CSEAS Seminar Programme
The Centre of Southeast Asian Studies was established in 1964, soon after the founding of Monash University, in recognition of the importance of the Southeast Asian region to the university and the expertise of Monash staff in this field.
The seminar series has been a vital part of the Centre’s activities across the years, facilitating the exchange of research findings between new and established scholars working on the region.
New Venue & New Time - For 2012 series, the seminars will be held fortnightly at the Japanese Studies Centre Auditorium, Building 54 (next to the bus loop), Clayton Campus (coordinates E2 on the Clayton Campus map: www.monash.edu.au/pubs/maps/3-Claytoncolour.pdf). Seminars will be held every second Wednesday, commencing at 4.00 pm, and concluding at 5.00 pm. If conditions allow it, question time will be extended.
Please send inquiries to the Convenor: Julian.Millie@monash.edu
May 30: PhD Research Forum on Language, Literature and Culture
4.00pm - 5.30pm (please note extended time)
Presenters: Anita Dewi; Paulus Sarwoto; Amelberga Astuti
Anita Dewi - ‘Perception of English: A Study of Staff and Students at Universities in Yogyakarta, Indonesia'
There has been a significant increase in the number of English speakers globally with non-native speakers signify the majority of speakers who rely on diverse varieties of the language. In its history, English has been disseminated through a number of processes ranging from colonialism to globalisation. This has ultimately resulted in the formation of various relationships between English and the target communities. English has also spread to countries where Muslims constitute the majority of the population. As religious teachings are embedded in local or national cultures and thus result in non-homogeneous Islamic communities across the globe, it is an oversimplification to conclude that English consistently stands in opposition to Islam in every Islamic society. This reflects the importance of studies directed towards perceptions of English in Indonesia, the fourth most populated country and the largest Muslim community in the world.
This research examines perceptions of English, focusing on staff and students at universities in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Five research questions were used as the basis for conducting this study, which lead to the themes of English and its acceptance in Indonesia, English at tertiary level, the roles of English, English in relation to identity, and perception of World Englishes. Research findings will be discussed at the forum.
Paulus Sarwoto - ‘The Javanese in Transition: A Postcolonial Study of the Priyayi in the Works of Indonesian Author, Umar Kayam'
The postcolonial study in Indonesian literature is still very limited. Indonesia's distinctive history has contributed to the scarcity of the writers examining the colonial legacy through literary representation. In fact critical reflection on colonial legacy has never been a major theme in Indonesian literature, theory and criticism. Among the few vernacular writers whose stories deal with the legacy of colonialism but is less discussed in a postcolonial perspective is Umar Kayam. The stories in question are Kayam's New York stories and priyayi stories that are the primary texts of this research. I will be taking a particularly postcolonial approach to this analysis. I hope to show through my analysis the development of priyayi class before and after colonialism through the perspective of these stories. The discussion centres on the constellation of priyayi figuration in the four major phases of Indonesian history: the early 20th century, 1945, 1965 (Gestapu), and 1966-1998 (the New Order). Through each historical point, Kayam portrays the priyayi strategy in negotiating social change. The figuration of priyayi in facing the social change is split between those who adhere to the concept of compassionate priyayi and those who manipulate their values for personal glory. Throughout the colonial and after independence periods, the compassionate priyayi finds the dead end of their struggle and hence marginalized whereas the latter gain material prosperity and strong political position. To this end the stories offer a typically universal humanist thesis, i.e. that priyayi-hood is a universal trait beyond the confinement of race and nationality.
Amelberga Astuti - ‘Women Writing the City in Contemporary (Asian-) Australian and Indonesian Novels'
May 16: Professor Merle C Ricklefs, Australian National University
Islamisation and Its Opponents in Java
Merle Ricklefs' newest book - entitled ‘Islamisation and Its Opponents in Java: A Political, Social, Cultural and Religious History, c. 1930 to the Present' - will be published in mid-2012 by NUS Press and University of Hawaii Press. It is the third and final volume in his series on the history of the Islamisation of the Javanese people from the 14th Century to the present. He will present an overview of the arguments of that book. In particular, he will focus on the Soeharto period (1966-98) as a decisive time in the deepening influence of Islamic norms and institutions in Javanese society. He will also briefly consider the legacies of that period in the post-Soeharto period.
M. C. Ricklefs is Professor Emeritus of the Australian National University and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He is a scholar of the history and current affairs of Indonesia, whose recent publications have concentrated particularly on the role of Islam in recent and contemporary Java. He was formerly Director of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University and more recently Professor of History at the National University of Singapore. He has also held appointments at The School of Oriental and African Studies (London University), Monash University (where he was Professor of History from 1980 to 1993) and All Souls College. His major books include Jogjakarta under Sultan Mangkubumi, 1749-1792 (1974), War, culture and economy in Java, 1677-1726 (1993), The seen and unseen worlds in Java, 1726-49 (1998), Mystic synthesis in Java: A history of Islamisation from the fourteenth to the early nineteenth centuries (2006), Polarising Javanese society: Islamic and other visions c.1830-1930 (2007), Islamisation and its opponents in Java: A political, social, cultural and religious history, c. 1930 to the present (in press) and A history of Modern Indonesia (4th English edition and 3rd Indonesian-language edition both 2008). His most recent book is A new history of Southeast Asia (2010), which he edited and co-authored with colleagues at NUS.
CSEAS Special Seminar
‘Indonesian Achievements as ASEAN Chairman 2011 and Prospects for ASEAN-Australia Relations'
I Gede Ngurah Swajaya, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Indonesia to ASEAN
Tuesday 8th May 2012, 6.30pm - 7.30pm
Link Theatre, Room S2.30, Building S, Monash University Caulfield Campus
Light refreshments will be served 5.30pm - 6.15pm at MAI Seminar Room (Room H5.95), Building H
Prayer Rooms: Level 1, Building T (men); Level 1, Building B (women)
Ngurah Swajaya joined the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1986, and with his first assignment being the Third Secretary at the Indonesian Embassy to the Federal Republic of Germany, in Bonn (1992-95). He was later assigned at the Indonesian Permanent Mission to the UN in New York (1999-2003). At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2005-08), he served as the Director for the Multilateral Economic and Environment Cooperation, and the Director for ASEAN Political Security Cooperation.
Ngurah Swajaya was sworn in by the President of the Republic of Indonesia, Dr H Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, as the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Indonesia to the Kingdom of Cambodia (2009-10), and to ASEAN (from 2010). During the period the Republic of Indonesia serving as the rotating chair of ASEAN 2011, he was appointed to serve as the Chairperson of the Committee of the Permanent Representative to ASEAN. He also served as the Chairperson of the ASEAN Connectivity Coordinating Committee which was tasked to coordinate the implementation of the Master Plan of ASEAN Connectivity. As the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Indonesia to ASEAN, Ambassador Ngurah also served as the member of the Board of Trustees of the ASEAN Foundation.
Ambassador Ngurah has been involved in many international, UN and ASEAN negotiations, and served as the chair or the facilitator in many of those negotiations. He is a co-author of the book titled ‘Indonesia and WSSD: Forging Consensus for Global Agreement on Sustainable Development', writes articles for local newspapers, and delivers lectures to several universities in Indonesia.
April 18: Dr Ben Reid (School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University)
Importing Latin American Approaches to Social Protection into Southeast Asia: Problems and Paradoxes
This presentation was a work in progress based on preliminary analysis of data collected in the Philippines during field work in early 2012.
One of the main approaches that is being promoted by multilateral development agencies for establishing social safety nets and for countries to achieve their millennium development goal targets are conditional cash transfer programs. They have largely been implemented in Latin America, although their considerable variation in their exact character and extent of population coverage. Poor households receive cash grants in return for ensuring children attend school and mothers attend health care centres. While the use of CCTs as components within overall poverty alleviation strategies should not be dismissed outright, their suitability for the Philippines is questionable. The current program displays critical weaknesses because of inter-linked problems of: a heavy reliance of external finance; a corresponding lack of a fiscal policies that can accommodate income transfers; an almost fetishised obsession with targeting; and an inability to resolve issues of chronic shortages of the supply of services. These observations are grounded in a analysis of how social risk management inspired policies can have perverse consequences when implemented - often with a realist rationale - in a national polity that is hegemonised by rent-extracting elites. Some initial discussion is made of how a transformative social protection approach could be applied and the central role labour rights and protection could play in this.
Ben Reid is a Lecturer in Development Studies and Resource Management. He has published in leading international journals on Philippine and Southeast Asian politics, political economy and development. His most recent paper on securitisation and participatory development won the 2012 runner up award for best publication in Journal of Contemporary Asia.
March 28: Mr Iip Yahya
Discontinuity in Indonesian Political Representation:
The Case of the ‘Sundanese Association' (Paguyuban Pasundan)
The ‘Sundanese Association' (PP) will next year celebrate its one hundredth anniversary. Since its formation in 1913, PP has had its ups and downs, but continues to survive strongly in the present. PP has 38 branches across West Java, as well as special branches in various provinces and countries. It has 104 high schools spread throughout West Java, three universities in Bandung, and one in Sukabumi. One of PP's universities, Universitas Pasundan, is amongst the largest and most popular tertiary institutions in West Java, and offers Masters and PhD programs. Its active members amount to around 120,000 people. Even though PP is an ormas, and not a political party, it has a socio-political role on the Indonesian political stage, especially in West Java. All candidates for governorship of West Java, for example, seek approval from the Chairman of the PP during their campaign, as do national figures who want to gain support from Sundanese people.
Nevertheless, the political role of the contemporary PP cannot be compared with the period during which the organisation was led by Oto Iskandar Di Nata (1929-1942). During that period, almost all Sundanese leaders on the national stage were PP activists, including Djuanda (PP General Secretary, Prime Minister of Indonesia), Ukar Bratakusumah (PP Secretary General, Ministry of Mines), Sanusi Hardjadinata (Institute of Economics Pasundan, a key figure of Indonesian National Party/PNI), to name a few. In the subsequent period, after Oto was mysteriously kidnapped and murdered in December 1945, the PP ceased "contributing" national leaders. The public frequently compares the contemporary PP with its predecessors of the pre-independence period, to the point where such comparisons have become a burden for the leadership.
This seminar will present an overview of the organisation. It will ask whether PP will be able to meet the expectations of contemporary society, and specifically whether it will be able to "contribute" national leaders from West Java. The presentation will also ask why nationalist organisations defined by ethnicity have not developed as successful political parties in the Republican period.
Iip D. Yahya was born in Tasikmalaya, West Java, Indonesia. He is currently a freelance writer and the Victorian correspondent for Pikiran Rakyat, the biggest daily newspaper in West Java. His research project concerned the history of writing traditions in Sundanese Islamic boarding schools (pesantren). He has studied Arabic Literature at IAIN Sunan Gunung Djati in Bandung, West Java and has written books on various themes, including children's books and biography, as well as translations and adaptations.
March 14: Patrick Walsh AM
East Timor's 2012 Presidential Election
On 17 March 2012, some 600,000 voters will go to the polls in East Timor to choose the country's president for the next five years, the third since the new nation broke with Indonesia in 1999. The stakes are high and, though not enjoying executive powers, the incoming president will face many challenges leading the nation into its second decade of self-government. Voter perceptions of the thirteen candidates, however, will be largely determined by their resistance credentials which may or may not equip them to fill what has become an influential post following the activist incumbencies of independence heroes Xanana Gusmao and Jose Ramos-Horta. The successful candidate will head a fragile petro-state that faces massive deficits from generations of colonialism, poverty, violence and trauma, challenges that are further compounded by the contemporary demands of a population explosion and rising community aspirations. Coupled with the outcome of parliamentary elections in June, the contest will be keenly watched by, amongst others, business, Indonesia, Australia and the UN, each of which has a vested interest in East Timor being a success story. What is the role of president? Who are the candidates and what are the issues? Will the process be peaceful and what is the buzz about the likely outcome?
Pat Walsh has recently returned to Australia after working in East Timor during the nation's first ten years since independence from Indonesia. In East Timor, he was seconded by the UN to help establish the CAVR truth and reconciliation commission, the first commission of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region, and served as its Special Advisor (2001-2005). He subsequently worked as senior advisor to the Post-CAVR Technical Secretariat until 2010 and is now involved with the CHART archival project in Australia and with plans to publish the CAVR report, entitled Chega! (enough, no more) in English and establish an Institute of Memory in East Timor. He is the co-founder of Inside Indonesia magazine, directed the Australian Council for Overseas Aid (now ACFID) regional human rights program, 1985-2000, and was a delegate to the World Congress on Human Rights in 1993. He recently published At The Scene of the Crime: Essays, Reflections and Poetry on East Timor, 1999-2010. He was awarded the Ordem de Timor-Leste in 2009 and the Order of Australia (AM) in 2012 for his contribution to human rights and reconciliation.
February 29: Dr Joost Cote (Senior Research Fellow, SOPHIS, Monash University
The ‘Awkward' History of European Civilian Internees
under Japanese and Indonesian Republican Administrations, 1942 - 1947
The Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia and its aftermath may have been the beginning of the end of European imperialism in Asia but in Indonesian national history the ‘real war' commenced on 17 August 1945 (Dirlik 2001). Caught up in that war were between 42,000 and 46,000 European civilians, a majority of whom were of part Indonesian descent. Some had previously been interned during the Japanese administration but a majority appear to have spent those years as ‘buitenkampers' (D=outside the camps), that is, not previously interned during1942 - 45. They found themselves in the territories controlled by the Indonesian Republic imprisoned in a variety of locations, often temporary and small, some that had previously been Japanese internment camps.
Drawing on recent Dutch publications, this presentation is not about war but summarises the historical and statistical ‘facts' to highlight the experience of these European civilians under Japanese and Indonesian Republican administrations. The paper draws attention to the serial process of racial categorisation - colonial, Japanese, Indonesian and subsequently, Dutch, Australian and American - to which these people of mixed descent were subjected. Theirs therefore represents an ‘awkward' history - and ‘difficult heritage' (Logan and Reeves, 2009) - that has been largely absent from Indonesian and Anglophone history and until recently also from Dutch history of this period.
CSEAS Seminar Convenor
Dr Julian Millie
Senior Lecturer - Anthropology/School of Political and Social Inquiry
Faculty of Arts, Monash University
Tel. +61 3 9905 2996
Fax. +61 3 9905 2410
Email: Julian.Millie@monash.edu
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Archives of previous years' series