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

Lian Kwen Fee is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. His research interests are race and ethnicity, multiculturalism, migration, and the politics of identity. His most recent edited books are 'Multiculturalism, Migration, and the Politics of Identity in Singapore' (2016), 'International Migration in Southeast Asia: Continuities and Discontinuities' (2016), and 'International Labour Migration in the Middle East and Asia; Issues of Inclusion and Exclusion' (2019), all published by Springer.  

Paul J. Carnegie is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. His research specializes in comparative democratization and human security in Southeast Asia. His works include The Road from Authoritarianism to Democratization in Indonesia (Palgrave Macmillan) and Human Insecurities in Southeast Asia (Springer) alongside research output in leading international journals. He has lived and worked previously in Australia, Egypt, Fiji, and the United Arab Emirates. 

Dr. Noor Hasharina Hassan is Deputy Director for the Office of Assistant Vice Chancellor (Research), Head of the Borneo Studies Network Secretariat and Research Associate with the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. She lectures in Geography, Environment and Development with research interests in sustainable city development, consumption culture and poverty studies in Brunei and Borneo. She has previously been Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London and Visiting Scholar at the East West Centre, Hawaii.

Introduction: Towards a Sociology of the Everyday in Brunei Darussalam.- Traditional Malay Marriage Ceremonies in Brunei Darussalam: Between.- Halal Certification in Brunei Darussalam: Bureaucratisation in Everyday Life.- Youth Religiosity and Social Media in Brunei Darussalam.- Food Choices and the Malay Muslim Middle Class in Brunei Darussalam.- Learning Gender in a Malay Muslim Society in Brunei Darussalam.- Older Malay Muslim Women in Brunei Darussalam: A Non-Western Conception of Aging.- Domestic Maids (Amah) in Malay Households in Brunei Darussalam.- Pengangun: Female Ritual Specialists for Malay Weddings in Brunei Darussalam.- Belonging and Unbelonging in Kampong Ayer, Brunei Darussalam.- The Sociocultural Significance of Homeownership in Brunei Darussalam.- Merantau: The Worldview and Praxis of Javanese Migrants in Brunei Darussalam.- Negotiating Assimilation and Hybridity: The Identity of Chinese-Malays in Brunei Darussalam.- Zoomers in Brunei Darussalam: Language Use, SocialInteraction and Identity.- From Migrants to Citizens: The Iban of Melilas Longhouse, Brunei Darussalam.