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Operating hours: Monday - Thursday: 8.30 - 6.00 pm Friday: 8.30 - 5.30 pm (Closed on Saturday, Sunday and Public Holidays) Address: Southeast Asian Studies Programme Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences 3 Arts Link Blk AS3, #06-18 Singapore 117570 Tel: 6516 6338 Fax: 6777 6608 |
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| Seminars and Conferences - 2007 |
| 2000| 2001|2002|2003| 2004| 2005 | 2006 | 2007| Workers, Wives, and Monks: Thais Intimating Transnationalism in Singapore Dr Pattana Kitiarsa Wednesday, 5 December 2007, 4.00 - 5 .30 p.m. Synopsis Since the mid 1990s, Southeast Asianists have seriously discovered transnationalism. Following the ground-breaking definition and works by Schiller, Basch, Szanton-Blanc (1995), Castles and Miller (1998), Sassen (1991), and Wang (1997), there has been an explosion of multidisciplinary studies on the politics of labor migration, diaspora, border-crossing, and city space across the region. In my talk, I will discuss the transnational lives of migrant workers, women, and monks as key actors within the transnational flows out of Thailand coming to work or settle in Singapore. I will situate my talk against the backdrop of major works in the field, such as Aguilar (2002), Mills (1999), Levitt (2001), Parrenas (2001), and Huang, Yeoh, and Rahman (2005). I will try to formulate the concept of “transnational intimacy” out of the Thais’ negotiation and imagination of their lives and work away from home. I argue that human agency in the contexts of transnational labor migration is shaped and reshaped by their intimate experience of specific forms and structures of transnationalism. More often than not, transnationalism is the product of intimately emotional as much as rational transactions. I will uncover actors, modes, features, and effects of transnational intimacy through the lives and work of Thai-migrant-workers, -wives, and -monks in Singapore. I hope that my argument will contribute to on-going scholarship on labor migration, border-crossing, and the global city in Southeast Asia and beyond. The materials presented in my talk are part of my ethnographic fieldwork which I carried out in Singapore from 2004-2006. The Speaker Pattana Kitiarsa is Visiting Fellow at the Southeast Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore. He holds his doctoral degree in socio-cultural anthropology from University of Washington. He has published both in Thai and English in the fields of Thai popular Buddhism and cultures of transnational labour migration. Chairperson:
Contested Citizenship: Cards, Colors, and the Culture of Identification Dr Pinkaew Laungaramsri Wednesday, 21 November 2007 , 3.30 - 5 .00 p.m. Synopsis This seminar examines the state-ethnic relationship through the conflicting construction of citizenship and the politics of ID card systems. I argue that the culture of identification in Thailand is characterized by its tension and contradiction, the product of the interplay between shifting official forms of domination and control, and everyday practice of ethnic minorities which strive beyond the confinement of the state. Being Thai or non-Thai other has never been stable or consistent but has constantly been mediated by different political and economic forces. The politics of nationalism, the cold war anxiety of national security, and the expansion of regional economic integration have rendered the definitions of citizenship highly contingent. Cards and colors as a powerful statecraft deployed to control mobility and to fix identity of border crossing people have often been employed by the non-Thai subjects as assets for circulation and tools for negotiation. As immigrants have been arbitrarily turned into an ambiguous ethnic category of the non-Thai minorities, such transformation has often been in a state of flux and thus resulting in diverse translation of everyday life notion of citizenship. The Speaker Pinkaew Laungaramsri has a PhD in anthropology at the University of Washington and is lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Chiang Mai University (Thailand). She is the author of Redefining nature: Karen ecological knowledge and the challenge to the modern conservation paradigm. She has also undertaken a research project relating to Shan women identities in Thailand and Burma, and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Southeast Asian Studies Program, National University of Singapore. Chairperson:
Graduate Research Seminar, Semester 1, AY 2007/2008 Wednesday, 31 October 2007 , 3.30 - 5.30 p.m. SE6770 Graduate Seminar: These presentations by incoming research students are intended to facilitate the development of their thesis topics and proposals. Having met as a group over the past semester, they now share their preliminary thoughts and findings with the wider scholarly community. Presenters & Topics Mok Mei Feng Silvia Mila Arlini Tan Beng Hui Tan Shao Han Chairperson: Assoc Prof Goh Beng Lan (6516 7935)
Ethnic Inequality and Affirmative Action: A Global Overview Professor Frances Stewart Wednesday, 24 October 2007 , 2.00 - 3 .30 p.m. Synopsis In this seminar Prof Stewart will argue why affirmative action and its policies are needed in societies that are divided along horizontal inequalities (or inequalities among groups, such as on the basis of ethnicity and gender). The seminar reviews a range of policies from Northern Ireland to Nigeria to Malaysia which have been used successfully or unsuccessfully in reducing horizontal inequalities in the political, socio -economic and cultural status dimensions. The Speaker PROFESSOR FRANCES STEWART, MA, DPHIL, OXON is a Development economist. She is Director of the Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity (CRISE) in the University of Oxford and fellow of Somerville College, and former director of the University’s International Development Centre (1993-2003). Books include Adjustment with a Human Face, with G A Cornia and R Jolly, OUP, 1987, War and Underdevelopment: the Economic and Social Consequences of Conflict, with Valpy Fitzgerald and others, OUP 2000; Group Behaviour and Development (with Judith Heyer and Rosemary Thorp); and Defining Poverty in the Developing World (with Ruhi Saith and Barbara Harriss-White). She is author of a number of articles on how Horizontal Inequalities (inequalities among groups) affect political stability and well-being. She was President of the U.K. and Irish Development Studies Association, 1990-1992, and a Board member and Vice-Chairman of the International Food Policy Research Institute. She is Vice-Chair of the United Nations Committee for Development Policy, and President Elect of the Human Development and Capability Association, and an Overseer of the Thomas Watson Institute, Brown University.
Postcoloniality and the Malay/Malaysian/Islamic Condition Dr Maznah Mohamad Wednesday, 26 September 2007 , 12.00 - 1 .30 p.m. Synopsis This seminar explores the contradictions and dislocations of postcolonial perspectives as applied to the study of the Malay/Malaysian/Islamic condition. I will focus specifically on several genres of Malay political writings, namely the nationalist imaginings of Ahmad Boestamam, the culture-as-deficient trope of Mahathir Mohamad, the counter-orientalist critique of Syed Hussein Alatas and Kassim Ahmad, the Islam-as-complete nationhood of Hadi Awang and Ashaari Muhammad and the self-reflexive unraveling of the Malay unitary by Dina Zaman, Karim Raslan and Amir Muhammad. These genres can be seen as variants of a “postcoloniality” as they reflect the polychromatic nature of Malay politics. Re-reading the writings I argue that a postcolonial condition was already in existence even without the imperative for a discursive unmooring from a colonial, post-Enlightenment framework. There were other reasons and there was also something else at work; such as, while the Islamic paradigm may manifest the starkest discourse of postcoloniality, it does not promise a postcolonial utopia. The Speaker Maznah Mohamad holds a joint appointment as Visiting Senior Fellow with the Southeast Asian Studies Programme and the Asia Research Institute at NUS. She was formerly Associate Professor with the School of Social Sciences, University of Science Malaysia. Among her publications are Feminism: Malaysian Critique and Experience (co-edited, 1994), The Malay Handloom Weavers: A Study of the Rise and Decline of Traditional Manufacture (1996), Risking Malaysia: Culture, Politics and Identity (co-edited, 2001) and Feminism and the Women’s Movement in Malaysia (co-authored, 2006).
Locating the Sandstone Quarries used to Construct Angkor Mr. Graeme Priestly Wednesday, 19 September 2007 , 3.30 - 5 .00 p.m. Synopsis This talk explores methodologies to detect the location of the sandstone quarries used by the Khmer Empire. Since the early 1990s optical band imagery and airborne radar (AirSAR) have provided profoundly new views of Angkor, the ancient capital of the Khmer empire, transforming our understanding of the extent and spatial organisation of the urban complex. Vast quantities of sandstone were used to construct the temples. Boulbet’s 1975 survey identified some quarries used to supply the sandstone to construct these buildings, but the quarries he identified could not account for the large volume of stone in the temples. In order to determine potential sites of sandstone suitable for quarrying, geo-referencing using GPS and digital photography was undertaken, followed by a GIS/remote sensing modeling routine. The GIS/RS predictive method did not produce the desired result. An alternate process of Landscape Analysis had to be developed to predict the quarry locations. The Speaker Graeme Priestly served for 20 years (1975 – 1995) in the Royal Australian Survey Corps. He has experienced in photogrammetry including field work on Cape York to carry out survey control operations. He also worked on the second generation of digital cartography computer systems, air photography control for mapping and production of ortho-photomaps, and in the Defence Intelligence Organisation on mapping related tasks as well as desktop publishing and graphic design tasks. At this time he was first exposed to remote sensing data. In 1995 he entered an undergraduate degree programme at the University of Canberra in Resource and Environmental Science with specialties in GIS and Remote Sensing. In 2000 he received a Graduate Diploma in Cultural Heritage Management, then went to work for the Australian Heritage Commission in Canberra on a heritage data base, and held the job title of GIS Conservation Officer, ACT Heritage Unit. In 2005 he received a Master’s Degree in Applied Science in Cultural Heritage Management with a thesis is based on Angkor, Cambodia, and moved to Singapore. Chairperson: Convenors:
From Superstition to National Cultural Identity: Politics of Popular Religion in Contemporary Vietnam Dr Pham Quynh Phuong Wednesday, 12 September 2007 , 3.30 - 5 .00 p.m. Synopsis In this presentation, I discuss the dynamic and politics of popular religion in Vietnam after Doi moi (Renovation), drawing from several religious practices that I have observed, particularly my ethnographic study of a national hero cult. An examination of the past policies of various governmental agencies often reveals an intense differentiation between those religious practices considered “superstition” and those categorized as “religion”, “folk culture” or features of “national cultural identity”. The attitude of the state in dealing with popular religion, however, has been more ambiguous. In this talk, I analyse the factors contributing to the changing attitude of the state including the impact of the market economy, the ambiguity inherent in the nature of state cultural and religious policies, the impact of the political effort to link Vietnam to the global world, and the role of intellectuals in defining Vietnamese cultural identity. I argue that particular popular religious icons, i.e., the national hero in my research, are symbols of the transformation shaping contemporary Vietnamese society and their cults reveal the close connection between popular religion and wider social, political and economic structures. The Speaker Pham Quynh Phuong obtained her PhD in Anthropology from La Trobe University, Australia. Her dissertation was an ethnographic analysis of the cult of Tran Hung Dao from the perspective of practitioners and its relationship with the wider social changes being experienced in Vietnamese society. Before joining Southeast Asian Studies Program, Dr Pham Quynh Phuong worked at the Institute of Cultural Studies, Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences. Chairperson: Convenors:
Creating Religious Identities: Buddhist Monuments in Colonial and Pre-Colonial Monsoon Asia Dr Himanshu Prabha Ray Monday, 20 August 2007 , 3.30 - 5 .00 p.m. Synopsis In this presentation, largely based on archaeological data, I argue that colonial intervention in 19th - 20th century South and Southeast Asia, a region that the French scholar Paul Mus termed Monsoon Asia not only altered our understanding of monuments, essentially religious structures, from being abodes of god to objects of artistic and aesthetic appreciation, but it also redefined the nature of Indic religions and here I focus on Buddhism. Alexander Cunningham (1814-1893), the first Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India brought Buddhism to the forefront and established its study as a legitimate branch in the second quarter of the 19th century. It is significant that many of Cunningham’s formulations, such as his identification of places associated with the life of the Buddha, description of Buddha as a social reformer, the prominent role of the Mauryan ruler Asoka in spreading the faith and the degenerate nature of Buddhism after 7th century AD continue to be repeated in secondary writings. In the second part of the presentation I highlight the archaeology of one specific complex, Mahabodhi temple at Bodh Gaya located on the Phalgu River, a tributary of the Ganga, 182 kilometres south of Patna, the capital of Bihar, but more significantly, the site where the Buddha attained Enlightenment. The objective is to comprehend the multi-layered narratives of religious architecture and the extent to which these were implicated in the politics of the colonial period. The Speaker Dr. Himanshu Prabha Ray is a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, and Associate Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She obtained her MPhil (Archaeology) from the University of Cambridge; her PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University; and did post-graduate work in Sanskrit at Panjab University. She has held several visiting positions, including JNU Visiting Fellow in Arts, University of Sydney, Australia, June 2005; Shivdasani Fellow, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, October-December 2005; Visiting Professor: University of Lyon II, France May to July 2001; Fulbright Visiting Lecturer: Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, January to April, 2000. Convenors:
The "Modern Woman" and Her Dangerous Liaisons: The Formation of Colonial Modernity and National Identity in Burma Dr Chie Ikeya Thursday, 10 May 2007 , 10.30am - 12 .00 pm Synopsis Beginning in mid-1930s, chastising and often misogynistic representations of Burmese women exploded in the Burmese media. These representations, in the form of editorials, commentaries, and cartoons that ranged from sarcastic to derogatory, displayed an intense contempt for "modern" Burmese women and accused them of transgressing cultural boundaries and fueling the colonial oppression of the country. This talk closely examines one such representation of modern Burmese women as unpatriotic "miscegenists" and the interrelated public discourse concerning their intimate relations with "foreign"- i.e., non-Buddhist, non-Burmese-men. It explores the connections between the sexual practices of Burmese women and the nationalist appeal for a rejection of colonial temptations, and shows that the controversial figure of the miscegenating Burmese woman was essential to and constitutive of the conceptualization of the Burmese nation-state and national identity. In so doing, the talk sheds light on the impact of colonial modernity on local configurations of gender, racial, and ethnic relations and identities. The talk will conclude with a discussion of how the historical case of the modern, miscegenating woman in 1930s Burma relates to contemporary discourses about Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, focusing in particular on Daw Suu Kyi's renunciation of her conjugal and familial roles since her emergence as the leader of Burma 's struggle for democracy. The Speaker Chie Ikeya received her Ph.D. in History from Cornell University in 2006 for her dissertation, "Gender, History and Modernity: Representing Women in Twentieth Century Colonial Burma," which won the Lauriston Sharp Dissertation Prize (Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University). She was also awarded a Rockefeller Postdoctoral Fellowship for the Project for Critical Asian Studies at the University of Washington for her project, "Miscegenating Women, Half-Caste Children: Legacies of the Japanese Occupation of Burma during the Second World War (1942-1945)." Dr. Ikeya's research investigates the fundamental links between social and economic change, colonial representations of women, nationalist discourse, and the development of reforms and protest movements on behalf of women and against gender-based discrimination. She is currently a visiting assistant professor in the Department of History at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Contact: Assoc Prof Goh Beng Lan (6516 7935)
Mediumship and Modernity: The Dynamics of Ritual Performance in Contemporary Vietnam Dr Kirsten W. Endres Tuesday, 8 May 2007 , 10.30am - 12 .00 pm Synopsis Vietnam's post-doi moi era has profoundly (re)shaped the spiritual and religious trajectories through which people contemplate, negotiate, and enact their relationship with the world. Popular beliefs and ritual practices that were once attacked as wasteful and superstitious have (again) become a conspicuous feature of contemporary urban and rural life. An important example is lên d?ng spirit mediumship. Temples dedicated to the pantheon of the Four Palaces (T? Ph?) receive a constant stream of devotees seeking to transact with the spirit world for existential needs and economic benefits, and prominent master mediums attract large and diverse clienteles of mediumship initiates. However, different (cultural, social and political) actors may hold divergent views about how popular ritual "traditions" are to be fashioned and integrated into the modernization process. The essential contestability of symbolic meanings and practices is mapped out in contentious claims to ritual authenticity, proper ritual and moral conduct, and interpretative authority. Based on recent anthropological research, this presentation will examine the creative and contingent processes that signify the dynamics of lên d?ng ritual performance in the economically burgeoning urban context of Hanoi. The Speaker Kirsten W. Endres is a research fellow and lecturer at the Anthropology Department, University of Freiburg. She started conducting fieldwork in Vietnam in 1996 and obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Munich in 2000. Her dissertation and preceding research has focused on the transformation of Northern Vietnamese village festivals since 1945 in the interrelation between local communities and the State. From 2001-2004 she worked as a coordinator of activities of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) at Hanoi University of Technology. Her ongoing research project on Len Dong ritual spirit possession in Northern Vietnam is funded by a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG). Kirsten Endres has published several articles and book chapters on Vietnamese culture and popular religious practice. Contact: Assoc Prof Goh Beng Lan (6516 7935)
"Cyber-Crime": An Aspect of Nationalist Idea and Consumption Behaviour in Global Culture Dr Aris Arif Mundayat Wednesday, 2 May 2007 , 10.30am - 12.00 pm Synopsis Although capitalism has designed global culture, effective counter-practice toward the capitalist mode of domination tends to manifest itself individually and locally. Historically, since capitalism has anchored its hegemonic strategy in constructing the discourse of fetishizing on commodity, anti-capitalist social movements have generally failed. This has led the rise of individual practice in irritating the capitalist through an instrument facilitated by capitalism itself, information technology. Theoretically, information technology is said to deterritorialize relationships between countries and citizens, but this is not completely true. Globalization processes only render cultural boundaries and national borders more permeable and are extending frames of consciousness and experience well beyond traditional boundaries. To some extent the resulting growth of global awareness has moderated the salience of ethnic and national identities. However, this does not mean that identities based on territory and spaces are now obsolete and destined for the trashcan of history. Identity and nationalist imagination still exist and colour the form of interaction in cyber-crime. This paper will discuss the relationships between the practice of cyber-crime, nationalist imagination, and consumption behaviour in the era of global culture and individual and local responses to globalization. The Speaker Dr. Aris is a senior lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta . Born in 1963, he obtained his B.A. and Sarjana (equivalent to an Honours Degree) from that department between 1982 and 1986. He received his doctorate in social science from Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria, Australia in 2005; his examiners were Dr. Alberto Gomez of La Trobe University, and Prof. Michael Stevenson of Monash University . In addition to his post as senior lecturer in anthropology, Dr. Aris also lectures in the MBA programme and the postgraduate programme for Local Politics and Regional Autonomy of Gadjah Mada. His other posts include the directorships of the Centre for Southeast Asian Social Studies at Gadjah Mada, and also of the research programme at the Women's Research Institute, Jakarta . He held a Meyer Fellowship at NUS in 2006; he has been a Visiting Fellow at Cornell University 's Southeast Asia Program in 1992-1993 and La Trobe University in 2004; and has conducted research at Walailak University, Thailand, through a SEASREP project. Contact: Assoc Prof John Miksic (6516 5008)
Java's oppositions: A political geography of collective action Dr. Douglas A Kammen Friday, 27 April 2007 , 10.30am - 12.00 pm Synopsis This talk seeks to explore the geographic distribution of different patterns of contentious politics in Java before and after 1998. Under authoritarian rule various forms of protest and even violence were celebrated as resistance to a repressive state. In 1998 widespread unrest was assumed to be part of a single pro-democracy movement pioneered and led by students. Today, however, many of these same forms of popular mobilization and contentious politics are viewed as being "irrational" and even "undemocratic." I will highlight the need to move beyond a simple focus on "opposition" to authoritarian rule, political parties and elections and take seriously multiple "oppositions" within society on Java and beyond. In doing so, this talk will address theoretical debates concerning social movements, democratization, and the relationship between political and economic change. The Speaker Dr. Kammen received his BA, MA, and PhD from Cornell University . His doctorate in 1997 was in the Department of Government. He was a lecturer in the Department of Political Science, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1998-2000, after which he obtained three Fulbright Senior Scholar awards. The first of these was for Hasanuddin University, Makassar; the latter two were both for Timor Lorosae. In Timor he has been associated with the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the National University of East Timor, the Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation, and is now in-country coordinator for the United States- East Timor Scholarship Program of the East-West Center, University of Hawaii. Among his other activities is the compilation of a report on the Indonesian armed forces in East Timor for the United Nations Mission of Assistance. Contact: Assoc Prof John Miksic (6516 5008)
Comparing Indonesia's Party Systems of the 1950s and the Post-Soeharto Era: From Centrifugal to Centripetal Inter-Party Competition Dr. Marcus Meitzner Tuesday, 24 April 2007 , 10.30 - 12 .00 p.m. Synopsis Scholarly literature on Indonesian multi-party systems of the 1950s and the post-Soeharto polity points to more similarities than differences between the two eras. In The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia , Herbert Feith described the parties of the 1950s as 'in general very poorly developed', with elite figures using them as 'a principal channel of access to the bureaucracy'. According to Feith, the parties 'lacked cohesion', were 'dominated by their top leaders', and were deeply fragmented by 'clique division'. Fifty years later, Paige Johnson Tan diagnosed 'widespread antipathy' toward the parties of the post-Soeharto system, which were 'widely seen as corrupt and self-seeking'. She concluded that parties were 'divorced from the population, almost uniformly elite-led creations', whose 'legitimacy is dissipating'. Analysts of both periods described their party systems as poorly institutionalized and isolated from society. Given these striking similarities, what accounts for the highly divergent outcomes of the attempts to consolidate multipartyism in both periods? Why did the party system of the 1950s collapse after only seven years while the current multi-party democracy is entering its 10th year without serious indications of disntegration? Granting substantial differences between the economic and political macro-conditions of the two periods, there have to be factors inherent in the character of the party systems as well. I argue that the fundamental difference between Indonesia 's party system in the 1950s and the present is only marginally related to divergent levels in the quality of the individual parties. Rather, it is the direction of inter-party competition that tends to determine paths of party system consolidation. Referring to the work of Sartori and Green-Pedersen, I show that Indonesia's party system in the immediate post-independence period was torn apart by the centrifugal tendencies of the key parties. By contrast, the stability of the current regime is due to the centripetal direction of inter-party contestation. Having contrasted the different forms of electoral rivalry between parties in both eras, the presentation will then highlight the impact of its findings on the theoretical discussion on the stability of party systems. While the recent debate on party system institutionalization remains relevant, it is the overall direction of inter-party competition that has the greatest potential to undermine or stabilize party systems. The Speaker Dr. Mietzner has lived in Ambon (1994-95) and Jakarta (1998-now). His past positions include a research fellowship with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta; USAID; and Development Alternatives Inc. He recently joined The Indonesia Institute, a research organization in Jakarta run by such prominent scholars as Rizal Sukma and Anies Baswedan. His position is that of Senior Visiting Fellow. Contact: Assoc Prof John Miksic (6516-5008)
Southeast Asia in the Museum: The Development of the South-East Asian Collections of the Horniman Museum, London 1891 - 1925 Dr. Fiona Kerlogue Wednesday, 18 April 2007 , 3.30pm - 5.00 pm Synopsis The Southeast Asian collections in the anthropology department of the Horniman Museum in London today number some 3000 items, built up over a period of approximately 150 years. In many ways the changing nature of museum collections and exhibitions reflects the history of the museum in Britain as well as the changing relationships between Britain and the parts of the world from where items have been collected. In this paper I focus on the first 35 years of the Museum, and consider how the collections came to be as they are. The study reveals a changing rationale underlying the Museum's collecting and display policies. In the early years, these were determined by the perspective of Frederick Horniman himself, influenced by his own background and experience and the circles in which he moved. Later a more academic perspective focusing on the development of technology replaced his more eclectic approach. Haphazard patterns affected by periodic donations overlie these two determinates. The resulting picture of Southeast Asia represented in the collections is thus fragmented and inconsistent, though the items included in them often have other kinds of value. The Speaker Fiona Kerlogue is currently Curator of Asian Anthropology at the Horniman Museum. She has held positions at the University of Hull and the University of Jambi in Sumatra and has lectured in the US , Scandinavia , the Netherlands and in the Southeast Asian region itself on aspects of South-East Asian Art and Anthropology. Her Recent publications include 'Batik: Design, Style and History (Archipelago Press and Thames and Hudson ),'Arts of Southeast Asia' ( Thames and Hudson 'World of Art' series) and an edited volume 'Performing Objects: Museums and Material Culture in Southeast Asia'. Chairperson: Dr Jan Mrazek (6516 4912)
A Tribute to the Scholarship of Professor Syed Hussein Alatas Thursday, 12 April 2007 , 6.30 - 8.00 p.m. The passing of Professor Syed Hussein Alatas on January 23, 2007, marks the loss of a leading Southeast Asian scholar. Perhaps best remembered for his path-breaking book, The Myth of the Lazy Native, Professor Alatas' works span a wide range of topics from colonialism, modernization & social change, corruption, Islam & democracy, the role of intellectuals in developing societies to the study of Malay society, culture and politics. While Professor Alatas may be better remembered as a scholar, he was also an activist who helped found Parti Gerakan, a multi-racial political party in Malaysia , in 1968. His long and illustrious career included: the headship of the research department at the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in Kuala Lumpur, the establishment and headship of the Department of Malay Studies at NUS; the Vice-Chancellorship at the University of Malaya; and a Professorship at the Institute for the Study of the Malay World and Civilisation (ATMA) at National University of Malaysia (UKM). This tribute provides an avenue for colleagues and students to reflect on the legacy and significance of his scholarship on the study of Southeast Asia . Speakers and Topics: Professor Reynaldo Ileto , Southeast Asian Studies Programme Professor Johan Saravanamuttu, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Associate Professor Maznah Mohamad, Asia Research Institute Mr.Idham Bachtiar Setiadi on behalf of Junior Scholars from the Workshop on 'Local Scholarship and the Study of Southeast Asia', Southeast Asian Studies Programme Contact: Assoc Prof Goh Beng Lan (6516-7935)
Graduate Research Seminar 2007 Wednesday, 11 April 2007 , 2.00 - 5.15 p.m. SE6770 Graduate Seminar: These presentations by incoming research students are intended to facilitate the development of their thesis topics and proposals. Having met as a group over the past semester, they now share their preliminary thoughts and findings with the wider scholarly community. Presenters & Topics Derek Potter Ermita Soenarto Inga Gruss Zuraidah Bte Ehsan Simon Suessegger Jonathan Bisson Chhaya Sivakumar Contact: Prof. Reynaldo C. Ileto (6516-6896)
Between Frontiers: Nation and Identity in a Southeast Asian Borderland Assoc. Prof. Noboru Ishikawa Wednesday, 28 March 2007, 3.30 - 5.00 p.m. Synopsis Since the advent of "nationalism", a contentious and often unanalyzed abstraction in post-war academic writing, the nation, has been treated as something that is "imagined", "fashioned", and "disseminated". The nation, in other words, is in the mind of people. It also exists in printed matter, on the school maps, in symbols such as flags and anthems, and in memory. Similarly for social thinkers in the neo-Kantian tradition, the state exists in the realm of ideation, where the state comprises institutional machinery with clear-cut spatial boundary that gives body and substance to the notional nation. My study returns the nation and the state to the social field from which they have been abstracted. An international boundary separating East Malaysia form Indonesia slices across the island of Borneo. For people living in that border zone, national territory is an everyday reality rather than the subject of imagination, and questions of identity can have far-reaching consequences. Based on two years of archival research and fieldwork in the Malaysian borderland adjacent to Indonesian territory in Western Borneo , I shall ask what kind of national order is necessary when the state attempts to materialize its territoriality? What kind of organizational features are required for the state to maintain a national space? And how do people strategically situate themselves, as members of a local community, nation, and ethnic group in a social field designated as national space? By examining such questions in the context of the border zone in the Malay maritime world, where a village boundary coincides with a national border, this study delineates the dialectical relationship between nation-state and borderland society both as history and as process. The Speaker Noboru Ishikawa is Associate Professor with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University and currently a visiting senior research fellow at Asia Research Institute, NUS. He obtained a PhD in Anthropology from the Graduate Center, the City University of New York and is the author of a range of articles on the borderlands and riverine societies of Borneo (Sarawak and West Kalimantan), nation and identity, transnationalism, and political economy of the Malay world. His publication includes Dislocating Nation-States: Globalization in Asia and Africa (2005) and Between Frontiers: Nation and Identity in a Southeast Asian Borderland (forthcoming). While at ARI, he works on several projects concerning the commodification of timber with special attention to the interaction between Japanese-Chinese transnational corporate networks and indigenous societies in Southeast Asia. Convenor: Assoc. Prof. Natasha Hamilton-Hart (6516-7934)
Workers and Businessmen in Indonesia's Crisis: Professor Mario Rutten Wednesday, 21 March 2007, 3.45 p.m. - 5.15 p.m. Synopsis Studies on labour relations in small-scale industries in Indonesia frequently emphasise the absence of open forms of protest. Some of them point at the Javanese ideology of 'rukun' (harmony) as a possible explanation for the alleged solidarity within the 'pribumi' (indigenous) community, in which help and support to each other are supposed to contribute to harmonious social relations between workers and entrepreneurs. This paper focuses on changes in labour relations in a cluster of 160 small scale iron foundries in the countryside of Klaten district, central Java, in which both workers and businessmen are of Muslim Javanese origin. The economic crisis and socio-political turmoil in Indonesia since 1997 have resulted in the downfall of many factories and subsequent decline in employment. In their efforts to overcome these problems, both businessmen and workers strategically make use of their religious background to ask for help and support. Businessmen use their religious background to acquire orders and to check the behaviour and activities of their labourers. Workers use religion as part of their survival strategy to oppose the deteriorating labour conditions. Emphasising religious background seems to have become an important class strategy of both businessmen and workers during the recent period of economic and social upheaval. This period of change in Indonesia has been an accelerator of existing tendencies in the labour relations in the selected iron foundries in central Java. More than a turning point, this period of change in Indonesia has been an accelerator of existing tendencies in the labour relations in the selected iron foundries in central Java. The Speaker Mario Rutten is Professor of Comparative Sociology of Asia at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Amsterdam and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore, between 15 January and 15 April, 2007. He has extensive research experience on rural entrepreneurship and labour relations in India, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and on Indian migrants in Europe. His published works include Rural Capitalists in Asia : A Comparative Analysis on India , Indonesia , and Malaysia (Routledge Curzon, 2003) and Labour and Capitalist Transformation in Asia (Special Issue of The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, co-edited 2004). His personal website is http://users.fmg.uva.nl/mrutten/ Convenor: Assoc. Prof. Natasha Hamilton-Hart (6516-7934) |
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