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 weekly 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.
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 2, 2008
17 July 2008 Professor Lenore Manderson, Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Arts, Monash University
'Karr’s curse: Panic, disease and strategies of control in Colonial Malaya'
In recent years there have been increasing reports of re-emergent infectious disease and new viral infections, precipitating considerable global nervousness. Although the political response to these infections has been complicated by fears of bioterrorism and associated racist rhetoric, the practical action has been familiar. Various personal behavioural and public health measures of surveillance and containment have been (re)introduced, sometimes with savage consequence on local populations and economies.
In this presentation, I contrast these trends with those of the 19th and 20th century, when moral panic informed state responses to epidemics of disease. Focusing on colonial Malaya, I illustrate how tactics of control and containment were implemented to sustain colonialism, commerce and industrialization. Although I use as my examples primarily on malaria and tuberculosis, I reflect also on other epidemics and endemic infections, and so highlight the consistencies over time of local and inter-government approaches to infectious disease, and the economic footings of these responses.
Lenore Manderson is Professor at Monash University, Australia in the School of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, and the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts. Previously, she was Professor of Women’s Health, the University of Melbourne (1999-2005), and from 1988-1998, Professor of Tropical Health, The University of Queensland.
She held an inaugural Australia Research Council Federation Fellowship to conduct research on chronic illness, disability, social relationships and well-being in Australia and Southeast Asia. She has published extensively: her books include Sickness and the State: Health and Illness in Colonial Malaya (1996), Global Health Policy, Local Realities (2000), Rethinking Wellbeing (2005) and Chronic Conditions, Fluid States (2009). She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and the World Academy of Art and Science, and in 2008, is Hillel Friedland Fellow and Visiting Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
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24 July 2008 Craig Thorburn, School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University
Tsunami recovery assistance in Aceh – a view from the village
The Aceh Community Assistance Research Project (ACARP) was a multi-donor supported qualitative social research project, aimed at identifying and better understanding the factors that support and constrain recovery and redevelopment in communities in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam in the wake of the Boxing Day earthquake and tsunamis. Field research was undertaken by a group of 27 Acehnese social researchers over a three-month period in late 2007, in 18 tsunami-affected villages in the districts of Aceh Barat, Aceh Jaya and Aceh Besar, led by a team of senior researchers from Banda Aceh, Jakarta, and Australia.
This paper presents a summary of the ACARP study findings, focussing mainly on village government and local capacity. It highlights the unrealistic expectations placed by government and donors on the office of Keucik (village head), and the more reasonable hopes of the communities themselves, along with decision-making and problem solving processes, issues of transparency and accountability, and women’s participation in village community affairs. The paper also briefly reviews livelihoods and economic development programs and housing and infrastructure assistance in the survey villages.
Craig Thorburn is a Senior Lecturer in Monash University’s School of Geography and Environmental Science and Co-ordinator of the Master in International Development and Environmental Analysis (M.IDEA) program. He has lived and worked in Indonesia for nearly 25 years, focussing on issues of common property resource management, environmental justice, agrarian reform, and local government capacity, and presently serves as adviser to the Program Monitoring and Support Group (PMSG) for the Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Reconstruction and Development in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam.
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31 July 2008 Virginie Andre, PhD candidate, Monash Asia Institute
Globalization: A new driving force in Southern Thailand
Recent developments in the conflict suggest that it is passing through a transformational stage which over time will witness a departure from the traditional patterns of violence characteristic of ethno-nationalist struggles in Southeast Asia in the post-colonial period. The failure in late 2001 of the Thai state to anticipate the resurgence of violence in the three southern provinces, and its parallel failure to develop a sustainable peace process, stems from two principle sources; its poor understanding of Southern Muslims as a distinctive people with their own sense of a separate identity and culture, and secondly a failure to grasp the capacity of external forces to re-energise and rejuvenate secessionist sentiment that is based on these distinctive patterns of culture and identity. In sum, from a traditional ethno-nationalist struggle the insurgency in Southern Thailand has morphed into a local Jihadist movement that is inspired by global forces but which is focused on local injustices. This seminar will be further exploring the ongoing transformation of the separatist insurgency in Southern Thailand such as the ideological shift and pattern of violence of the movement.
Virginie Andre is a PhD candidate and researcher with the Global Terrorism Research Centre at Monash University. Virginie's research is focusing on the framing of separatist terrorism in Southern Thailand. Related areas of research are security, disarmament, conflict resolution, ethno-nationalism, separatism, democracy and military, especially in Thailand and Southeast Asia. Virginie conducted fieldwork in Thailand in 2007 and 2008 and met with key actors who are shaping an understanding of the conflict in Southern Thailand. She has also worked with NGOs in Thailand on conflict resolution issues. Before coming to Monash University, she was project officer for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) in Brussels, and worked for the Asia-Europe Foundation in Singapore.
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7 August 2008 Minako Sakai, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales at ADFA campus
In search of a new identity: The rise of Islamism in regional Indonesia
After the introduction of decentralisation in Indonesia, local governments in strongly Islamic regions have implemented shariah-like regional by-laws. This paper will analyse why such movements are on the rise in provincial areas of Indonesia. The provincial localities of the recent rise of Islamism will pose a question because support for Islamism is traditionally strong among the urban middle class.
In this paper I will highlight that a ‘de-culturalisation’ process has taken place in the regional societies of Indonesia as represented by fragile social structure and the disappearance of iconic cultural symbols in the localities. De-culturalsation process is contributing to the rise of interest in Islamic symbols as new alternatives to customary cultural practices which had strongly co-existed with Islam.
In my conclusion, I will argue that this rise of Islamism in regional societies of Indonesia should be interpreted as a response to global, national, local and historical factors. Various Islamic groups are supporting their own brand of Islamic movements to promote their own agenda.
Minako Sakai is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales at ADFA campus.
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14 August 2008 Leontine Visser, Professor and Chair of Rural Development Studies, Wageningen University, The Netherlands
Transborder fisheries and the limits of coastal governance
Taking examples of transborder fisheries practices within Indonesia and of Indonesians fishing in the Australian Fishing Zone, the paper aims to extend the forestry-based concept of territorialization by Vandergeest and Peluso (1995) by applying it to themarine environment in the case of transborder access and appropriation of marine resources. Transborder resource appropriation is a historical practice that is presently triggering international political and policy concerns because of a competition and contestation of increased claims on resources as expressions of local identity and regional economic demands of decentralized government agencies and private entrepreneurs, on the one hand, and competing intra-state and transborder search for ‘the blue gold’ with the potential risk of conflict, on the other hand. In Southeast Asia growing regional wealth and desire for shrimp, shark fin and sea cucumber are occurring in disjuncture with fuzzy processes of decentralization and privatization.
The two case studies and the connectivity between ‘fishing in’ and ‘fishing out’ of Indonesia clearly indicate that the concept of transborder environmental access covers a wide range of individual strategic actions. The cases also provide the necessary data of people’s everyday practices to better understand the livelihood strategies of ‘traditional’ coastal fishers who are engaged in licit but illegal transborder resource appropriation.
Cast within the recently popular frame of ‘resilience’ studies these case studies also question the increasing domination of ‘systems thinking’ over ethnographic studies of everyday practice of coastal livelihoods and governance. What can social resilience tell us about the resilience of a marine system, about everyday politics in coastal livelihoods, and about coastal governance?
Leontine Visser holds a PhD in Anthropology from Leiden University, taught there and at the University of Amsterdam, and works since 2002 in Wageningen. Her research interests are mostly in the field of rural development, land entitlements and natural resources management. Since 2001 when she became the Head of the Maritime Studies centre MARE she is gradually moving toward coastal and marine resources governance (www.marecentre.nl ). Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia, remain the locus of various PhD research projects on coastal livelihoods, governance and competing claims to marine space in Kalimantan; on peace and conflict mediation in Semarang and Aceh, and on a comparison of Marine Park Area developments in eastern Indonesia. She also supervises PhD students in Nepal and Cote d’Ivoire on the effect of HIV/AIDS on food security and women’s position in changing rural environments.
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21 August 2008 David Walker, Professor, Australian Studies, Deakin University
Death on Ambon
In February 1942 my uncle, Laurence Douglas Walker, was executed by Japanese troops on the island of Ambon. The outcome was unclear to the family until 1946 when mass graves were exhumed and some bodies were identified, though not my uncle's body. I would like to use this episode to reflect on war, traumatic memory and the larger questions of engagement with Asia. The paper will draw upon research undertaken for Anxious Nation and the volume that will follow it, Great Neighbours, covering the period from World War Two to the 1970s.
David Walker is Professor of Australian Studies at Deakin University. He has written extensively on Australian representations of Asia from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. He is also currently writing a more personal account of family, memory and history.
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28 August 2008 Patrick Baker, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, Monash University
A natural history of disturbance in the dry forests of Southeast Asia
Seasonally dry forests in the tropics are among the most threatened ecosystems in the world. They are often found on relatively fertile soils and are easily converted to other land-uses through the tree-felling and the application of fire. In continental Southeast Asia seasonally dry forests also provide habitat for a remarkable diversity of plants and animals, making them critical elements in regional conservation planning. Developing management plans for the forests of continental Southeast Asia is complicated by the diversity of forest types, which occur in mosaic patterns across most landscapes, and the poor understanding of the factors that maintain these mosaics. We combine evidence from historical ecology, contemporary surveys of large forest study plots, and 15 years of field experiences to describe the influence of disturbances (eg, fire, wind) on the structure and composition of the seasonally dry forests of continental Southeast Asia.
Dr. Patrick Baker is a lecturer in plant ecology in the School of Biological Sciences, Monash University (Clayton). His primary interests are in understanding the dynamics of complex, mixed species forests and the role of climate and disturbance on structuring these forests. Over the past 20 years he has worked in Northwest Africa, South and Southeast Asia, North America and the Hawaiian Islands.
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4 September 2008 Matt Ericson, PhD candidate, Monash University Accident Research
Centre
Road safety in developing Asia
As visitors to Asia we’ve all noticed the crazy traffic: whole families on a motorbike, overloaded trucks and so on. In many Asian countries, road traffic injuries already kill more people than tuberculosis and malaria. With increasing economic development and improved road infrastructure, the problem is forecast to worsen. The seminar will present an overview of the road safety problem in developing Asia, with examples drawn from rural road safety in Cambodia and the Lao PDR.
Matt will present survey data on the effect of road traffic injury on middle-income peri-urban households. Using the Millennium Development Goals as a benchmark, he will show how road accidents affect each of the MDGs—including such ostensibly unrelated Goals as gender and the environment.
Matt will then present case studies from rural road safety in Cambodia and Laos. The first regards the use of pick-up trucks providing public transport services. Matt will then present new research data on the increasing risk posed by two-wheel tractors, which are the dual-mode agricultural implement/transport vehicles increasingly popular in rural areas.
The seminar will conclude with an overview of the road safety problem in developing Asia, the central stakeholders and funding organisations, and the policies and programs currently being prioritised.
Matt is the recipient of the Peter Vulcan Scholarship and additional funding from the Accident Research Foundation. His Asian Studies supervisor is Prof David Chandler (Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash Asia Institute).
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11 September 2008 Sara Niner, Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University
Change for the better? Handcraft development in Timor-Leste
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18 September 2008 Lia Kent, PhD candidate, School of Political Science, Criminology and Sociology, University of Melbourne.
Transitional justice in East Timor: exploring local expectations and effects
Transitional justice is increasingly promoted by the United Nations (UN) and a range of international organisations as an essential component of the ‘tool kit’ for successful post conflict recovery. There are growing expectations that transitional justice mechanisms will satisfy survivors’ demands for justice and facilitate ambitious goals such as societal reconciliation and the transition to a democratic future.
Two transitional justice mechanisms were established during the UN administration of East Timor - a Serious Crimes Investigations and Prosecutions process and a Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR). Drawing on recent field research in East Timor, this presentation critically explores survivors’ expectations of transitional justice and the effects of these processes in their day-to-day lives. I suggest that while survivors endorse the concepts of national reconciliation, telling the nation’s story, and prosecutions of serious crimes, they express disappointment that transitional justice has not led to ‘results’ in their everyday lives, including symbolic and material recognition from the state. This widespread frustration - exacerbated by the national leadership’s current nation building priorities - raises questions about the purported benefits of transitional justice for survivors and East Timorese society more broadly. Nonetheless, I suggest that the CAVR, if not the Serious Crimes process, has had a number of indirect and unexpected effects; in particular, by encouraging the development of local memory projects, it has facilitated the creation a new political space for some victims to exercise agency and voice their demands for recognition and redress to the state.
Lia’s PhD thesis explores the tensions and possibilities arising from the interaction of internationally-sponsored transitional justice processes with national and local politics in East Timor. In addition to her PhD research, Lia has also worked in East Timor in a number of capacities, including as Policy Analyst for Oxfam International, Human Rights Officer with the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), and as a consultant for numerous national and international organizations.
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25 September 2008 Stuart Robson, Honorary Research Associate, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University
‘Arjunawiwaha, The Marriage of Arjuna’, by Mpu Kanwa
This Old Javanese poem (kakawin) is the second oldest specimen of its kind, dating from about A.D. 1030. It has been valued for its philosophical passages, but at the same time contains some remarkable erotic descriptions. It is a challenging task to translate it into acceptable English, and to interpret its significance within the historical and cultural setting of early Java, not to mention tracing its literary connections, including Sanskrit sources. The seminar will explore a number of these facets.
Stuart Robson was Associate Professor of Indonesian at Monash University 1991-2001, and is now in active retirement. He has been exploring Old Javanese literature for more than 40 years, and has a number of publications to his name in this field.
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Mid-semester break
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(A Joint Seminar with the Centre for Malaysian Studies)
9 October 2008 Kerstin Steiner, Lecturer in the Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Business Law and Taxation (BLT), Monash University
Human rights protection at the crossroad? International law, religious laws and national laws: Jurisdictional division and freedom of religion in Malaysia
Malaysia has been trying to absorb Islam within a framework of a modern ‘secular’ state forging an uneasy compromise between secular laws and religious laws. One area where the tensions between the different legal systems become apparent are cases regarding freedom of religion. In this area expectations arising out of the international human rights framework, national/ constitutional protection of rights and religious laws have the potential to collide. Particular attention will be given to the legal context in which freedom of religion is framed focusing in particular on the relationship between the two different legal court systems, state and religious, that are dealing with cases of freedom of religion. There appears to be a strong tendency of the secular courts to confer cases of Muslim apostasy to the religious courts. However, if a Muslim files such a case at a Syariah high court it appears unclear as to whether the court will accept jurisdiction on this matter and whether such a conversion will be granted with or without sanctions. The presentation will discuss three recent cases of the secular courts and compare these cases to decisions by religious courts, which have adjudicated quite differently in matters of apostasy in Malaysia.
Kerstin Steiner recently commenced her new position as Lecturer in the Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Business Law and Taxation (BLT), at Monash University. Prior to joining BLT, Kerstin was a staff member of the Asian Law Centre from 2001 to 2008 working on a variety of projects with different members of the Centre. She worked with Professor Tim Lindsey on his ARC-funded Discovery Project ‘Islamic Law in Contemporary Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei’. She is currently completing a two volume book series as a result of this research that is co-authored with Professor Tim Lindsey. Kerstin's research interests include the study of Southeast Asian legal systems, Islamic law in Southeast Asia, comparative law and international law.
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16 October 2008 Paul Grundy, Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Monash University and Iftekhar Ahmed, University of Melbourne
Building disaster resilience into development
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Seminar 1, 2008
28 Feb 2008 Launch: A special double Seminar, 9.30am – 12.30pm
9.30 am Wim van Zanten, Professor of Ethnomusicology, Leiden University
Baduy music and life 1976-2003: Temptations for ascetics in West Java, Indonesia (Film in progress)
This is a documentary film intended to supply audiovisual information to a book about the music of a minority group of about 8000 people. The film is rather descriptive, but some aspects of the change in this community during last 30 year will be mentioned. The main part of the film will be about 50-60 minutes and special topics will be available on the DVD as well.
The Baduy form an ethnic group, who live in an area of about 51 square kilometres located some 100 km southwest of Jakarta, West Java. They have been living in Kanékés village for at least several hundred years, and there are no other groups except the Baduy living in Kanékés. The Baduy speak a Sundanese dialect and are in this respect not very different from the other Sundanese people. However, their social organization and religion are different from those of the surrounding Islamic Sundanese. Baduy life is regulated by many duties and prohibitions, as handed down by former generations. For instance, they are not allowed to go to school, to have irrigated rice fields, buffalo or fishponds, to grow cloves or tea, nor to have electricity, radio or television.
Foreign visitors and researchers are only allowed to visit and spend the night in the villages of the ‘Outer Baduy’, and usually for only a few days. I started to make audio and film recordings of Baduy life and music during short trips in June and July 1976 and in 1979. In October-November 1992 and March-April 2003 I was allowed to stay for about 2-3 weeks at a stretch in Baduy territory. As it is difficult to get permission to stay in Kanékés for longer periods, it has also been difficult to be present at rituals. However, the collected material contains an audio recording of the very important ritual to ‘awake’ the goddess of rice, and to announce her marriage to the earth in the following morning. Baduy life and music is very much organised according to the agricultural year.
In this documentary film I shall present the most important materials and pay some attention to processes of change in Baduy life and music from 1976 to 2003. It is becoming increasingly difficult to carry out the Baduy duty to live in a ritually pure state for the well being of the world. This is caused by the increase of their number and the interaction with the modernising outside world, such as large numbers of tourists in the weekends, information and entertainment by radio, and temptations by money.
Wim van Zanten was staff member at the Department of Cutural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University, from 1971-2007 and did ethnomusicological fieldwork in Malawi (1969-1971) and Indonesia (1976-present). Most of his publications are based on this fieldwork and some are about methodological issues in anthropology and ethnomusicology, including statistics for the social sciences. Filming for documentary purposes has been part of his fieldwork since 1976 and he published two films about Minangkabau performing arts in West Sumatra. Presently he is preparing a book about the music of the Baduy minority group in West Java and also a second book on Tembang Sunda Cianjuran music from West Java, both accompanied by film and audio CDs. Wim van Zanten is one of the Vice Presidents of the International Council for Traditional Music. In 2002 he edited the Glossary Intangible Cultural Heritage/ Glossaire patrimoine culturel immatériel for UNESCO and he has been involved in work concerning the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage since then.
11:00 am Jothi Rajah, PhD candidate, Asian Law Centre, Melbourne University
Constantly colonised: Hindu legal identities in the modern nation state of Singapore
This paper asks whether the official legal system of Singapore’s post-colonial nation-state, constructed as modern and politically plural, accommodates or constrains minority religious legal identities. My focus is on ‘Hindu’ legal identities. Has the avowedly secular post-colonial Singapore State constructed ‘law’ as an instrument of containment for minority religious identities so as to reify the discourse of ‘nation’ and the construction of national identity? Put differently, has the ‘religion’ of minority citizens been colonised by the State, via ‘law’, and in this way, appropriated to the construction of national identity? This question is considered in relation to state legal responses to ‘religion’ as a social force with political potential. With reference to Singapore, legislative instruments and state policy documents demonstrate that the post-colonial nation-state has regarded ‘religion’ as potentially subversive of the state. This paper contextualises the issue of Hindu legal identities within the broader question of whether the nation-state, building on the legal-administrative apparatus inherited from the colonial state, has sought to contain ‘religion’ while delivering, or appearing to deliver, the nationalist promise of identity and rights restored.
Jothi Rajah is a PhD candidate at the Asian Law Centre of the Law School, The University of Melbourne. She is a graduate of the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, where she also graduated with Honours in English. Jothie has taught with the Legal Writing and Research Skills Program of the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore, where she has also lectured on Hindu Legal Traditions. She has also taught with the English departments of the National University of Singapore, the Institute of Education and Open University, Singapore. Jothie has been a member of the consultancy team working on the official translations of Lao laws, a United Nations Development Project. At the Law School of the University of Melbourne, Jothie has been a sessional lecturer with the undergraduate program, and guest lectured in the postgraduate program.
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6 Mar 2008 Sylvia Yazid, PhD candidate, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University
Activism of Indonesian local NGOs on the issue of women migrant workers: Building national, regional and international networks
Changes in the Indonesian political context have allowed more space for NGO activism. However, there are some aspects which have not changed significantly, such as the attitudes of the bureaucracy towards NGOs, and weaknesses in the implementation of laws and regulations concerning women migrant workers. As a response, Indonesian NGOs have been making manoeuvres which include choosing partners and networks which are more likely to support their activism. This paper will look into the changes in Indonesian labour migration system and how two Indonesian NGOs, Solidaritas Perempuan and Migrant CARE have responded to these changes. Solidaritas Perempuan is a women's NGO and was one of the first NGOs to deal with the issue of women migrant workers. Migrant CARE is a migrant worker NGO established after reformasi in 1998, at about the same time when the Indonesian government finally passed a law on the placement and protection of migrant workers. Although both NGOs are basically fighting for similar causes, they have different strategies and approaches in achieving their goals, and the paper will explore the reasons for these differences.
Sylvia Yazid is a PhD candidate at the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, Monash University. Her research is on the Roles of Indonesian NGOs in Promoting the Rights of Indonesian Women Migrant Workers.
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13 Mar 2008 Kate McGregor, Lecturer, School of Historical Studies, Melbourne University
Schapelle Corby’s My Story and Responses to Her Trial in Australia and Indonesia
In 2006 Schapelle Corby, an Australian woman convicted of drug-smuggling in Indonesia, published a book about her experiences which sold more than 17,000 copies in eight days. She called it My Story, and so distinguished it from all the other versions of her story, accounts that were not really hers. As the phenomenal sales showed, the Corby case had caught the interest of the Australian public, and it was endlessly debated and interpreted in the popular media, by social commentators, and then by academic analysts. Corby’s own story, as she perceived it, and the public perception of it differed, but they did not run in parallel. Instead they intersected, interfering with each other, so that each became a part of the other. The story written by (or for) Schapelle Corby served quite different purposes from the stories about Schapelle Corby that were told in the courtrooms and media. In her protestations of innocence Corby specifically courted an Australian audience, but she did not cast herself in the simple terms of a white Australian woman up against all Indonesians.
Corby’s book provides an opportunity to reflect on Australian attitudes to Indonesia and how political and ideological conflicts played out in this trial and in commentary on the trial. Australian commentary on the Corby case reflected arguments about national identity and law, but responses were not bound by national identity alone. Some Australian responses fitted the mould of legal orientalism and hinted at attitudes of assumed sovereignty in relation to the treatment of Australian tourists in Bali, but others suggested tougher penalties for drug trafficking were justified. Corby and other Australians also made comparisons between her sentence and that of the Bali bombers, suggesting she was punished too harshly and thus connecting this case to wider debates about punishment and crime.
Corby’s trial gained far less attention in Indonesia, yet it seems responses of outrage from some Australians may have adversely affected her sentence. For anti-drug lobby groups such as (Gerakan Nasional Anti Narkotika- Indonesia, National Anti -Narcotics Movement), Corby was a national threat. For other Indonesians, Australian commentary on the trial was more threatening. The Corby case provides an interesting case study of how ideas of ‘culture’ are used by diverse interest groups in cross-cultural criminal trials. It allows us to test the usefulness of overarching explanations such as legal orientalism or a clash of cultures as ways of explaining responses to these trials and to specifically examine how one defendant draws on ideas of culture to present her account.
Kate McGregor is a lecturer in the School of Historical Studies at Melbourne University. Her research interests include Indonesian historiography, memories of violence, the Indonesian military, Islam and identity in Indonesia and more recently an examination of ‘cross-cultural’ responses to high profile criminal trials. She teaches in the areas of Southeast Asian history and Asian thematic history. Kate is currently working on a project entitled Islam and the Politics of Memory in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia. She recently commenced work on a collaborative project entitled ‘Enemy Law: Cross-Cultural Responses to the Prosecutions of High Profile Foreign Criminals’. She is author of History in Uniform: Military Ideology and the Construction of Indonesia’s Past, Singapore University Press, University of Hawaii Press and KITLV and the Asian Studies Association of Australia, Singapore, 2007.
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20 Mar 2008 Elisabeth Hames-Brookes, PhD Candidate, Monash Asia Institute
Cultural Circles: Dancing through a history of Tanah Toraja, South Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Although there was acknowledgement among both the Dutch colonial service and among some in mission circles that Torajan culture had changed due to colonial rule along with Christian and Islamic influence and that there were slight cultural and linguistic differences between regions in the Sa’dan highlands of Sulawesi, Indonesia, the word ‘pagan’ conjured a static image of traditional culture from time immemorial until the introduction of Christianity and Dutch cultural influence. The Torajan people have demonstrated a willingness to change their culture considerably in the 20th and early 21st centuries to survive whilst determinedly maintaining elements considered of high importance, and it is seems feasible that they had similarly done this in earlier times.
This paper will give an outline of my thesis as a work-in-progress. The thesis will not attempt to detail all changes that have occurred over the history of the Sa’dan Toraja. Terance Bigalke’s Tana Toraja: A Social History of an Indonesian People 2005 details their history from around 1860 until the post 1965 period, dealing with a variety of sources, including colonial records. A number of topics will be examined from the perspective of cultural circles in a state of change, including endeavouring to identify what might be considered ‘pre-European contact’ culture, European influence including the possibility of 16th or 17th century Spanish and, or Portuguese presence and Dutch colonial influence, the experience of living in a Dutch mission household and finally ritual dance circles; spheres of influence in the society Claire Holt of the Les Archives Internationales de la Danse, Paris, visited on her tour of southern Sulawesi in 1938 and which until this day continue to find expression in some form.
‘Cultural circles’ is about understanding the interconnection of culturally distinct groups who, as a consequence, influenced each other and changed over the course of time.
Under the auspices of CSEAS, in 1985-6 Ms. Hames-Brooks conducted preliminary field work in Bali, Java, Sumatra & Sulawesi, Indonesia, and in 1987 research in Tana Toraja, Sulawesi, Indonesia. She worked as a tutor the Monash Orientation Scheme for Aborigines, Monash University (1985-6), Southeast Asian & Indian Politics, RMIT, (1990) and lectured in Southeast Asian Politics and History at the University of Victoria (1990-91). As an Honorary Fellow of the Monash Asia Institute since 2002, Elisabeth Hames-Brooks has enjoyed being a regular participant in Centre of Southeast Asian Studies seminars.
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27 Mar 2008 Jean Gelman Taylor, Associate Professor, School of History and Philosophy, University of New South Wales
Cleanliness and the Colony: Histories from the Indies Photographic Archive
Followed by launch of Joost Coté’s Realizing the Dream of Kartini: Her sister’s letters from colonial Java, (Ohio RIS Southeast Asia Series), 2008.
Coté presents a unique collection of documents reflecting the lives, attitudes and politics of four Javanese women in the early twentieth century. The letters of Raden Ajeng Kartini, Indonesia’s first feminist, have been a vital testament to her vision since the first selection of them was published in 1911, seven years after Kartini’s death. Now Joost Coté’s translation of her sisters’ letters reveals for the first time the contributions of Roekmini, Kardinah, Kartinah and Soematri in defining and carrying out Kartini’s ideals. With this collection, Coté aims to situate Kartini’s sisters within the more famous Kartini narrative – and indirectly to situate Kartini herself within a broader narrative.
The letters reveal the emotional lives of these modern women and their concerns for the welfare of their husbands and the success of their children in rapidly changing times. While by no means radical nationalists, and not yet extending their horizons to the possibility of an Indonesian nation, these members of a new middle class nevertheless confidently express their belief in their own national identity.
William H. Frederick, author of ‘Visions and Heat: The making of the Indonesian Revolution’: “Joost Coté presents what is probably the last of the Kartini-related letters extat a precocious and unique resource. The translations are first class and the editor probably knows more about Kartini and her family than anyone else in the world.”
Joost Coté teaches Southeast Asian history at Deakin University and has been attached to Monash Asia Institute as Honorary Research Associate since 2006. He researches and publishes on colonial cultures, Dutch colonial policy and practice, and the emergence of Indonesian modernity. He has recently published, Recalling the Indies: Colonial Memory & Postcolonial Identity (Aksant, Amsterdam 2005) (co-edited with Loes Westerbeek), and On Feminism and Nationalism: Kartini's letters to Stella Zeehandelaar (2nd ed. MAI, Monash University, 2005), both volumes translated in Indonesian. A CSEAS Working Paper, No 128 (Colonising Poso: The diary of controleur Emile Gobée) appeared in December 2007. Currently he is working on a joint project on the life and work of the Dutch colonial architect and town planner in Indonesia, Thomas Karsten (1885 - 1945), and a history of Poso.
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3 Apr 2008 Dr Julian Millie, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University
Religious authority, culture and state power: A comparison of EZ Muttaqien and AF Ghazali
Julian Millie spent the second half of 2007 researching Islamic oratory in Bandung, West Java. A major goal of his research is to gain an understanding of the meanings oratory invokes for the Muslims of West Java, and of the interests involved in it.
In this presentation, which is really a report of work in progress, he will approach these issues by comparing two prominent figures on the Bandung oratory circuit, namely Dr KHEZ Muttaqien (died 1987) and KH AF Ghazali (died 2001).
The career of one of these figures (Muttaqien) illustrates how the interests of the state are asserted through preaching, and how this assertion creates an expansive written legacy. Ghazali, by contrast, was a preacher with an audience located in Sundanese village society, whose preaching implemented communication strategies heavily rooted in Sundanese culture. This enormously popular preacher left no traces in writing, not even a proper obituary. The contrasts between the roles of these figures in Sundanese society causes to rise a number of questions concerning the role of state power in the religious sphere and the social distinctions dividing segments of Sundanese Islamic society.
The presentation will be enriched by sound recordings of sermons by AF Ghazali.
Julian Millie is an ARC postdoctoral fellow working in the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, Monash University.
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10 Apr 2008 Kerstin Steiner, Research Fellow, Asia Law Centre, Melbourne University
(A joint seminar with the Centre for Malaysian Studies)
Human Rights Protection at the Crossroad? International Law, Religious Laws and National Laws: Jurisdictional Division and Freedom of Religion in Malaysia
Malaysia has been trying to absorb Islam within a framework of a modern ‘secular’ state forging an uneasy compromise between secular laws and religious laws. One area where the tensions between the different legal systems become apparent are cases regarding freedom of religion. In this area expectations arising out of the international human rights framework, national/ constitutional protection of rights and religious laws have the potential to collide. Particular attention will be given to the legal context in which freedom of religion is framed focusing in particular on the relationship between the two different legal court systems, state and religious, that are dealing with cases of freedom of religion. There appears to be a strong tendency of the secular courts to confer cases of Muslim apostasy to the religious courts. However, if a Muslim files such a case at a Syariah high court it appears unclear as to whether the court will accept jurisdiction on this matter and whether such a conversion will be granted with or without sanctions. The presentation will discuss three recent cases of the secular courts and compare these cases to decisions by religious courts, which have adjudicated quite differently in matters of apostasy in Malaysia.
Kerstin Steiner holds an appointment as Research Fellow at the Asian Law Centre and the Centre for Islamic Law and Society (formerly CSCI) both centres with The University of Melbourne and is a lecturer with the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies. Kerstin holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Bielefeld, Germany and a Master of Laws from the University of Melbourne, focusing on Asian legal studies and comparative law. She completed her doctoral studies in 2006. Her thesis examined the ‘Asian Values’ discourses with a particular focus on how this discourse has been misconstrued as a monolithic, static and regional debate while it is in fact multi-faceted, evolving and not regionally confined. She has been teaching at undergraduate and graduate level in her area of research, in particular in the area of Islam and human rights and has extensively presented her research at conferences and seminars nationally and internationally. She is currently completing a two volume book series on Islam and Law in Singapore and Islam and Law in Malaysia and Brunei, co-authored with Professor Tim Lindsey.
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17 Apr 2008 Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen, ARC Research Fellow, Centre for Australian Studies, Melbourne University
Memory and silence in the Vietnamese diaspora: The narratives of two sisters
In one of the largest and most visible diasporas of the late twentieth century, approximately two million Vietnamese left their homeland after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and made new lives for themselves overseas. This paper examines the experiences of two sisters who escaped from Vietnam in 1978 and lost their only brother at sea during the journey. A third sister also escaped but has since died of cancer. The narratives of the two surviving sisters reveal distinct interpretations of past traumas, as well as the silences in their lives. Their retellings crisscross and shape each other to paint a multifaceted portrait of sibling relationships, the experience of exodus, the pain of loss, and the challenges of moving on.
A graduate of Melbourne and Oxford Universities, Nathalie Nguyen holds an ARC Australian Research Fellowship at the Australian Centre, the University of Melbourne. She is the author of Voyage of Hope: Vietnamese Australian Women’s Narratives (2005), shortlisted for the 2007 NSW Premier’s Literary Award, and Vietnamese Voices: Gender and Culture in the Vietnamese Francophone Novel (2003).
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24 Apr 2008 Mark Donohue, Professorial Fellow, Linguistics, Monash University
& Tim Denham, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University
Reimagining Austronesia
Received wisdom portrays the dispersal of Austronesian cultures as a grand narrative comprising ancient migrations south from Taiwan to Indo-Malaysia and thence east to Melanesia, Micronesia and across Polynesia, including the colonisation of such disparate places as Madagascar, Hawai`i, Easter Island and New Zealand within the last 1000 years. A thorough re-examination of this regional prehistory disentangles multi-disciplinary lines of evidence that have been uncritically woven together to create an illusion of the ‘Great Austronesian migration’. Using insights from ongoing research into Melanesian cultures, we present an alternative history for these vast regions.
Mark Donohue has been researching language and language history in eastern Indonesia and Papua New Guinea for the last 15 years, producing several books relevant to the area, and numerous speculations about the implications of linguistic evidence for the ancient culture histories of the Southeast Asia/Sahul area.
Tim Denham focuses on understanding how agricultural practices may have arisen from pre-existing forms of plant exploitation, most likely during the early-to-mid Holocene, on the island of New Guinea. He has considerable experience as an archaeological consultant and has participated on projects in American Samoa, Australia, CNMI, England, Palau, Hawai`i and the Marshall Islands.
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1 May 2008 Hendrarto Darudoyo, PhD Candidate, Latrobe University
Press ownership, commercial interest, and content diversity: Political economy of press conglomerates in post-Suharto Indonesia
Media ownership diversity becomes a challenging concept after the demise of the 32-year Suharto regime, although there have been dramatic changes in the ownership of the national press industry following the 1999 press (ownership) deregulation. Little is known about how the deregulation policy did contribute to concentration of the country’s press ownership and how the sector has inclined even greater to conglomeration. This study looks into the industrial aspects of the country’s press, analyzing it from production perspective. Engaging with the theory of critical political economy, it investigates the structures of ownership within the press industry in post-Suharto Indonesia and it is aimed to document the concentrated ownership of major press groups as well. It attempts to demonstrate the relation between press ownership, commercial interest, and content diversity, investigating the impact of the first two on the latter. The current study examines further what liberal theorists believe that there can be an effective separation between ownership and control of editorial decisions. It argues that the common business practice among the country’s press conglomerates contradicts this assumption. Previous studies suggest that news organizations that are parts of general conglomerates were likely to be compromised by their affiliated non-media interests. Survey questionnaires completed by Indonesian journalists working for press enterprises in the Indonesian capital and four major cities (Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Solo, and Surabaya) will assist in providing an in-depth understanding of how different press entities take up different positions on the editorial policy continuum as well as how powers may be exercised by those who own the news organizations. The confidential surveys reveal that conflict of business interest is very likely to occur in a news organization that is part of conglomerate.
Hendrarto Darudoyo studied media and communication at Monash University before currently doing his PhD in media studies at La Trobe University. His main research interests include media and democracy, press ownership and control, political economy of the mass media, and media conglomerates in post-Suharto Indonesia. He has been in Indonesia’s media and communication industries for 17 years, mostly working in the country’s print media sector as business journalist. He is a lecturer in media and communications, including broadcasting and journalism, at several private universities in Jakarta. While studying at La Trobe, he also works as a casual radio broadcaster at the ABC’s Radio Australia.
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8 May 2008 Lynne Milgram, Professor, Ontario College of Art and Design
Reconfiguring Urban Livelihoods: Women and Street Vending in the Northern Philippines
In the Philippines, since the 1980s the liberalization of the country’ economy has meant increasing rural to urban migration and dramatic growth informal sector trade. Women, in particular, building on their historical roles as regional traders, have made Philippine city streets their new business venues for itinerant, but viable work selling different goods. Despite municipal officials’ recent efforts to sharply curtail this growing street trade, women have organized themselves into vendor associations to lobby local governments for change. That many of their livelihood enterprises occur within civic spaces not customarily used for regular commerce further challenges these activities’ very existence. This paper focuses on the mushrooming street trade in Baguio City, northern Luzon’s administrative and industrialized center, to argue that female street vendors, both new migrants and longer-term traders, sustain their livelihoods by engaging in forms of activism that unsettle essentialist categories of work, class and space. To protest the 2005 Baguio City by-laws banning trade in some central city districts and relocating it in others, vendor associations promoted letter-writing campaigns, lobbied police and gained NGO assistance. Many of these women may appear to be unlikely candidates for labor organizing as few have the financial resources, information or training they need to protect their rights. Yet, by assuming innovative leadership positions, they have won concessions on selected laws and have captured urban spaces in which to work. Philippine women vendors, I argue, thus negotiate the constraints they face by engaging a ‘place-based politics’ that enables them, in part, to mobilize whatever resources are at their disposal consolidating their positions despite the latter’s potential to shift.
Lynne Milgram is a cultural anthropologist whose research explores the commercialization of crafts, the operation of craft cooperative, and issues in gender and development in the Philippines. She teaches issues-based courses on different aspects of material and public culture, material art and design and arts of Asia and Oceania at Ontario College of Art and Design. Amongst her recent publications is Artisans and Cooperatives: Developing Alternative Trade for the Global Economy, eds., Kimberly M. Grimes and B. Lynne Milgram. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2000.
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15 May 2008 Judith Shaw, Senior Research Fellow, Monash Asia Institute
Leveraging remittances with microfinance: A cross-country study of Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka
In 2005, 190 million people lived outside their country of birth, and 82 per cent of them come from developing countries. At a time when other financial flows from developed to developing countries are in stagnation or decline, money sent home by migrant workers has become a key resource for their families and their national economies. There is growing international policy interest in the potential of migrant remittances to support pro-poor development, and several recent studies by agencies such as the World Bank consider policies and processes for harnessing their developmental impacts.
This paper outlines the findings of a comparative study of labour migration and remittances in three Asian countries: Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Migrant households, both within and between countries, are highly diverse with respect to initial socioeconomic status, the migrant experience overseas, remitting behaviour, the usage of remittances by recipients, the relative importance of remittances in the household economy, and ultimately, the economic outcomes of migration. We argue that this social and economic heterogeneity must be taken into account in designing policy initiatives.
Dr Judith Shaw joined the MAI in 2007 from RMIT University's international development program. Her main research interest is in labour markets and livelihoods in developing countries. Within this broad field, she has published on microfinance, microenterprise development, labour migration and migrant remittances, and working conditions in Sri Lanka's garment manufacturing sector. Judith is a chief investigator on two projects supported by grants from the Australian Research Council (ARC): ‘Leveraging remittances with microfinance: a cross-country study’; ‘Rebuilding sustainable communities: assessing post-tsunami resettlement projects in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India’. Judith has conducted consultancies and collaborative research projects on international development issues with several Australian and international agencies including AusAID, the World Bank, the ANZ Bank, the Sri Lanka Export Development Board, the Foundation for Development Cooperation, Australian Volunteers International and the Sri Lanka Free Trade Zone Workers Union.
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22 May 2008 Howard Manns, PhD candidate, Linguistics, Monash University
"Jakarta slang is cool, but I’m Javanese”: Spoken Indonesian in modern Java
There has been much discussion recently about the effect that Jakarta Indonesian, especially via bahasa gaul ‘the social language’ of young people, is having on the Indonesian language. This talk proposes that among young Javanese speakers of Indonesian, this influence is overstated. First, it will show that some of this perceived influence can be attributed to synchronically occurring linguistic variables in Jakarta Indonesian and Javanese-influenced Indonesian. Second, it will show that although young Javanese do use bahasa gaul to index an extra-local modernity and youthfulness, use of this trendy Indonesian variety is superseded by a desire to adhere to local norms. Finally, this talk will conclude with a discussion of a few modern Indonesian archetypes, including a rich, trendy male, an upwardly mobile female with a strong village accent and a devout Muslim female, and how their Indonesian use may come to affect the future of the language.
Howard Manns is a PhD candidate in the linguistics department at Monash University. His research interests include language and identity, social network analysis, audience design for mass media language and computer-mediated communication. Before coming to Monash, he worked as a linguist in the Middle East, taught English in Indonesia and spent considerable time travelling and studying languages in Africa, Asia and Central and South America.
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29 May 2008 Michael Connors, Lecturer, and Politics and International Relations Program, Latrobe University
Is standing before a picture of the Thai King in line with the Islamic faith?
This presentation offers some observations on the politics of official culture promotion as it plays out in the Muslim South of Thailand. Thai culture policy has developed in unexpected ways in recent years. Acceptance of diversity is now orthodoxy in terms of 'official position'. How does this position play out in the Muslim South of Thailand, where the limits of 'diversity' come into relief?
Michael Connors teaches politics at Latrobe University. His research interests include Thai Politics, democractisation and International Studies with a particular focus on the Asia Pacific. He currently has an ARC Discovery Grant to research international agencies, national identity, development and NGOs in Thailand and will soon publish some of his findings from these project in a monograph titled 'Politics, Culture and Development in Contemporary Thailand'. He is the co-author of 'The New Global Politics of the Asia Pacific', Routledge: London, 2004 and 'Democracy and National Identity in Thailand', Routledge, London and New York, 2003.
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Brief Semester 1 Schedule in Word format
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Seminar Organiser
Dr Jemma Purdey
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University
Email: Jemma.Purdey@adm.monash.edu.au
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