Every month the Maktaba Books team will select a book that we would be reading and would invite others to read along with us and discuss with us. After every month, we will do a review of the book and include points from the discussion. If there’s a decent amount of interest in the book, we may open a book club session to talk about it.
The book of the month for July: The Myth of The Lazy Native
Book summary
The Myth of the Lazy Native is Syed Hussein Alatas widely acknowledged critique of the colonial construction of Malay, Filipino and Javanese natives from the 16th to the 20th century. Drawing on the work of Karl Mannheim and the sociology of knowledge, Alatas analyses the origins and functions of such myths in the creation and reinforcement of colonial ideology and capitalism. The book constitutes in his own words: an effort to correct a one-sided colonial view of the Asian native and his society and will be of interest to students and scholars of colonialism, post-colonialism, sociology, and Southeast Asian Studies.