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In this paper I examine issues of identity formation, conflict and accommodation by means of a number of cases drawn from ethnographic research. In particular I look at some of the ways in which Malay-ness has been linked to the processes of inclusion and exclusion that operate between 'insiders' and 'outsiders' (or 'natives' and 'settlers') in and around localised 'communities' in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. I suggest that far from necessarily being a fixed and permanent political identity, Malay-ness may also describe a highly fluid interactive space. It seems that ethno-religious conflict has been more likely to occur where hard, even racialised divisions develop between insiders and outsiders and that conflict has been less likely in situations when different groups have been able to make common cause under the banner of a more open and hybridised sense of Malay co-responsibility. In other words a key variable in such situations has been the extent to which a sense of solidarity may, or may not, develop between relatively immobile, localized, 'indigenous' cultivators and political elites on the one hand and more mobile, commercially-oriented outsiders of more universalistic orientation on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]