Nationalism and Multiculturalism: The Paradox in Collective Social Identities from ASEAN Short Stories

Abstract

This article has an objective to study the collective identities about nationalism and multiculturalism from the short stories of ASEAN writers. It is studying from 100 titles of ASEAN short stories with the concept framework of Identity and Collective Identities. The result found that the 13 titles of ASEAN short stories of ASEAN writers showed the collective identities about nationalism and multiculturalism that the ASEAN people are aware of nationalism by having bias towards the other nationalities living in their countries. There are 3 types of bias nationality: sanitation, culture, and appearance. Even though the living together of different nationalities in the same country make them have the bias, the society of multiculturalism make them live together peacefully. The contradiction of collective social identities of ASEAN showed that ASEAN people learn to adapt themselves and accept the ethnic diversity, though they have a main nationality still has the bias appeared.