ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some aspects of the popular discourse on ethnicity and Malayness in the light of the formation of a new province that will split off the 3, 200 islands of the Riau Archipelago from the Sumatra part of Riau province (see Map 8.1). My interest lies in the construction and modelling of personhood through ethnic, kinship, geopolitical and nation-bound memberships. The concept of ethnicity, with its variety of modes such as historical imagination and self-awareness, is, more often than not, considered the focus of reference in the portrayal of one's own group's membership. Nagata defined ethnicity as:
A category or group with some perception of shared culture, one or more aspects of which will be used primordially as a charter for membership (and for excluding specific non-members). It has the capacity for an institutionally self-supporting and self-sustaining existence.
Nagata (1981:92)