Navigating intersectional being while doing community development

This chapter follows my journey of critical reflection on the decolonisation of community services in my native Malaysia. Through recollecting my personal childhood and education as a diaspora Chinese, I draw on deep-seated cultural values such as guanxi (关系) which shaped the ways in which community development was practised in the Chinese diaspora in colonial Malaya. Through mobilisation of sociocultural capital, the diaspora set up independent, self-governing, hybrid systems in terms of kongsi (å…¬å¸) to provide social and community supports for their close-knit communities during the oppressive and segregated British colonial time. Linking personal with professional, I reflect on the tensions and dilemmas as an Asian educator decolonising practices in white structures, within which inequality could be invisible. To continue to decolonise practices, inclusive dialogue is needed to raise critical consciousness and to reveal epistemological biases.