CSEAS Seminar Programme, 2007
Unless otherwise indicated, seminars are held on:
Thursdays 11.00 am - 12.30 pm Manton Room SG02, Ground Floor, Menzies Building (11) South, Monash University Clayton campus
Seminar 1, 2007
8 March 2007
Mr Eric Anton Heuser,
PhD candidate, Institute of Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Freiburg
"On the dialectics of friendship and interculturality in Indonesia"
So far, no systematic academic research has been produced on friendship as a social relationship influenced by the dynamics of cultural globalisation, where the emphasis is placed on the actors’ social and cultural practices. Therefore, the proposed study aims to analyse friendship relationships within intercultural social discourses, and to investigate how these social constructs develop between individuals from different cultures backgrounds. Existing discussions on cultural globalisation will provide the theoretical framework for gaining an understanding of these intercultural relationships. It will also account for a different understanding needed for an appropriate perceptive of the fusion of cultures in times of the disembedding of social interaction.
Friendship here is defined as a non-sexual category in which individuals enter relatively voluntary, intimate, and emotional relationships based on trust. Those relationships can be same-sex or mixed-sex relationships. Towards conducting a systematic investigation of the dynamics of intercultural friendships, this research seeks to analyse the relationships between Western immigrants who live in Indonesia permanently, and their Indonesian friends, highlighting possible commonalities and differences in the construction and function of those relations. It is intended to stress possible changes in the social meaning of friendships, as well as showing to what extent these friendships provide an arena to help the foreigner integrate into local culture. This research aims to explore the relationships of 20 Western immigrants, living in Yogyakarta, Java and Ubud, Bali in Indonesia, where they position themselves in an intercultural space. Accordingly, the plan is to analyse the strategies through which they locate their social positions, and to investigate which social practices they employ to gain access to local knowledge, which is in return relevant for the entry and maintenance of friendship relationships. Relating to this, it is of significance to study whether cultural borders are being reproduced within these intercultural relationships, and if so, which cultural markers are employed to do so, and whether actors possibly create “third spaces” relating to transcultural social practices.
Empirical data for this study is being collected during social anthropological fieldwork in Yogyakarta, Java and Ubud, Bali, employing an eclectic methodology approach including participant observation and interviewing and reflections on personal experience. The method of participant observation is especially well-suited to analyse the dynamics of friendship relationships within a specific social context. The development of this researcher’s personal intercultural friendships provides another insightful perspective for analysing the social dynamics of these intercultural relationships.
Eric Anton Heuser studied Social Anthropology, Sociology and Political Science at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, and Asian Studies at the University of Melbourne before taking a Masters of Pacific Asian Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is presently a doctoral candidate in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Freiberg.
Contact details: ea.heuser@web.de
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15 March 2007 *Joint seminar with the Centre of Malaysian Studies
Associate Professor Aishah Bidin
Faculty of Law, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM)
"Corporate rescues in Malaysia - An agenda for law reform"
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22 March 2007
Dr Julian Millie
CSEAS Postdoctoral Fellow, Monash University
"Fiqh, pesantren and awam : non-specialists and the circulation of Islamic knowledge in Bandung"
This paper studies social behaviour through which Islamic knowledge (ilmu) circulates in contemporary Bandung. During his research at a pesantren (religious school) in Bandung, Julian Millie was a regular participant at a routine event in which a cleric (ajengan) gave an exegesis of a work of fiqh (jurisprudence). A large portion of the audience were orang awam (Muslims with no training in the Islamic sciences). The paper asks questions about the engagement by orang awam with the fiqh text. By observing the conduct of participants in the exegesis, it makes conclusions about how non-specialists give meaning to fiqh.
Dr Julian Millie is the CSEAS Postdoctoral Fellow 2006/2007. His next project, Preaching Islam: Politics, performers and publics in Indonesia , will be carried out in Anthropology, School of Political and Social Inquiry, as an ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship commencing in April 2007.
Contact: julian.millie@arts.monash.edu.au
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29 March 2007
Ms Patawinee Yooyaem
MA Candidate, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University
"Negotiating bun khun: Interpreting and reproducing the idea of ‘debt of gratitude’ in the context of education in Thailand"
This research aims to explore the role and significance of the notion of Bun Khun or the ‘debt of gratitude’ in the context of formal schooling in Thailand. This study will examine the complexity of the notion and its relation to educational institution, investigating how it is integrated into official school curriculum, and how it is interpreted and presented to young children. The research also aims to draw the attention to the role and influence of Bun Khun as a key element in shaping and controlling of power within hierarchical relationships at all level and in many aspects of Thai society. It is hoped that the examination of Bun Khun will contribute a comprehensive analysis of cultural reproduction in Thai schooling to Thai studies.
Patawinee Yooyaem is a candidate for the MA by Research in the School of Political and Social Inquiry (Anthropology) at Monash University.
Contact: Patawinee.Yooyaem@adm.monash.edu.au
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5 April 2007
Professor Greg Barton
Herb Feith Research Professor for the Study of Indonesia, Monash University
"Islam's other nation: a fresh look at Indonesia"
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19 April 2007
Dr Vandra Harris
School of Political and International Studies, Flinders University
"More or Less? An exploration of Southeast Asian perspectives on overseas aid"
Northern governments make significant foreign aid contributions each year, however post-development critics label aid as a culturally violent imposition on the global South. Post-development claims to represent the views of the people of the South, whom they say do not want aid but rather wish to be left to their own spontaneous grassroots responses, which are necessarily more appropriate and successful than external interventions. This claim to representation has made it almost impossible to challenge their argument, and as a consequence it has been very difficult to advance the debates over foreign aid and development.
This paper reports on research that explored that claim by gathering insights from Cambodian and Filipino development workers. It revealed that while practitioners share the post-development concern about culture, they do not share its assessment of the role of aid in cultural change, rather seeing development as a tool for cultural reinforcement and reconstruction. On this basis they embrace development rather than rejecting it, and while they support the grassroots groups promoted by post-development, they do not accept that they are the only groups with a role to play in the South.
This paper presents these practitioners’ perspectives on international intervention as a constructive force in the lives of ordinary people, and presents their suggestions for improvements. By demonstrating that there is not a single Southern voice calling for an end to overseas aid, it is hoped that future development debates can move on to the practical and urgent questions of how to deliver development in ways that enable local and national communities to meet their goals and aspirations, rather than whether to deliver it at all.
Dr Vandra Harris completed a PhD in Development Studies at Flinders University, examining the cultural impact of international development in Cambodia and the Philippines. She has been a post-doctoral research fellow at the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies, where she conducted research on Scandinavian policies on development partnerships, and has taught at Flinders University, University of South Australia and Bjorknes International College, Norway, in topics including Globalisation, Development Studies, International Relations and Asian Studies. She is currently teaching part time in the Globalisation Program at Flinders and her research interests include culture, identity, development, NGOs and globalisation.
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26 April 2007
Professor Martin Stuart-Fox
Emeritus Professor in History, University of Queensland
"The persistence of political culture: lessons from Cambodia and Laos - or the limitations of institutions and how to subvert them"
This paper argues that putting 'appropriate' institutions in place in developing countries in order to improve governance and the functioning of a free market, as urged by the World Bank, is no guarantee that they will work as anticipated; for how those institutions work will depend on the political culture of the nation-states involved. The argument is illustrated by reference to Laos and Cambodia, in each of which very different political systems were externally imposed, both of which have been subsequently subverted in ways that were not foreseen.
Emeritus Professor at the School of History, Philosophy, Religion & Classics at the University of Queensland, Martin Stuart-Fox has published several books on Laos, and has also written on Cambodia, China's relations with Southeast Asia, early Buddhism, and the theory and philosophy of history. In the last couple of years he has focused particularly on the political cultures of Laos and Cambodia in relation to governance, reform and corruption.
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3 May 2007
Dr Will Peterson
School of English, Communications, and Performance Studies, Monash University
"Holy week in the ‘Heart of the Philippines’: Spirituality, theatre, and community in Marinduque’s Moriones Festival"
The week-long Moriones Festival on the island of Marinduque, south of Manila, weaves together a complex mix of events including street theatre, processions, religious ceremonies, and a three-night sinakulo that dramatizes the history of salvation with a focus on the Christ story. Present throughout the week’s events are the morions, caped and elaborately costumed local men enacting a vow or panata, and whose identities are disguised by large headpieces and full-face carved masks meant to resemble Roman centurions. The leading morion is the Roman centurion Longinus, who according to apocryphal sources, was the lance-wielding soldier present at the crucifixion and whose sight was miraculously restored by Christ’s blood. The ubiquitous morions and the transformation and martyrdom of Longinus provide an active, experiential route into the story of Christ’s sacrifice for many Catholics in Marinduque during Holy Week. This presentation will provide an overview of the event and attempt to map out an interdisciplinary conceptual framework to further contextualise it.
Dr William Peterson is Senior Lecturer and Postgraduate Coordinator in the Centre for Drama and Theatre Studies at Monash University. He is the author of Theatre and the Politics of Culture in Contemporary Singapore (Wesleyan University Press, 2001) and has published widely on the intersections between theatre, politics, and culture in Singapore, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the Philippines.
DOWNLOAD Audio recording of this seminar (File size: 18.8 MB; Format: mp3)
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10 May 2007
Ms Antonia Staats
Fellow, Robert Bosch Foundation / International Crisis Group (ICG), Jakarta
"Decentralisation and conflict in Indonesia: Tales from Maluku"
The process of pemekaran – the splitting off of new districts and provinces from ‘mother’ districts and provinces – has triggered administrative, resource-related, political, and demographic/cultural disputes or tensions in Indonesia. The tensions typically erupt over the choice of capital or the drawing of the new boundary. In most cases, the disputes are managed more or less peacefully. However, in or near areas where there has been a history of conflict, these minor disputes have the potential to fall out along ethnic or religious lines.
The creation of a new administrative unit, Tual, in Southeast Maluku, is on the verge of success but has generated intense political competition and fear of conflict in the district. Tual is on the periphery of a major conflict area, and spillover caused a brief flare-up in 1999 which was, however, quickly resolved. The Tual campaign for pemekaran accelerated in 2006 and early 2007 despite reservations regarding the viability of both the new and the ‘mother’ district. The current division between those in favour and those against pemekaran include high-ranking local politicians and traditional leaders, with emotions running high. The vocal campaigns of both sides have led to a certain degree of polarisation among the population. Squabbling between the pro and contra sides has already taken place. The possible danger was that the pro and anti positions could fall out along religious lines.
This seminar explores the dynamics, rivalries and potential triggers of trouble at the local level as well as the challenges posed by pemekaran which accounts for the majority of laws passed since 1999. In Tual, the conflict proved to be more a competition between local elites for resources and power as well as a quest for electoral survival in the face of upcoming local elections than a dispute running along religious lines. Pemekaran of Tual, which is expected to be formally endorsed in May, is part of a bigger phenomenon in Indonesia and sheds light on local level developments in Indonesia since the 2001 ‘big bang’ decentralisation of power.
Antonia Staats studied Southeast Asian Studies, Journalism and Cultural Studies at the Freie and Humboldt University in Berlin before falling in love with London while on a European exchange year and subsequently taking a Masters course in Asian Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). After graduating in 2005 she went to live in Cambodia for several months in order to familiarise herself with mainland Southeast Asia and learn the language. Back in London, she worked as a research assistant at the Armed Conflict Database of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), analysing conflicts in Southern Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal, Ethiopia and Eritrea. In 2006 she won a fellowship for the Robert Bosch Foundation’s Postgraduate Program in International Affairs, for which she is currently working on a project on decentralisation in Indonesia. As part of the program, she has worked with the German Federal Ministry for Development and Economic Cooperation and the International Crisis Group’s Jakarta office.
DOWNLOAD Audio recording of this seminar (File size: 6.64 MB; Format: mp3)
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17 May 2007
Dr Trudy Jacobsen
School of Political and Social Inquiry/CSEAS, Monash University
"Divergent perspectives on the Cambodian ‘harem’ in the reign of King Norodom (1863-1904)"
In 1875 three women of the palace and a male palace servant executed on the order of King Norodom of Cambodia. One of the women, a lesser queen who had borne two of the king’s children, was beheaded with a sword for having entered into a sexual liaison with the man; the other two women were shot for acting as go-betweens for the couple. The French saw these executions as evidence of the despotism and backwardness of the Cambodian monarchy. Emancipating the women of the Cambodian royal ‘harem’ became a key objective of the French colonial project and assisted in legitimizing their presence in the kingdom. Yet for Norodom, his actions were fitting retribution for an act he perceived as treason. The French did not realize that sexual fidelity on the part of the women of the palace symbolised the political loyalty of their families. This paper explores the institution of ‘women of the palace’ from both angles and how the French perception of the ‘harem’ as a place of immorality is the one that has endured in the minds of Cambodians. In reality, however, the women of the palace were inhabitants of a realm at once mundane and celestial; far from mere sexual playthings, their roles enabled the king to move between the worlds he represented and maintain diplomatic relations with the lands he ruled.
Dr Trudy Jacobsen is ARC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash Asia Institute, and Anthropology, School of Political and Social Inquiry, at Monash University. Her recent written work has encompassed punishment in Southeast Asian cultural contexts; Cambodian cultural antipathy toward the Vietnamese; gender and merit in Cambodia; and Tep Vong, Cambodia’s supreme Buddhist leader. Currently Dr Jacobsen is working on papers concerning Cambodian masculinity, female agency in Cambodia, and the history of Cambodian feminism, as well as a joint project with Tom Chandler focussing upon the role of technology in heritage conservation. Her first book, Lost Goddesses: The Denial of Female Power in Cambodia, is forthcoming from NIAS Press (2007).
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24 May 2007
Ms Katie Dyt
PhD candidate, School of Historical Studies, Monash University
"Ho Chi Minh - A bodhisattva of Vietnamese Buddhism: Sangha, state and Marxisizing Buddhism in Vietnam"
This paper analyses the interaction between Marxism and Buddhism discourses in Socialist Vietnam. This synthesis between Marxist and Buddhist symbols is most clearly illustrated in the casting of Ho Chi Minh, head of the Marxist State, as a Buddhist deity – or a “Bodhisattva of Vietnamese Buddhism.” Through a close reading of Vietnamese Buddhist magazines, the paper will examine efforts made to recast Buddhist concepts at their ideological core so as to conform with Marxist principles. While the symbols and values of Buddhism were undoubtedly appropriated to further the ideological and political agenda of the Marxist State, I will also point to a counterveiling thread of Buddhism absorbing Marxist symbols of power.
During 2004-5, and again in late 2006, Katie Dyt conducted over 16 months of fieldwork in Hanoi and surrounding areas, collecting both written and ethnographic data (including interviews) for her Master’s dissertation on female monastic experience in Socialist Vietnam. During this time, she also undertook intensive language training at the National University of Vietnam, Hanoi. She is in the process of writing up her Master’s dissertation under the supervision of Dr Jane Drakard.
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31 May 2007
Mr Martin Polkinghorne
PhD candidate, Archaeology/Art History & Theory, University of Sydney
"Local transformations of Indianisation at the turn of the 1st millennium: Architectural and decorative models of Khmer temples"
From the identification of Sanskrit and Indian iconography at Angkor as early as 1863 by the German Orientalist Adolf Bastien, the relationship between India and Southeast Asia has been a perennial theme in the scholarship of the region. The idea of waves of cultural ‘borrowing’ is still underscored by confidence in a rigid set of ‘ideals’ traveling across the Bay of Bengal. This is acutely noticed in the medieval period where the faithful representation of Indian iconographic conventions, the orderedness of particular temple complexes, and the exceptional grammatical structure of the Sanskrit inscriptions are given to represent a Khmer adoption of an Indian ideal. Local transformation of iconography and architectural form no doubt found considerable inspiration from India. Yet the remarkable richness in the material record is more likely the result of the actions of craftspeople choosing, adapting, and inventing from the artistic milieu made available to them from tradition, training, and process. Artistic change observed in the decorative lintels of Angkorian temples offers evidence of the use of decorative templates and the increasing organisation of artistic labour. Additionally, appraisal of measurements and ratios in a series of key medieval monuments, distinguishes the unique Khmer interaction between makers and models.
Martin Polkinghorne is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Sydney. His dissertation focuses upon the makers and models of medieval Khmer architecture and decoration. Polkinghorne has extensive fieldwork experience in Cambodia and Southeast Asia and has contributed considerably as a Team Leader of the Greater Angkor Project. He worked upon the ‘Goddess – Divine Energy’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and also teaches Southeast Asian art history at the National Art School.
Semester 2, 2007
26 July 2007
Professor Campbell Macknight
Research School of Asian and Pacific Studies, Australian National University
"In search of a past: South Sulawesi essays"
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2 August 2007
Dr Susie Protschky
Faculty of Arts, Monash University
"European landscape painting in late Colonial Indonesia: A cultural topography"
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Dutch and other European colonists in the Netherlands Indies (colonial Indonesia) produced an enormous number of landscape paintings. Many of these are referred to pejoratively as ‘mooi Indië’ (beautiful Indies) paintings. Most of the scholarly work on these paintings has been concerned with constructing biographies of painters and sorting out attributions. Very little analysis of the content of these paintings, their relation to Dutch colonial culture, and their role in the formation of colonial identities has been undertaken thus far. This paper represents an outline of my recent efforts to redress this gap in the literature on the art, landscape and culture in the Netherlands Indies.
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9 August 2007
Dr Robert Pringle
"Islam and Indonesia: threat or therapy"
Dr Robert Pringle has a PhD from Cornell, written in the early 1960s on the Ibans of Sarawak under the rule of the three Brooke rajahs, later published (Cornell U P. 1970) under the title Rajahs and Rebels. He then served in the State Department for thirty years, with stints in Jakarta, Manila, Port Moresby and several West African countries and South Africa, including as Ambassador in Mali.
He is currently writing a book on Islam in Indonesia, a subject he has been following closely for over thirty years. His aim is to provide an account for general readers rather than just scholarly specialists, although grounded in the scholarly studies. His fine book on Bali several years ago, A Short History of Bali (which was far more than just a history and threw a lot of light on recent social developments there) showed just how well he can achieve that balance.
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16 August 2007
Mr Terry Johal
School of Applied Communication, RMIT University
"Internet content management by the State and Business: A case study of Singapore"
The Internet promised to give voice to the cacophony of democracy and to grassroots globalization as well as those frozen out of the mainstream media. Timely, given the seeming rise of state corporatism where the media and the state work hand-in-glove to reduce the voice of the people to a whimper. In this presentation, I argue that the Internet is being managed through the legislative and judicial processes as well as through the resources and capital of the mainstream media. I will evaluate the successes of these two fronts of Internet content management and what that means to the future of the Internet as an alternative discursive arena. This will be done using Singapore as the case study.
Terry Johal is a lecturer at the School of Applied Communication at RMIT University, where he teaches digital communication technologies, popular culture and media globalization, particularly Asian perspectives on these. His research encompasses regulatory processes of digital communication technologies and the discursive potential of convergent communication technologies. He is also a director at The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice.
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23 August 2007
Dr Diana Carroll
Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University
"The ambiguity of Melayu"
This paper offers a re-reading of two eighteenth century texts on the Malay world; the first is Marsden’s 1783 History of Sumatra, the second is Hikayat Hang Tuah and is based on part of a chapter of my thesis William Marsden and his Malyo-Polynesian Legacy. I argue that eighteenth century understanding of the word Melayu is considerably broader than the received understanding of the Melayu concept that emerged in the late twentieth century. Marsden’s reading of “the Malay” went unrecognised by later scholars until it was partially rediscovered in 1979 by Virginia Matheson Hooker.
Marsden’s 1783 work is re-examined in the light of the relevant philosophical ideas that shaped the eighteenth century Western world and which are essential to understanding its scholarship. Such an analysis reveals that ideas of Malay national character and Malay identity found inWilliam Marsden’s 1783 edition of The History of Sumatra coincide with the uses of Melayu in the eighteenth century narrative, Hikayat Hang Tuah.
Why was the Marsden’s scholarly contribution and the wider significance of Melayu overlooked for so long? Even in late the twentieth century, Malay studies were strongly influenced social Darwinism and a scholarly infrastructure that encouraged an elitist interpretation of Melayu in the pre-colonial period. Despite an upsurge of interest in contemporary notions of Malay identity emphasis was on the role of strong social norms and collective rather than individual consciousness. Moreover, the ideas on social condition in traditional societies promulgated by the Durkheim school of social science tended to concentrate on institutions and politics at the expense of culture.
About the speaker:
This paper draws upon Dr Carroll's thesis *William Marsden and his Malayo-Polynesian legacy*. Before beginning work on Malay studies she had a long career at the National Library of Australia, during which, with Professor James Cameron, she co-edited _Short Title Catalogue of books printed in the British Isles … 1701-1800_ (Canberra , National Library of Australia, 1966). Her other publications include “Hikayat Abdullah: Discourse of Dissent”, _Journal of the Malay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society_, Vol LXXII, Part 2 (1999): 92-129 and “Savages and Barbarians: The British Enlightenment and William Marsden’s contribution to a Malayo-Polynesian Discourse", _Signatures_, V, pp. 1-44.
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30 August 2007
Dr Adam Fforde
School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University
"State-owned enterprises in Vietnam"
Dr Fforde took his PhD in Vietnamese development issues at Cambridge in 1982. He has extensive consultancy and academic research experience in Vietnam in addition to several research fellowships and teaching posts in institutions including Hanoi University, ANU, NUS, and the Asia Institute at Melbourne University. His research interests are eclectic, continuing a long-standing interest in Vietnamese development issues across many sectors with newer work on the nature of development policy and comparative issues. He has also published on the theory of transition and problems of economic methodology. His most recent monograph is "Vietnamese State Industry and the Political Economy of Commercial Renaissance: Dragon's Tooth or Curate's Egg?" (Oxford: Chandos, 2007).
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6 September 2007
Associate Professor Roland Fletcher
Co-Director, Greater Angkor Project, University of Sydney
"Water management at Angkor: redefining the debate"
The water management system of Angkor has been the topic of intense debate since the early 1980s with opinions spuriously divided between functionalist and ritualist interpretations. New evidence collected by the EFEO and the Greater Angkor Project from remote sensing, field survey and excavations has redefined the debate by identifing an immense three-part water control and dispersal network spread over a 1000 sq km that contains massive masonry-built water management features. The network formed the infrastructure of the urban complex, was a key component of its low-density, urban residential pattern and may also be implicated in its demise as Groslier argued in the 1960s and 70s.
Associate Professor Fletcher is the principal Director and instigator of the Greater Angkor Project at the University of Sydney. He is an archaeologist and spatial theorist with experience in the archaeology and ethnography of settlement dynamics. He has worked on the analysis of settlements in contemporary Ghana, on archaeological sites in Egypt and the south-west United States. As Research Collaborator at the Smithsonian Institution (Washington DC) in 1995-6 he researched the 30 largest pre-industrial cities, most of which were in Asia. He has developed his specific expertise on Angkor over the past decade.
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13 September 2007
Dr John Prior
Candraditya Research Centre for the Study of Religion and Culture, Maumere (Flores)
"The Tibo Case: Local sectarianism, national factionalism and the struggle for justice."
The execution of Tibo and companions earlier this year brings out issues of sectarianism, factionaism and legal manipulation by powerful interests, and the dilemma of those working for social justice without being sucked into these negative forces.
Dr John Prior has lived in Flores, eastern Indonesia, since 1973. He holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham in the field of inter-cultural theology. Professor at Ledalero Major Seminary, Maumere, Flores, he is also an associate lecturer at Yarra Theological Union, Box Hill, and a visiting scholar at the University of Melbourne.
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20 September 2007
Joint Centre for Malaysian Studies/ Centre of Southeast Asian Studies Seminar
Dr Dennis Walker
Honorary Research Fellow, Centre of Malaysian Studies, Monash Asia Institute
“Books, Booklets and Magazines read by Malay Muslims in Patani (Southern Thailand) since 1980: Power, Mega-States and Crises fanning Jihadism and Millenarianism”
This paper focuses mainly on Malay-language booklets and magazines read by Malay Muslim youth in Patani since 1980. Most systematize the wishes of those who aim to maintain the Malay language along with Arabic works and the Middle East as the fused bases for their identity in the face of deculturization by the modernist-Buddhist Thai state, which is seen by many Patanians as "colonialist". While many works, original or translated, focus on the history of the Middle East, both classical-Islamic and modern, the sovereign greatness of Arabs and Muslims in classical times, and their loss of sovereignty or agency to Americans and Israelis in modern times, they also implicitly address the increasing powerlessness of the Patanian Malays vis-a-vis successive Thai governments. The paper assesses how accurately these Patanian publications grasp the history of Arabs and Muslims (including Ottoman Turks) in the Middle East as indications of how far Patani-Middle East relations could be expanded in future.
The paper will also look at Islamic books published in the Thai language in the 21st century, mainly from Bangkok. These constitute an emerging Islamic literature shared between Patanian Malay Muslims and Muslims in other areas of Thailand whose mother tongue is Thai. There is a new Islamic literature in Thai that encourages Muslims to construct a neo-bourgeois prosperity within which they still practise Islam in its strict form. This is a literature that has as its main sources Egyptian Salafite and Sa'udi Wahhabi works which exhort newly urbanized Arabs to practise a slimmed-down version of Islam. Thus, some of the new Thai Islamic literature is not concerned with immediate conflict with the Thai government. But much of that new Thai-medium Islamic literature's discussion of claimed sufferings of Muslims in the Middle East at the hands of Israel does support armed struggle by the old, half-secular PLO and by newer Arab Islamist groups such as Hamas and Hizbullah.
ALL WELCOME
Enquiries: Dr Wendy A. Smith, Director, Centre for Malaysian Studies, Monash Asia Institute
Email: wendy.smith@buseco.monash.edu.au
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27 September 2007
Seminar not scheduled due to mid-semester break
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4 October 2007
Dr Yao Souchou
Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney
"Writing Singapore: Perils and lessons"
Singapore, a parliamentary democracy with a totalitarian streak, offers a significant challenge to anyone trying to get to the centre of things: the way it operates, its economic success and international appeal, its shoddy treatment of the opposition, and its aggressive 'talk back' to media criticism. The seminar is based on Dr Yao's experience of research and writing in the production of his latest book "Singapore: the State and the Culture of Excess" (Routledge 2007).
Dr Yao Souchou has a Bachelor of Economics and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Adelaide. He was formerly with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, then spent a decade on the academic staff of the Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney, where he is now Research Associate. Dr Yao has published widely on Southeast Asia and the Chinese diaspora generally, including his "Confucian capitalism: discourse, practice and the myth of Chinese enterprise" (RoutledgeCurzon 2001) and the edited volume "House of glass: culture, modernity, and the state in Southeast Asia" (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, c2001). Dr Yao's latest project is To the Chengdu Station, a traveling ethnography on the Silk Route from Kashgar to Chengdu, China. He may be contacted on email <schou@optusnet.com.au>
ALL WELCOME
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11 October 2007
Joint Centre for Malaysian Studies / Centre of Southeast Asian Studies Seminar
"The 2007 Malaysian budget: 'Buying' a general election?"
Speaker: Professor James Chin, Swinburne University of Technology (Malaysia Campus)
Many Malaysians are calling the recently announced budget an 'election budget'. The government slashed the corporate tax and announced multi-billion ringgit projects in the Northern Corridor Economic Region (NCER) and the Iskandar Economic Region (IER) which will guarantee money flowing into the economy ahead of a general election, which is due in the next 12 months. Taxes on tobacco and achohol (sin tax) widely expected to rise, was left untouched. Yet there are signs that huge public spending may not work. The speaker will give his views on the coming elections and assess the likely performance of the ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front) and the main opposition parties.
Prof. James Chin is Head, School of Business, Swinburne University of Technology (Malaysia Campus). He has published extensively on Malaysia, and his most recent publication is an edited volume, Reminiscences: Recollections of Sarawak ministrative Officers (Pelanduk Publications, 2007)
ALL WELCOME
Enquiries
Dr Wendy A. Smith, Director, Centre for Malaysian Studies, Monash Asia Institute
Email: wendy.smith@buseco.monash.edu.au
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18 October 2007
Dr Jemma Purdey
School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University
"Many voices, one life: Dealing with memory and 'telling' in the biography of
Herb Feith"
Herb Feith (1930-2001) was one of the first Australians to live and work in the newly independent Indonesia in the early 1950s. He is regarded in Australia and Indonesia as an almost iconic symbol of the relationship between the two nations. The respect and affection with which he was regarded by Indonesians whilst alive and still after his death, was due to the vast and deep knowledge he had of Indonesia but also his genuine passion for its people and their future. An understanding of his ability to build relationships across cultures, class and world experience is critical in telling his life.
A key part of research for the biography is the collection of an ‘oral history’ – testimonials and interviews with the subject’s friends, family and colleagues across several nations, particularly Australia and Indonesia. This paper investigates how these many voices, including my own, participating in the story-telling of a single life, can be brought together in biographical narrative. It will explore the complexities and difficulties associated with this process in a multi-national and multi-cultural setting. Questions include, do ideas of memory around ‘a life’ vary from one national or cultural context to another? This paper unpicks how the various ‘histories’, often conflicting, always personal, provided by interviewees fundamentally combine to ‘write’ this biography. As Robert Perks calls it, “history through composite autobiography” (An Oral History Reader, 1998). At the same time, in oral history for biography, the part of feeling and emotion is extremely important.
Dr Jemma Purdey was appointed Writer-in-Residence Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre of Southeast Asian Studies (Monash Asia Institute) 2005-07 to research and write a biography of Herb Feith. Her PhD from the University of Melbourne is published as "Anti-Chinese violence in Indonesia, 1996- 1999" (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006). Her research interests include human rights, violence and conflict resolution in Indonesia and the study of minorities. She has worked as a volunteer with education and women's rights NGOs in Mumbai. In 2006, she was awarded a Harold White Fellowship to conduct research in the archives at the National Library of Australia. Jemma has recently taken up an ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship that she was awarded for a related project dealing with ‘Ways of Knowing Indonesia: Scholarship and engagement in the Australian academy’
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Seminar Organiser
Dr Trudy Jacobsen
Post doctoral Researcher
School of Political and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts
Email: Trudy.Jacobsen@arts.monash.edu.au
ALL WELCOME
Download Full Programme for Semester 1, 2007
Download Full Programme for Semester 2, 2007
The CSEAS seminar series will recommence for 2008 at the start of 1st semester on Thursday, 6 March.
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