(Evers 1980, SSRC 1999).

Thus Southeast Asian studies,dominated by humanities and the socialsciences, have been about the study of t~e'society' and 'societies' in the region, In

their various dimensions; in the past and atpresent. The complex pluratity of these'society' and 'societies', or societal for~s,that do indeed co-exist, endure and enJoysome functional stability, have made itimperative for researchers to apply anequally diverse set of approaches,. somediscipline-based (anthropology, sociology,geography, history, political science, etc.)and others thematically-oriented(development studies, gender studies,cultural studies, etc.) in studying SoutheastAsian society. In some cases, it eveninvolve disciplines from the natural andapplied sciences (Wallace 1869).

The greatest challenge inSoutheast Asian studies, and to its experts,has been to keep pace with the majorchanges that have affected the 'society'and/or 'societies' and then narrate, explainand analyze these changes and presentthe analysis in a way that is accessible toeveryone within and outside the region.The technique of presenting and accessingthis knowledge is equally critical, which, byimplication, involves the accumulation and

maintenance process of the variousresearch resources. Undoubtedly, framingthe analysis is very important, too, inunderstanding as to how Southeast Asianstudies constitute and reproduce itselfthrough the study of 'society' and'societies' within Southeast Asia. The'knowledge baseline' approach is useful inmaking sense of the said framing process.

The 'Knowledge Baseline' inSoutheast Asian studies

Social scientific knowledge -- humanitiesincluded - on Southeast Asia has a clearknowledge baseline, meaning a continuousand inter-related intellectual-cum-conceptual basis, which emerged from itsown history and has, in turn, inspired theconstruction, organization and consump-tion process of this knowledge. The twopopular concepts that have been usedfrequently to characterize Southeast Asiaare 'plurality' and 'plural society', both ofwhich are social scientific constructs thatemerged from empirical studies conductedwithin Southeast Asia by scholars fromoutside the region.

In historical terms, or during the'proto-globalisation' era, 'plurality'characterizes Southeast Asia before theEuropeans came and who, subsequently,divided the region into a community of'plural societies'. Plurality here signifies afree-flowing, natural process not onlyarticulated through the process ofmigration' but also through culturalborrowings and adaptations (Sellwood1985, Collins 1994). Politically speaking,polity was the society's political order of theday, a flexible non-bureaucratic style ofmanagement focusing on managementand ceremony by a demonstrative ruler.States, governments and nation-states,which constitute an elaborate system of'bureaucratic institutions, did not really existuntil Europeans came and dismantled thetraditional polities of Southeast Asia andsubsequently installed their systems ofgovernance, using 'colonial knowledge',which gave rise to the plural societycomplex (Tarling 1992).

Historically, therefore, pluralsociety Signifies both 'coercion' and'difference'. It also signifies theintroduction of knowledge, socialconstructs, vocabulary, idioms andinstitutions hitherto unknown to the

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indigenous population (such as maps,census, museums and ethnic categories),the introduction of market-orientedeconomy and systematized hegemonicpolitics as well new techniques ofpresentation (read print capitalism).Modern nation-states, or state-nations, inSoutheast Asia have emerged from thisplural society context (Brown 1994).

It is not difficult to show that theproduction of social scientific knowledge onSoutheast Asia has moved along thisplurality-plural society continuum (Evers1980). When scholars conduct researchand write on pre-European Southeast Asia,they are compelled to respond to the realityof 'proto-globalization' Southeast Asianplurality during that period; a period whichsaw the region as the meeting place ofworld civilizations and cultures, wheredifferent winds and currents convergedbringing together people from all over theworld who were interested in 'God, goldand glory', and where indigenous groupsmoved in various circuits within the regionto seek their fortunes. As a result, we havehad, in Java, a Hindu king with an Arabicname entertaining European traders. InChampa, we had a Malay raja ruling apredominantly Buddhist populace tradingwith India, China and the Malayarchipelago. Whether we employ theorientalist approach or not, we cannotavoid writing about that period but within aplurality framework, thus emphasizing theregion's rich diversity and colourfultraditions (Reid, 1988, 1993). In otherwords, the social reality of the region to alarge extent dictates our analyticalframework.

However, once colonial rule wasestablished and the plural society wasinstalled in the region, followed later by theformation of nation-states, the analyticalframe, also changed. Not only did analystshave to address the reality of the pluralSOCiety but also the subsequentdevelopments generated by the existenceof a community of plural societies in theregion. The analytical frame was narro~edto nation-state, ethnic group, inter-natlon-state relations, intra-nation-state problems,nationalism and so on. This gave rise toWhat could be called 'methodologicalnationalism,' a way of constructing andUSing knowledge based mainly on the'territoriality' of the nation-state and not onthe notion that social life is a universal and

bord~rless phenomenon, hence thecreation of 'Indonesian studies,' 'VietnamStudies,' 'Malaysian Studies' 'ThaiStudies' and so on. '

. With the advent of the Cold Warand the modernization effort analystsbecame further narrowed in their frame ofreference. They began to talk of povertyand basic needs in the rural areas of apa~icular nation, also focusing onresistance and warfare, slums in urbanareas, and economic growth of smallholderfarmers. The interests of particulardisciplines, such as anthropology, becamenarrower still when it only focuses onparticular communities in remote areas aparticular battle in a mountain area, a faiied~rriga~ionproject i~ a delta, or genderIdentIty of an ethnic minority in a markettown (Steinberg 1987).

In fact, in numerical terms thenumber of studies produced on SoutheastAsia in the plural society contextsupersedes many times those produced onSoutheast Asia in the plurality context.Admittedly, social scientific studies aboutSoutheast Asia developed much morerapidly after the Second World War.However, the focus became increasinglynarrow and compartmentalized not only byacademic disciplines but also inaccordance to the boundaries of modernpostcolonial nations. Hence, socialscientific knowledge on Southeast Asiabecame, to borrow a Javanese termkratonized, or compartmentalized. '

It is inevitable that a substantialamount of social scientific knowledgeabout Southeast Asia itselfparadigmatically, has been generated:produced and contextualized within theplural society framework, because 'nation-state' as an analytical category mattersmore than, say, the plurality perception ofthe Penans of Central Borneo, who, liketheir ancestors centuries ago, move freelybetween Indonesia and Malaysia to ekeout a living along with other tribal groupsand outside traders, ignoring the existenceof the political boundaries. In factanthropologists seem to have found itconvenient, for analytical, scientific andacademic expedience, to separate theIndonesian Penans from those of Malaysiawhen, in reality, they are one and the samepeople.

Therefore, the plurality-pluralsociety continuum is not only a 'knowledge

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baseline' but also a real-life socialconstruct that was endowed with a set ofideas and vocabulary, within which peopleexist day-to-day in Southeast Asia. Thepresence of leT does not alter theknowledge baseline. Instead, it has furtherenhanced the plurality-plural societyconceptual-cum-analytic divide becausenewly-built digital databases haveaccepted the existing knowledge grid asgiven. The voluminous empirical material,both published and unpublished, that arenow accessible in digital form, either onlineor offline, have been accumulated,classified, catalogued and maintained,indeed, locked in that grid.

Constituting and Reproducing theKnowledge on Southeast Asia

There are at least four major axes alongwhich the construction, organization andreproduction of social scientific knowledgeabout Southeast Asia and its societieshave taken place.

The first axis is that of discipline/area studies. There is an ongoing debatebetween those who prefer to approach thestudy of Southeast Asia from a disciplinaryperspective, on the one hand, and thosewho believe that it should be approachedfrom an area studies dimension, employingan inter-disciplinary approach, on theother.

The former prefer to start clearlyon a disciplinary footing and treatSoutheast Asia as a case study or the sitefor the application of particular set oftheories that could also be appliedelsewhere globally. The aim of such anapproach is to understand socialphenomena found in Southeast Asia and tomake comparisons with similar phenomenaelsewhere. Those preferring the latterapproach see Southeast Asia aspossessing particular characteristics andinternal dynamics that have to beexamined in detail using all availabledisciplinary approaches with the intentionof unravelling and recognizing theindigenous knowledge without necessarilymaking any comparison with other regionsof the world.

The bureaucratic implications ofthese two approaches can perhaps beclearly discerned in the way socialscientific knowledge about Southeast Asiais reproduced through research and

teaching. This brings us to the second axis,namely, the undergraduate/graduatestudies axis.

Those who favour area studiesoften believe that Southeast Asian studiescan be taught at the undergraduate levelhence the establishment of SoutheastAsian studies departments or programmes,in a number of universities in SoutheastAsia, combining basic skills of variousdisciplines to examine the internaldynamics of societies within the region.Acquiring proficiency in one or twolanguages from the region is a must in thiscase. The problem with this bureaucraticstrategy is that these departments have tobe located in a particular faculty, say, in thearts, humanities or social science faculty.This denies, for instance, those with abackground in the natural sciences theopportunity to study in-depth aboutSoutheast Asia.

Therefore, those discipline-inctinedobservers would argue that SoutheastAsian studies should be taught at thegraduate level to allow those grounded inthe various disciplines, whether in thesocial or natural sciences or in other fieldsof study, to have an opportunity tospecialize in Southeast Asian studies.Therefore, a geologist or an engineer who,for instance, is interested in the soil andirrigation systems of Southeast Asia couldexamine not only the physical make-up ofSoutheast Asia but also the human-environment relationship. This isparticularly relevant at the present timesince environmental and ecological issueshave become global concerns.

This has made many individuals,institutions and governments carefullystudy how they should invest their precioustime and money when they are requestedto support the setting up of a programme,centre or institute of Southeast Asianstudies. They often ask whetheruniversities should continue to have theprerogative on the teaching, research anddissemination of knowledge aboutSoutheast Asia and its societies. Why arenon-university institutions not given thisprerogative?

This takes us to the third axis,namely, the university/non-university axis.For many years, we imagined that wecould acquire and reproduce knowledgeabout Southeast Asia, whether approachedfrom the disciplinary or area studies

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perspective only at the university.However, many governments andinternational funding bodies felt that toobtain knowledge about Southeast Asiaone need not go to a university, but couldacquire it through non-academic butresearch-orier.ted institutions establishedoutside the university structure to serveparticular purposes. National researchbodies such as LlPI (Indonesian Institute ofthe Sciences) in Jakarta and ISEAS(Institute of Southeast Asian Studies) inSingapore have been playing that role.'Think-tanks', such as the Center forStrategic Studies (CSIS), Jakarta, or theInstitute of Strategic and InternationalStudies (ISIS), Malaysia, have also playedthe role of the producer and reproducer ofknowledge on societies in Southeast Asiaoutside the university framework. However,there seems to be a division of labour,based on differences in researchorientation, in the task of producing andreproducing knowledge between theacademic and non-academic institutions.

This final axis is academiclpolicy-oriented research axis. While academicendeavours pursued within the context ofSoutheast Asian studies in the universitiesare motivated by interest in basic research,which is by definition scholarly, thosepursued outside the universities are oftenperceived as not being scholarly enoughbecause they are essentially applied orpolicy-oriented in nature and serving rathernarrow, often political, interests of thepowers that be in Southeast Asia.

It is argued that the criticaldifference between these two approachesis that the academic approach is alwaysopen to stringent peer-group evaluation asa form of quality control, but the appliedapproach is not aiways assessedacademically. The latter is often highlyconfidential and political in nature, thusdenying it to be vetted by the peer groups.The basic research-based academicendeavours are therefore seen as highlyscholarly, whereas the non-academic onesare not perceived as scholarly works andare not considered to contribute to theaccumulation of knowledge on SoutheastAsia societies.

However research institutes likeISEAS in Sing~pore would argue t~at,even though it is essentially a poficy-oriented research institute mainly servrngthe interests of the Singapore government,

it st.ill produces scholarly work of highqualrty and encourages basic research tobe conducted by its research fellows eitheron an individual or a group basis. In otherwords, a non-university research instituteof Southeast Asian studies, such asISEAS, could simultaneously conductapplied and basic research withoutsacrificing the academic and scholarlyqualities of its final product; or put inanother way, it is 'policy-oriented yetscholarly'.

Without doubt, the availability ofICT has hel~e.d tremendously the buildingof a more efficient and user-friendly systemof accumulation and management of theknowledge, in terms of storage, retrievaland access. Graduate students wouldeasily vouch that the exercise of literaturereview is much less arduous than before.The numerous databases on SoutheastAsian Studies available, both within andoutside the region, would probably renderinter-library loan an activity of the past.

The moot question is who arereally the consumers of knowledge onSoutheast Asian societies, henceSoutheast Asian studies; the SoutheastAsians or outsiders?

Consuming the Knowledge onSoutheast Asia

It could be argued that social scientificknowledge about Southeast Asia and itssocieties is a commodity with a marketvalue. Often the 'market rationale', and notthe 'intellectual rationale,' prevails inmatters such as the setting-up of aSoutheast Asian studies programme,centre or institute, even in the government-funded academic institutions. However, thefunding of research on Southeast Asianstudies has often been dictated not byidealistic, philanthropic motives but byquite crass utilitarian desires, mainlypolitical or economic ones. There are atleast three important 'sectors' within whichknowledge on Southeast Asia societieshas been consumed: the public, the privateand intellectual sectors.

. Since the governments inSoutheast Asia have been the biggestpublic sector investors in education,through public-funded educationalinstitutions, they have been the largestemployment provider. They have set theirown preferences and priorities, in

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accordance to their general framework ofmanpower planning, in deciding what typeof graduates and in which fields ofspecialization they want to employ them.The pattern in Southeast Asian countrieshas been well-established. There is ahigher demand for science graduates thansocial science and humanities graduatesespecially those who specialize inSoutheast Asian studies. However, thereseems to be a significant demand for theinclusion of the Southeast Asian studiescontent in all the non-natural sciencecourses at the undergraduate level in mostof the government-funded academicinstitutions in Southeast Asia. This isrelated to the fact that the awarenessabout ASEAN as a community amongstthe public, hence the need for a moreinformed description on the differentcountries and societies within ASEAN(read Southeast Asia).

Outside Southeast Asia, such as inJapan and the United States of America,specialization in Southeast Asian studies,or its components has very rarely beenconsidered highly desired in the job marketof the public sector. A graduate-levelqualification in Southeast Asian studies isperhaps more marketable in the publi~sector especially in government and se~l-government bodies that deal With.diplomatic relations or intelligence.

In the private sector, the demandfor Southeast Asian studies as a form ofknowledge and the demand for a potentialemployee who possesses that knowledgeare both limited and rather specific.However, the number could increasedepending on how large is the investmentand production outfit a particular companyhas in Southeast Asia, which is particularlyrelevant to large transnational corporationswith multi-sited production locations. Sincesome of the demand for the knowledge israther short-term, often specific butdetailed, and has to be customized to theneeds of a company, 'think-tanks' or'consultant companies' have often becomethe main supplier of such tailoredknowledge. Many of such organizationsare actually dependent on 'freelance'Southeast Asianists or academics .doingsuch jobs on a part-time, unofficial basis.

It has been observed that theJapanese seems to be a regular consumerof knowledge on Southeast Asia. This ishardly surprising because they have

massive investments in Southeast Asia.There is therefore a constant need to knowwhat is happening in the region. Researchfoundations from Japan, in particular theToyota Foundation, has been very active inthe last decade, in promoting 'SoutheastAsian studies for Southeast Asians,' andsupporting other research and exchangeprogrammes. Taiwan and Korea are thetwo other Asian countries having their ownSoutheast Asian studies research centres,besides United States, United Kingdom,France and The Netherlands, formercolonial powers in Southeast Asia.Perhaps after September 11, the demandin the USA has increased substantiallyparallel to the increase in its militaryinterest and operation in the region.

A more generalized demand forknowledge on Southeast Asian societiesrelates to marketing and this trend mustnot be underrated with the recentexpansion of the middle class in the region.As the market and clients in SoutheastAsia become more sophisticated the needfor in-depth knowledge on sectors of theSoutheast Asian societies has increased.This in turn has increased the demand forgraduates who have followed coursesrelating to Southeast Asian studies.

In the intellectual sector,knowledge on Southeast Asia has beenconsumed generally by the NGOs, namely,those that are national-based as well asthose that have regional networks. Sincemost of the NGOs are issue-specific basedinterest group, such as environmentalprotection, abused housewives, socialjustice and the like, and often seekingfunds for their ac.tivities from thegovernments and NGOs in developedcountries, they find it more advantageousto operate on a regional basis becausethey get more attention and funding fromthese sources. The strength and successof their operation is very much dependenton the amount of knowledge they haveabout Southeast Asian societies in generalas well as the specific issue that they arefocusing on as a cause in their struggle.

With the popularity of the Internetand its increased usage around the worldand within Southeast ASia, it has nowbecome an important medium throughwhich academic and popular knowledge onSoutheast Asian societies has becomeavailable. The source of the knowledgecould be located outside or within the

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region but are now much more accessiblefor commercial and non-commercialpurposes. An interesting development inthe latter is in the realm of 'democraticpolitics'. Put simply, the presence of ICThas enabled the various aspects ofknowledge on Southeast Asian society andpolitics to be utilised for political purposes.Beyond that the Internet has also becomean effective and popular alternative sourceof information and news to the opposition,anti-establishment as well as minoritygroups. Indeed, the Internet has become anew medium of producing and reproducingknowledge on Southeast Asian people,politics and society.

It could be said that Southe~.-~Asian studies and what it constitutes is,first and foremost, a knowledge constructthat represents only part of the region'ssocial reality. In spite of this, it is the mostimportant element, amongst the many, thatgives Southeast Asia, the geo-physicalregion as well as its people andenvironment, its history, territory andsociety. Due to the co-existence of differentsocietal forms in the region, theunevenness of the tempo of social life inthe region and the speed of social changealso differs from one community to theother and from one area within the regionto another. The understanding andanalysis are complicated by thepersistence of 'methodOlogicalnationalism'. Therefore, only a poly-disciplinary approach could capture thesecomplexities embedded in the societies ofSoutheast Asia. Increasingly, ICT hasplayed the critical role of weaving thecomplex of information and knowledge,available from all corners of the globe onthe region, into a coherent storageable,retrievable and accessible whole.

The Institute of the Malay Worldand Civilization (ATMA), UniversitiKebangsaan Malaysia, can testify to. that.With a collection of some 50,000 stnqle-text articles written in a number oflanguages, 'located in the nev.:ly-constructed ATMA's Malay World StudiesDatabase, another 11,000 Malay pantunsin the ATMA's Collection of Pantun BabaCina Database and ATMA's KamusPeribahasa that holds about 20,000Malay proverbs, ATMA's portal(WWW.malaycivilization.com) is ~lo~IY~aking its presence felt thus establishingIts own niche in the global knowledge

sphere (Shamsul, Rumaizah &Haslindawati 2002).

With the increase in importance onthe region in the globalizing world, bothgeneralist and specialist knowledge aboutSoutheast Asia have become critical to theworld and the region itself. SoutheastAsian studies as a knowledge construct, istransforming itself into a lived realityespecially for the Southeast Asian~themselves. This knowledge thereforebe...omes indispensable both to those whostudy Southeast Asia and its society aswell as to the Southeast Asian themselves.However, the struggle against'methodological nationalism' would still bethe biggest challenge for such anendeavour.

ACCESS AND uSAGE OF ICT -BASEDKNOWLEDGE: A GLIMPSE OF THE

MALAYSIAN EXPERIENCE

Preliminary empirical evidence from theMalay world -- the maritime and riverinecomplex of Southeast Asia, an integralcomponent of the region -- shows that thedistribution of the nation-state-basedknowledge, including those that use ICT asa conduit, is very much limited by thedominance 'of a number of factors, inparticular, the larger and dominant socialinequality grid articulated by the unevendistribution of infrastnictural facilities, suchas electricity supply, without which theaccess to ICT-based knowledge is only adream.

In our attempt to make theknowledge on the Malay world (originallycalled the Malay Archipelago by Wallace1869) available through our digitaldatabases, we have come to realise thatthe reach or audience is very much limitedby a number of factors, such as presenceor absence of basic infrastructural items,such as electricity and telephones, habitsof Internet users and undoubtedly the stateof social inequality in a particular country.We do not have to look very far as theMalaysian case would give us ampleevidence to that effect.

To the people in Bario, Sarawak, aplace located in the middle of Borneoforest that does not enjoy the taken-for-granted luxuries of electricity, piped-watersupply and telephones, a special E-Community pilot project has to be createdto find means and ways how the population

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in Bario could have access to ICT and bewired to the outside world. It has been acostly project. Whether this could berepeated elsewhere in Malaysia is a mootpoint. Although the Malaysian governmentpromised that in the next five years thereshould be one computer in every home, noelectricity supply and telephones lines inthese homes would render these itemsuseless.

One study conducted, in 1999, byCommunications Department, Faculty ofModern Language and Communications,Universiti Putra Malaysia, that involved2,015 respondents (males and females,urban and rural as well as from the majorethnic groups) indicated that about 95% ofMalays have heard the word IT, followedby 85 % Indians and 76 % Chinese.However, the Chinese seems to leadamong the ethnic groups in terms of "haveused computers" (65%), "have computersat home" (46%), "have computersconnected to Internet" (30%), and "haveattended computer trainingcourses" (23%). The Malays that have theircomputers connected to the Internet is only14%, compared to 30% of Chinese and22% Indians. The study also showed thatin the urban area, "computers connected toInternet" was about 26% and in the ruralonly 10%.

We can argue endlessly about thevalidity of these figures and wheth~r or notwe can arrive at any useful conclusion fromthem. These figures simply demonstratethe fact that the basic precondition for thepossibility of any form of knowledge beingdistributed through the ICT is theavailability of basic infrastructural facilities,such as electricity supply and telephonelines, the ICT hardware and software, andthese have to be connected. The userstoo, must be computer literate.

To the urban inhabitants of KlangValley, the majority of whom have accessto the basic infrastructural facilities that thepeople in Bario does not, ownership andusage of computer is common place, if notat home, but at the hundreds of Internetcafes in the region. However, the findingsfrom a number of studies conducted in theKlang Valley, in the last three years, seemto indicate that amongst Internet users,very few actually use the Internet to accessknowledge of various kinds, either forpersonal or other use.

A research, conducted by a group

of researchers from the InternationalIslamic University Malaysia amongst 442Internet users in the Klang Valley, 56% ofwhom are students from local institutions ofhigher learning (private and public),revealed that less than 10% actually usethe Internet for activities that could beconsidered as knowledge seeking, such asfor academic assignments. The majorityuse the Internet for chatting, e-mail andgames.

Our point is that even for thosewho have access to the Internet, thepercentage of which, against the totalMalaysian population, is very small (notmore than 15%), they do not necessarilyuse it for knowledge enhancement, less sofor knowledge production. We wouldtherefore advance the argument thatdigital-based knowledge located in thenumerous web-based databasesaccessible on-line, although easilyavailable, is not the dominant knowledgesource for the majority of the population,especially in the developing countries, likeMalaysia. Indeed, we are still dependenton paper-based knowledge and databases.

It brings us to the basic issue ofresource accumulation and maintenance.The debate over conservation andpreservation of paper-based materialversus open access and digitization of allforms of material remains an importantone. The trend seems to be favouring thelatter -- digitize and digitize and digitize. Itis becoming obvious that the differentownerships of softwares and alsooperating systems do not make theexercise of digitization an easy, cheap andmanageable process, as it seems. Theissue of the shelf life of a particularsoftware or technology is also a criticalone. These issues have never beendiscussed openly because of the 'digitalfetish' that has swept the world over.However, the evidence available to usseems to show that the paper-basedmaterials, with good techniques ofpreservation, are still surviving well aftercenturies. The problem is how to storethem because they need larger and widerspace. This is the unfavourable factor thatthe. present accumulation, storage andmaintenance system has vis-a-visSou~heast Asian studies. Being in thetropics does pose a special challenge forthe preservation of the paper-basedmaterial. The debate goes on.

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