This thoughtful and wide-ranging open access volume explores the forces and issues shaping and
defining contemporary identities and everyday life in Brunei Darussalam. It is a subject that
until now has received comparatively limited attention from mainstream social scientists
working on Southeast Asian societies. The volume helps remedy that deficit by detailing the
ways in which religion gender place ethnicity nation-state formation migration and
economic activity work their way into and reflect in the lives of ordinary Bruneians. In a
first of its kind all the lead authors of the chapter contributions are local Bruneian
scholars and the editors skilfully bring the study of Brunei into the fold of the sociology of
everyday life from multiple disciplinary directions. By engaging local scholars to document
everyday concerns that matter to them the volume presents a collage of distinct but
interrelated case studies that have been previously undocumented or relatively
underappreciated. These interior portrayals render new angles of vision scale and nuance to
our understandings of Brunei often overlooked by mainstream inquiry. Each in its own way speaks
to how structures and institutions express themselves through complex processes to influence
the lives of inhabitants. Academic scholars university students and others interested in the
study of contemporary Brunei Darussalam will find this volume an invaluable resource for
unravelling its diversity and textures. At the same time it hopefully stimulates critical
reflection on positionality hierarchies of knowledge production cultural diversity and the
ways in which we approach the social science study of Brunei. 'I wish to commend the editors
for bringing this volume to fruition. It is an important book in the context of Southeast Asian
sociology and even more important for the development of our social geographical cultural and
historical knowledge of Brunei.' -Victor T. King University of Leeds
