Ethnicity, development, crimes and conflict in a multi-ethnic urban setting in Malaysia: Trans-border sociological and GIS analyses of an urban society

Abstract

Sociologists have often worked in silo from other disciplines in their attempts to observe and explain the social phenomenon being studied. This research project is based on the need to combine a social science approach to studying social phenomenon with inputs from science and technology. In this study, data on development and its relationship with crimes and conflict in a multi ethnic urban setting are collected based on a social survey, narcotic data from the police records, and Geographic Information System (GIS) of the development of the township Sungai Petani. The social survey does indicate that development taking place is socially structured in which the Chinese community avails themselves to the fruits of urban development relative to Malays and Indians. The longitudinal data of urban development from GIS indicates that as development and urban areas expand, the Malays in the rural areas and Indians living on the rubber estates are dislocated and join the urban pours with low education and job skills. The narcotic data collected were superimposed on the longitudinal GIS data of Sungai Petani. The patterns of narcotic related crime are observed to have a relationship with the expansion of industrial and housing schemes. In an urban multi-ethnic setting such as Malaysia, development, social inequality and crime if not identify and manage, often end in ethnic conflict. This township has shown such social ruptures in 2012 when these ethnic groups of development losers, street bikers and gangsters fought across ethnic lines and produce a spiralling downward trend of good ethnic relations that had been enjoyed before this incident in this town.