Mega- Urbanization in Asia - International Institute for Asian ...

56
July 2003 | the IIAS newsletter is published by the IIAS and is available free of charge 31 IIAS | P.O. Box 9515 | 2300 RA Leiden | The Netherlands | T +31-71-527 2227 | F +31-71-527 4162 | [email protected] | www.iias.nl 1 2 3 4 5 6 By Sanjaasuren Oyun B efore the 1990s poverty as such was not a problem in Mongolia. With the advent of transition and the sudden collapse of economic structures, the economy contracted and unemployment soared. Surveys undertaken over the last seven years indicate that one in three Mongolians live below the poverty line, earning less than a dollar a day. During the period 1995-2002, the Gini coefficient of inequality increased from 0.31 to 0.37.* Despite the recent return of moderate eco- nomic growth, the number of those living in poverty has not decreased. Mongolia did not recover its 1989 pre-transition GDP of just over USD 1 billion until 2000. Like many post-commu- nist countries, Mongolia began the 1990s with negative growth and extreme inflation (up to 350 per cent). The mid- 1990s witnessed economic stabilization and inflation around 10 per cent; growth and single-digit inflation had to await the end of the decade. Unfortunately, Mongolia is still struggling to achieve growth rates necessary for poverty reduction and job creation. According to a 1999 World Bank study of poor developing countries, poverty reduction requires economic growth rates at least twice the rate of population growth. That is for countries with good governance. Without good gover- nance, when the distribution of wealth is unequal and cor- ruption thrives, economic growth needs to be at least three times the rate of population increase. Its population currently growing at 1.5 per cent and good governance lacking, Mon- golia needs a minimum annual growth rate of 4-5 per cent in order to raise general living standards. Yet, over the last several years, Mongolia’s growth has been insufficient, aver- aging 1-3 per cent. Foreigners are easily impressed by the many jeeps in the streets of Ulaanbaatar and the expensive houses that are being built in the capital’s suburbs. In a country with a per capita GDP of USD 450, however, these are not signs of a healthy but of a sick economy. So what went wrong? Mon- golia has been, in the words of The Economist, ‘the star pupil of Western liberal economics’, ‘the darling of ultraliberals in the West’. Meticulously following the instructions of inter- national financial institutions, the country liberalized its cur- rency, trade and economy, privatized most of its state assets, and brought down inflation. Below are some examples of how these reforms were undertaken. Tight monetary policies dictated by the IMF and implemented by the Central Bank of Mongolia aimed to reduce inflation; bank rates, however, were kept too high for local businesses to be profitable. Foreign aid (ODA) brought benefits to tens of thousands of Mongolians, but the overall amount is reaching dangerous levels. Over the past twelve years, Mongolia received ODA aver- aging 20 per cent of GDP. In addition the old (commu- nist-era) debt to Russia has not yet been negotiated or Following the collapse of communism, Mongolia embarked upon an ambitious path of political and economic reform. The ensuing transition brought new opportunities to the country and its people: an end to international isolation, the introduction of political freedoms and a nascent private sector after many decades of centralized planning. Economic liberalization, however, has yet to deliver benefits to the Mongolian majority. At the beginning of the 1990s, many believed that the market economy would bring unprecedented prosperity within a decade. Instead, it brought unprecedented poverty. In many respects, life for most people is more precarious today than during the communist era. continued on page 3 > page 5-15 From the Year of the White Horse to the Year of the Black Horse Mongolia After Twelve Years of Transition 7 < Theme: Mega- Urbanization in Asia Website: www.IIAS.nl Forum > Central Asia PhotoDisc > In this edition Surely a reason for laughter in Indonesian politics, Arndt Graf explains Gus Dur’s [1] humour in terms of political strategy. p.16 Centred on a Muslim prostitute coming from Muzzafarpur to Mumbai, Fareeda Mehta’s film Kali Salwaar is an almost abstract odyssey in to migration, marginalization, and displacement [2]. p.19 Whereas early-mod- ern Indian medical history is substantially defined by Sanskrit systems of thought [3], Hormuz Ebrahimnejad shows European medical tra- ditions to be more readily incorporated in nineteenth century Iran. p.20-21 Digital Himalaya: Unlike many early anthropologists, botanical collectors roamed across Nepal. Adam Stainton’s travel accounts provide anthropological information of a wide regional scope [4]. p.22 Is this Wimbledon? Nandana Chutiwongs takes us into a Thai temple in London in her review of ‘Making Merit, Making Art’ [5]. p.36 Accord- ing to Richard Boyd, Japan’s Ministry of Finance is surrounded by a mystique, which has long held researchers at bay. Now, Maurice Wright has dared to interview these mandarins among mandarins, who are the pick of the bureaucracy. p.37 > Asian art & cultures Art theft galore in this issue. Tijhuis and Soudijn explore the illicit trade in Chinese antiquities. p. 29 Yasser Tabaa gives his view on why the Iraqi’s stole from their museums [6]. p.43-44 IIAS Newsletter opens the floor to your reactions on the latter. ASEMUS: The exhibition ‘Peranakan Legacy’ adds an important dimension to exploring Singapore’s ‘ancestral cultures’ [7]. p.50 Robert Cribb speculates on why the mixed-race ‘Indisch’ community did not take a more prominent role in the nationalist movement. p.52 International Conference Agenda. p.54-55

Transcript of Mega- Urbanization in Asia - International Institute for Asian ...

Page 1: Mega- Urbanization in Asia - International Institute for Asian ...

July 2003 | the IIAS newsletter is published by the IIAS and is available free of charge

31

IIAS | P.O. Box 9515 | 2300 RA Leiden | The Netherlands | T +31-71-527 2227 | F +31-71-527 4162 | [email protected] | www.iias.nl

12

34

56

By Sanjaasuren Oyun

Before the 1990s poverty as such was not a problem inMongolia. With the advent of transition and the sudden

collapse of economic structures, the economy contracted andunemployment soared. Surveys undertaken over the lastseven years indicate that one in three Mongolians live belowthe poverty line, earning less than a dollar a day. During theperiod 1995-2002, the Gini coefficient of inequality increasedfrom 0.31 to 0.37.* Despite the recent return of moderate eco-nomic growth, the number of those living in poverty has notdecreased.

Mongolia did not recover its 1989 pre-transition GDP ofjust over USD 1 billion until 2000. Like many post-commu-nist countries, Mongolia began the 1990s with negativegrowth and extreme inflation (up to 350 per cent). The mid-1990s witnessed economic stabilization and inflation around10 per cent; growth and single-digit inflation had to await theend of the decade. Unfortunately, Mongolia is still strugglingto achieve growth rates necessary for poverty reduction andjob creation. According to a 1999 World Bank study of poordeveloping countries, poverty reduction requires economicgrowth rates at least twice the rate of population growth. Thatis for countries with good governance. Without good gover-nance, when the distribution of wealth is unequal and cor-ruption thrives, economic growth needs to be at least threetimes the rate of population increase. Its population currently

growing at 1.5 per cent and good governance lacking, Mon-golia needs a minimum annual growth rate of 4-5 per centin order to raise general living standards. Yet, over the lastseveral years, Mongolia’s growth has been insufficient, aver-aging 1-3 per cent.

Foreigners are easily impressed by the many jeeps in thestreets of Ulaanbaatar and the expensive houses that arebeing built in the capital’s suburbs. In a country with a percapita GDP of USD 450, however, these are not signs of ahealthy but of a sick economy. So what went wrong? Mon-golia has been, in the words of The Economist, ‘the star pupilof Western liberal economics’, ‘the darling of ultraliberals inthe West’. Meticulously following the instructions of inter-national financial institutions, the country liberalized its cur-rency, trade and economy, privatized most of its state assets,and brought down inflation. Below are some examples ofhow these reforms were undertaken.

Tight monetary policies dictated by the IMF andimplemented by the Central Bank of Mongolia aimed toreduce inflation; bank rates, however, were kept too highfor local businesses to be profitable. Foreign aid (ODA)brought benefits to tens of thousands of Mongolians,but the overall amount is reaching dangerous levels.Over the past twelve years, Mongolia received ODA aver-aging 20 per cent of GDP. In addition the old (commu-nist-era) debt to Russia has not yet been negotiated or

Following the collapse of communism, Mongolia embarked upon an ambitious path of political and economic reform. The ensuingtransition brought new opportunities to the country and its people: an end to international isolation, the introduction of politicalfreedoms and a nascent private sector after many decades of centralized planning. Economic liberalization, however, has yet todeliver benefits to the Mongolian majority. At the beginning of the 1990s, many believed that the market economy would bringunprecedented prosperity within a decade. Instead, it brought unprecedented poverty. In many respects, life for most people ismore precarious today than during the communist era.

c o n t i n u e d o n p a g e 3 >

page 5-15

From the Year of the White Horse to the Year of the Black HorseMongolia After Twelve Years of Transition7

< Theme:

Mega-Urbanization in Asia

Website: www.IIAS.nl

Forum >Central Asia

Ph

oto

Dis

c

> In t

his ed

ition

Surel

y a

reas

on fo

r la

ugh

ter

in In

don

esia

n p

olit

ics,

Arn

dt G

raf e

xpla

ins

Gu

s D

ur’

s [1

] hu

mou

r in

ter

ms

of p

olit

ical

str

ateg

y. p

.16

¶C

entr

ed o

n a

Mu

slim

pro

stit

ute

com

ing

from

Mu

zzaf

arp

ur

to M

um

bai,

Fare

eda

Meh

ta’s

film

Kal

i Sal

waa

ris

an

alm

ost

abst

ract

ody

ssey

in t

o m

igra

tion

, mar

gin

aliz

atio

n, a

nd

disp

lace

men

t [2

]. p.

19¶

Wh

erea

s ea

rly-

mod

-er

n I

ndi

an m

edic

al h

isto

ry is

su

bsta

nti

ally

def

ined

by

San

skri

t sy

stem

s of

th

ough

t [3

], H

orm

uz

Ebr

ahim

nej

ad s

how

s E

uro

pea

n m

edic

al t

ra-

diti

ons

to b

e m

ore

read

ily in

corp

orat

ed in

nin

etee

nth

cen

tury

Ira

n. p

.20-

21¶

Dig

ital

Him

alay

a: U

nlik

e m

any

earl

y an

thro

pol

ogis

ts, b

otan

ical

colle

ctor

s ro

amed

acr

oss

Nep

al. A

dam

Sta

into

n’s

tra

vel a

ccou

nts

pro

vide

an

thro

pol

ogic

al in

form

atio

n o

f a w

ide

regi

onal

sco

pe

[4].

p.22

¶Is

this

Wim

bled

on?

Nan

dan

a C

hu

tiw

ongs

tak

es u

s in

to a

Th

ai t

emp

le in

Lon

don

in h

er r

evie

w o

f ‘M

akin

g M

erit

, Mak

ing

Art

’ [5]

. p.3

6¶

Acc

ord-

ing

to R

ich

ard

Boy

d, J

apan

’s M

inis

try

of F

inan

ce is

su

rrou

nde

d by

a m

ysti

que,

wh

ich

has

lon

g h

eld

rese

arch

ers

at b

ay. N

ow, M

auri

ce W

righ

th

as d

ared

to

inte

rvie

w t

hes

e m

anda

rin

s am

ong

man

dari

ns,

wh

o ar

e th

e p

ick

of t

he

bure

aucr

acy.

p.3

7¶

> Asia

n art

& cu

lture

s Art

th

eft

galo

re in

th

is is

sue.

Tij

hu

is a

nd

Sou

dijn

exp

lore

th

e ill

icit

tra

de in

Ch

ines

e an

tiqu

itie

s. p

. 29

¶Ya

sser

Tab

aa g

ives

his

vie

w o

n w

hy

the

Iraq

i’s s

tole

fro

m t

hei

r m

use

um

s [6

].p.

43-4

4¶

IIA

S N

ewsl

ette

rop

ens

the

floo

r to

you

r re

acti

ons

on t

he

latt

er.¶

ASE

MU

S: T

he

exh

ibit

ion

‘Per

anak

an L

egac

y’ a

dds

an im

por

tan

tdi

men

sion

to

exp

lori

ng

Sin

gap

ore’

s ‘a

nce

stra

l cu

ltu

res’

[7].

p.50

¶R

ober

t C

ribb

sp

ecu

late

s on

wh

y th

e m

ixed

-rac

e ‘I

ndi

sch

’ com

mu

nit

y di

dn

ot t

ake

a m

ore

pro

min

ent

role

in t

he

nat

ion

alis

t m

ovem

ent.

p.5

2¶

Inte

rnat

ion

al C

onfe

ren

ce A

gen

da. p

.54-

55¶

Page 2: Mega- Urbanization in Asia - International Institute for Asian ...

2

> Editorial

By Jan Annerstedt

Coinciding with the September2002 ASEM Economic Ministers’

Meeting in Copenhagen, the seventhannual Asia-Europe Business Forum(AEBF 7) conference was held justahead of the ASEM IV summit. Well inadvance, academic researchers andother specialists from East Asia andWestern Europe met to discuss strate-gic issues identified at the previousmeeting in Singapore.

In Singapore in 2001, it was decidedthat three strategic issues cutting acrossthe AEBF working groups would bebrought to the fore to bring momen-tum to the deliberations: (1) dynamicregions, metropolitan hubs, and mod-ern governance in the globalizing econ-omy; (2) strengthening the economicfabric through the growth of small andmedium-sized business enterprises;and (3) the global challenge to corporategovernance and business participationin socio-economic development.

These themes were discussed inmeetings among Asian and Europeanspecialists, and evaluated in a workshopthat brought together academics andother specialists from Asia, Europe, andNorth America three months ahead ofthe Copenhagen AEBF. The resulting30-page Briefing Paper presented acomprehensive set of suggestions forthe eight working groups and for delib-erations in the plenary sessions. Theworking groups then used this contentto develop their platforms for advice to

the ministers and other top policy-mak-ers involved in the ASEM process.

To deliver tangibles, much of thework in the AEBF conferences is con-ducted in the aforementioned workinggroups, each co-chaired by an Asianand a European business representa-tive. The two chairs prepare the delib-erations and help in the follow-up to theconference. Over the past years, the‘Trade’ and ‘Investment’ workinggroups have been instrumental in iden-tifying obstacles to trade and invest-ment and in proposing specific actionsby governments, the WTO, and similarinternational and regional organiza-tions. Last year, with the Doha devel-opment agenda at the centre of discus-sions, business representatives urgedgovernments to liberalize interconti-nental trade and to simplify and makemore transparent rules for foreigndirect investment.*

As in Singapore, the conference inCopenhagen hosted working groups forFinancial Services, Information andCommunications Technology, Infra-structure, and Life Sciences and HealthCare. Two new working groups, ‘Envi-ronment’ and ‘Food’, discussed the foodprocessing, biotechnology, and envi-ronmental technology industries andimplementation strategies for sustain-able economic growth that allows forsocial as well as environmental improve-ment. While the private role in initiat-ing and facilitating trade and cross-con-tinental investment was emphasized, sowere the issues of corporate citizenshipand social responsibility.

Research and urgent policy issues

For many AEBF 7 participants, thediscussions in Copenhagen were use-ful and intellectually inspiring. For the30-odd researchers involved in prepar-ing the AEBF Briefing Paper, AEBF 7was a challenging set of encounters,where research results were confront-ed with urgent policy issues asexpressed by top business representa-tives and public officials.

Areas for improvement were alsoidentified. The lack of a permanentASEM secretariat and the annual shift-ing of AEBF conference responsibili-ties render continuity in deliberationsand the implementation of follow-uprecommendations more difficult. As aresult of the transfer of responsibilitiesbetween Europe and Asia, specializedknowledge is unfortunately lost. There-fore, the installation of a ‘lean, yet effec-tive’ ASEM secretariat was recom-mended on behalf of ASEM leaders.With the expansion of the EuropeanUnion, these proposals are moreurgent. They also fit well with WimStokhof’s emphasis in his ‘Director’sNote on ASEM’ (IIASN 30, p.2): TheASEM process, of which AEBF remainsan important part, is in need of a ‘long-term internally driven strategic vision,which can be translated into clear andconcrete objectives’.

Deliberations among business rep-resentatives, academics, and other spe-cialists need to continue to invigoratethe next AEBF planned in Seoul forOctober 2003. <

References

- Confederation of Danish Industries,

Growing Together. New Features of Asia-

Europe Business Cooperation. (Briefing

paper prepared by Asia Research Centre ,

Copenhagen Business School, for the

Asia-Europe Business Forum), Copen-

hagen (18-20 September 2002). (Reprint

available from the Asia Research Centre:

[email protected])

- Hwee, Yeo Lay, ASEM The Asia-Europe

Meeting Process: From Sexy Summit to

Strong Partnership? Copenhagen: Danish

Institute of International Affairs (2002).

- Lim, Paul, ‘Research collaboration to

promote Asia-Europe relations’, NIASNyt,

2002:2, pp. 18-19.

Professor Jan Annerstedt is a member of

the Asia Research Center, Copenhagen Busi-

ness School, where he holds the UNESCO

Chair in Communication. He is a specialist

on international business and the manage-

ment of innovation.

[email protected]

[email protected]

Edit

oria

l For

a fe

w y

ears

now

, the

illu

sory

saf

e ha

ven

for

hum

anit

ies

and

soci

al s

cien

ces

in g

ener

al a

nd o

f Asi

an S

tudi

es in

par

ticu

lar

appe

ars

seve

rely

cha

lleng

ed b

y su

b-st

anti

al b

udge

t cu

ts in

man

y co

untr

ies

acro

ss t

he g

lobe

. How

cou

ld t

his

hap

pen

? A

s A

sia’

s p

rom

inen

ce a

nd

inte

rnat

ion

al r

ole

is in

crea

sin

g, w

ould

n’t

it m

ake

mor

e se

nse

tha

t A

sian

Stud

ies

achi

eves

a h

ighe

r pr

ofile

? In

the

prev

ious

issu

e, I

voic

ed s

ome

pers

onal

con

cern

that

the

scie

ntif

ic c

omm

unit

y ha

s cr

eate

d a

sepa

rate

nic

he fo

r it

self

and

negl

ects

one

of i

ts c

ore

resp

onsi

bilit

ies

tow

ards

soc

iety

at l

arge

, nam

ely

crit

ical

ly e

xam

inin

g po

litic

s an

d po

wer

. One

cou

ld im

agin

e th

at if

Asi

an S

tudi

es ta

kes

up th

is r

espo

nsib

ility

of i

nfor

min

g th

e pu

blic

and

invo

lves

itse

lf m

ore

in b

road

er p

olit

ical

, eco

nom

ic, a

nd c

ultu

ral p

ublic

deb

ates

and

eve

nts,

pol

icy

mak

ers

will

be

mor

e lik

ely

to a

ppre

ciat

e it

s in

trin

sic

valu

e. T

hese

bri

ef t

houg

hts

fit

inw

ell w

ith

Jan

Ann

erst

edt’

s ar

ticl

e on

thi

s pa

ge, w

hich

em

phas

izes

the

rel

evan

ce o

f aca

dem

ic in

volv

emen

t in

the

Asi

a-Eu

rope

Mee

ting

s an

d B

usin

ess

Foru

ms.

It

also

link

s to

the

fron

t-pa

ge a

rtic

le, i

n w

hich

Mon

golia

n p

arlia

men

tari

an S

anja

asur

en O

yun

add

ress

es t

he d

ark

side

of g

loba

lizat

ion

an

d ex

poun

ds t

he w

ays

in w

hich

Mon

golia

’s p

ost-

com

mun

ist

econ

omic

deve

lopm

ent h

as b

een

goin

g aw

ry.

Econ

omic

glo

baliz

atio

n ha

s an

equ

ally

mar

ked

(but

sur

ely

not n

eces

sari

ly n

egat

ive)

impa

ct o

n A

sian

cit

ies

and

rank

s hi

gh a

mon

g th

e ca

uses

for

thei

r la

stin

g at

trac

tion

to th

e ru

ral p

oor,

to (

fore

ign)

inve

stor

s, a

nd to

var

ious

laye

rs o

f gov

ernm

ent.

The

cur

rent

and

exp

andi

ng g

loba

l and

reg

iona

l im

port

ance

of A

sian

cit

ies

war

rant

s an

ext

ensi

ve (

11-p

age)

them

e se

ctio

n on

‘Meg

a-U

rban

izat

ion

in A

sia’

. The

me

edit

or, D

r P

eter

Nas

, has

edi

ted

a w

onde

rful

col

lect

ion

of a

rtic

les

on a

num

ber

of u

rban

are

as, i

n w

hich

bot

h un

iver

sal a

nd c

ity-

spec

ific

asp

ects

of

meg

a-ur

bani

zati

on a

re a

ddre

ssed

. Due

to

the

shee

r si

ze a

nd r

apid

exp

ansi

on o

f the

se c

itie

s, t

he A

sian

land

scap

e st

eadi

ly b

ecom

es m

ore

urba

n. In

due

cou

rse

this

cha

nged

geo

grap

hi-

cal r

ealit

y w

ill n

o do

ubt p

rom

pt r

esea

rch

field

s su

ch a

s an

thro

polo

gy, s

ocio

logy

, urb

an p

lann

ing,

soc

io-e

cono

my,

cul

tura

l stu

dies

, but

als

o hi

stor

y, to

adj

ust t

heir

app

roac

h. W

heth

er th

isra

pid

urba

niza

tion

is la

men

tabl

e or

not

, Asi

an c

itie

s be

ar w

itne

ss o

f a w

anin

g im

port

ance

of r

ural

in fa

vour

of u

rban

are

as a

nd d

eliv

er a

noth

er b

low

to O

rien

talis

t im

ages

of a

n un

chan

g-in

g ru

ral A

sia.

At

the

sam

e ti

me,

by

conv

eyin

g so

me

spec

ific

form

s of

urb

aniz

atio

n in

the

non

-Wes

tern

con

text

, the

uni

vers

al c

once

pt o

f urb

aniz

atio

n is

bei

ng r

edre

ssed

. We

hope

tha

tyo

u ag

ree

that

thi

s is

sue’

s th

eme

prov

es a

pro

mis

ing

step

in th

e ab

ove

dire

ctio

n.To

con

clud

e, Y

asse

r Ta

bbaa

’s a

rtic

le ‘L

esso

ns fr

om L

ooti

ng’ d

eser

ves

a sh

ort r

emar

k. T

he m

uch-

deba

ted

unre

liabi

lity

of th

e fi

gure

s on

loot

ed m

ater

ial t

hat t

he Ir

aqi N

atio

nal M

useu

m’s

dire

ctor

pre

sen

ted

som

e tw

o m

onth

s ag

o, n

o do

ubt

add

to t

he c

ontr

over

sial

nat

ure

of t

his

top

ic, f

or w

hich

rea

son

we

open

the

flo

or f

or y

our

reac

tion

s to

thi

s ar

ticl

e in

par

ticu

lar.

As

alw

ays

we

also

war

mly

wel

com

e yo

ur c

omm

ents

and

sug

gest

ions

to o

ther

par

ts o

f the

new

slet

ter.

Enjo

y re

adin

g. <

Mau

rice

Sis

term

ans

Whereas political and business circles recognize the importance of the biannual Asia-Europe Meetings (ASEM), the significance of these deliberations and the possibility toinfluence them seems to escape many in academia. Alongside the ASEM political summitsin the media spotlight, the Asia-Europe Business Forum (AEBF) gatherings provideresearchers the opportunity to constructively influence the process of businesscooperation, facilitating and invigorating the AEBF deliberations and ultimately the ASEMagenda as such.

I I A S N e w s l e t t e r | # 3 1 | J u l y 2 0 0 3

Forum >General

SubscriptionsThe IIAS Newsletter is published by the IIAS and is avail-

able free of charge. If you wish to subscribe to the newslet-

ter, please return a completed subscription form to the IIAS

secretariat. Subscription forms can be obtained from either

the secretariat or the website.

[email protected]

www.iias.nl/iiasn/subscribe.html

Note >

* The November 2001 declaration of the Fourth Minister-

ial Conference in Doha, Qatar, provides the mandate for

negotiations and other work including issues concerning

the implementation of current WTO Agreements, i.e. the

agreements arising from the Uruguay Round negotia-

tions. In Doha, ministers agreed to adopt around 50

decisions clarifying the obligations of developing country

member governments with respect to issues including

agriculture, subsidies, textiles and clothing, technical

barriers to trade, trade-related investment measures and

rules of origin.

The IIAS endeavours to adopt a dynamic and versatile

approach in its research programmes. Research fellows at post-

PhD level are temporarily employed by or affiliated to the insti-

tute, either within the framework of a collaborative research pro-

gramme, or on an individual basis. Always ready to anticipate

new developments, the IIAS aims to achieve and continue to

build on a broad, high-quality level of knowledge of Asia. The

institute organizes seminars, workshops, and conferences, and

publishes a newsletter with a circulation of approximately 21,500

copies. Moreover, the IIAS has established a database for Asian

Studies, which contains information on researchers and

research-related institutes worldwide.

The IIAS acts as an international mediator, bringing various

parties together. In keeping with the Dutch tradition of trans-

ferring goods and ideas, the institute works as a clearing-house

for knowledge and information. This entails activities such as

providing information services, constructing international net-

works, and setting up international cooperative projects and

research programmes. In this way, the IIAS functions as a win-

dow on Europe for non-European scholars and contributes to

the cultural rapprochement between Asia and Europe.

The IIAS administers the daily secretariat of the European

Alliance for Asian Studies (Asia-Alliance: www.asia-alliance.org)

as well as the Secretariat General of the International Conven-

tion of Asia Scholars (ICAS: www.icassecretariat.org). Regular

updates on the Asia-Alliance and ICAS activities can be found

in the IIAS Newsletter. <

www.iias.nl

The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) is a post-

doctoral research centre based in Leiden and Amsterdam,

the Netherlands. Its main objective is to encourage the study

of Asia and to promote national and international coopera-

tion in this field. The institute focuses on the humanities and

social sciences and, where relevant, at the interface between

these disciplines and sciences like medicine, economy, poli-

tics, technology, law, and environmental studies.

Growing TogetherThe Academic Invigoration of the Asia Europe Business Forum

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By Greg Fea ly

The attitude and motivation of AliImron and his fellow accused ‘Bali

bombers’ deserves close attention, notonly to enable scholars of Islam and ter-rorism to understand the specificdynamics of Southeast Asian extrem-ism but also to provide governmentswith a basis for designing effective anti-terrorism policies. Most scholars of ter-rorism agree that context is critical tounderstanding extremist activity. Fac-tors which drive terrorism in one timeor place may not be present in otherperiods or locations. While much isnow known about al-Qaeda’s thinking,we should be wary of assuming that theBali bombers were acting from pre-cisely the same motivations.

The bomb at the Sari Club, alongwith a smaller preceding explosive atthe nearby Paddy’s Bar, killed 202 peo-ple and seriously injured another 350,making it the deadliest terrorist attacksince 9/11. Most of those killed wereWestern tourists, including eighty-eightAustralians, twenty-three Britons, nineSwedes and seven Americans. There isnow sufficient material available frompolice testimony and media interviewsto enable a preliminary analysis of thebombers’ mindset. The evidence wouldsuggest that an extreme hostilitytowards the West, and the US in par-ticular, was a critical factor.

Within a month of the bombing, thejoint Indonesian and foreign policeinvestigation began arresting key sus-

pects, almost all of whom were mem-bers of the clandestine JemaahIslamiyah (JI) movement. JI is at theextreme fringe of the region’s small rad-ical Islam communities and is the onlygenuine transnational terrorist organi-zation in Southeast Asia. Althoughmost of its leadership and the majorityof its operatives were Indonesian, it hadactive cells in at least four countries andhad held planning meetings and train-ing programmes across the region.There is strong evidence of JI involve-ment in terrorist attacks since 2000,including the ‘Christmas Eve 2000’church bombings in Indonesia, whichkilled nineteen people, and the MetroManila attacks of the same month,which left twenty-one dead. JemaahIslamiyah was established by the Arab-Indonesian preacher, AbdullahSungkar, in the mid-1990s but anoth-er Indonesian of Yemeni extraction,Abubakar Ba’asyir, took over leadershipof the organization following Sungkar’sdeath in 1999. Estimates of the orga-nization’s current membership varyfrom about 500 to several thousand. Atthe time of writing, Indonesian policehave either charged or intend to chargeat least thirty-three people in connec-tion with the bombings.

Public attention has been focussedon four of the accused bombers:Amrozi, Ali Imron, Mukhlas, andImam Samudra. The first three arebrothers. Amrozi purchased the explo-sives and minivan into which the SariClub bomb was placed. Ali Imron and

Mukhlas were both veterans of the waragainst the Soviet Union inAfghanistan in the 1980s; the formerhelped to design and assemble thebombs and the latter, as JI’s operationalhead, had oversight for the attack.Imam Samudra, another formermujahidin, was the JI field command-er leading the bombing.

Anti-American hostilityPolice interrogation and media inter-

views soon established that a deep ani-mus towards the West, the United Statesin particular, was a primary motivatingfactor for the bombers. The US was seenas embodying the anti-Islamic struggleof the Christian- and Jewish-dominatedWestern world. When investigatorsasked Amrozi why he wanted to bombthe Sari Club he repeatedly told them he‘hated Americans’. Similarly, ImamSamudra made it clear that his main tar-get was the US. He said: ‘I hate Ameri-ca because it is the real centre of inter-national terrorism, which has alreadyrepeatedly tyrannised Islam’. ‘I carry outjihad’, he declared, ‘because it’s the dutyof a Muslim to avenge, so [that] theAmerican terrorists and their alliesunderstand that the blood of the Mus-lim community is not shed for nothing’.He went on to say that he had chosenthe Sari Club and Paddy’s Bar as targetsbecause he knew they were ‘often visit-ed by Americans and even Mossad peo-ple’. Later, when informed that many ofthe victims were Australian tourists,Imam was said to be ‘shocked’ and

‘quite regretful’ because they were ‘notthe right target’. Mukhlas was quoted assaying: ‘[We wanted] to terrorise the gov-ernment of America’.2

Arguably, the most complete publicstatement of the bombers’ positionappeared on the Istimata (AbsoluteStruggle) webpage, which Imam Samu-dra said ‘sets out the essence of mystruggle’.3 It declared: ‘Let it be acknowl-edged that every single drop of Muslimblood, be it from any nationality andfrom any place will be remembered andaccounted for.’ The site referred to thou-sands of Muslims who perished inAfghanistan, Sudan, Palestine, Bosnia,Kashmir, and Iraq, stating: ‘The heinouscrime and international conspiracy ofthe Christians also extends to thePhilippines and Indonesia. This hasresulted in Muslim cleansing in Moro[southern Philippines], Ambon, Posoand surrounding areas. It is clearly evi-dent the crusade is continuing and willnot stop…Every blow will be repaid.Blood will be redeemed by blood. A lifefor a life. One Muslim to another is likea single body. If one part is in pain, theother part will also feel it’.

It continued: ‘To all you Christianunbelievers, if you define this act [i.e.,

the Bali bombings] on your civilians asheinous and cruel, you yourself havecommitted crimes which are moreheinous. The cries of the babies andMuslim women …has [sic] never suc-ceeded in stopping your brutality. Well,here we are the Muslim men! We willharness the pain of the death of ourbrothers and sisters. You will bear theconsequences of your actions wherev-er you are.’ It concludes by saying: ‘Weare responsible for the incident inLegian, Kuta, Bali.’

The sense of avenging past brutalitytowards Muslims, of smiting the infi-del hegemon, is common to many ofthe accused bombers’ explanations.The Istimata declaration and testimo-ny from police interviews suggest thatthe bombers saw themselves as fight-ing a heroic war against evil. The Chris-tian (and Jewish) West is vilified anddehumanized and the bombers portraythemselves as high-minded warriorsacting according to the demands oftheir faith. Indeed, many JI membershave stated that they are engaged in aholy struggle and are happy to die asmartyrs for the cause. Imam Samudra,for example, told a journalist: ‘I have

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settled. Thus the accumulated debt over the last twelveyears nearly equals GDP.

Compared to Southeast Asia, where Foreign DirectInvestment (FDI) averages 15 per cent of GDP, or Chinawhere the figure varies from 20 to 30 per cent, Mongoliaattracts FDI amounting to only 3-5 per cent of its GDP. Obvi-ously, Mongolia must strive harder towards creating a moreattractive investment climate. It has only been in the last twoyears that mining investors have expressed greater interest,due to the discovery of a seemingly world-class deposit of cop-per and gold (Oyu Tolgoi) in South Gobi. Despite ten yearsof efforts to build a favourable economic and investment cli-mate, Mongolia is still failing to attract investors, both for-eign and domestic. Current business taxation rates are pro-hibitively high and resemble those of developed Westerncountries, not those of developing transition countries.

WTO and trade tariffsThe wealthy countries controlling the international finan-

cial institutions have demanded that poor countries, includ-ing Mongolia, eliminate their trade barriers. This Mongoliadid in 1997, shortly after joining the WTO. As Mongolia wasremote, far away from markets, and highly dependent onimports – so the rationale went – there was no point in retain-ing import tariffs. Almost overnight, these tariffs wereslashed from 15 to 0 per cent. With borders suddenly openand tariffs instantly non-existent, fledgling domestic indus-tries were severely undercut. As a result many domestic man-ufacturers had to close shop. Given the weak social safety net,the unemployed rapidly fell into poverty.

For products Mongolia cannot produce, eliminating importtariffs makes sense. Meanwhile, those few industries, suchas wool, leather, and some agricultural products (flower and

milk and the like), in which Mongolia can compete with itsneighbours, should be protected until they are strong enoughto be competitive. So-called blanket protectionism deservesno praise, but one cannot expect infant domestic industriesto compete with their more advanced counterparts in neigh-bouring China and Russia, let alone the rest of the world, ifthe government does not initially support them.

Many Western countries built up their economies by pro-tecting key industries until they were strong enough to com-pete internationally. Even now, the developed and suppos-edly free-market West annually spends USD 350 billion onagricultural subsidies (by comparison, annual ODA to devel-oping countries totals USD 50 billion). Ironically, the verycountries that push developing countries to open up marketsthemselves maintain trade barriers and import quotas whenit suits them.

Over the last decade small and medium-sized state enter-prises have been privatized; the selling off of the larger firmsis now under way. As a result the private sector today consti-tutes over 70 per cent of GDP. In total, 440 state owned enter-

prises were privatized, out of which 330 shareholding com-panies were created. Currently, no more than 1,500 individ-uals, representing 0.5 per cent of the population, own over70 per cent of the shares of these 330 companies.

Despite certain notable achievements, many things havegone wrong with Mongolia’s transition. Paralleling the expe-riences of other badly managed transitions from commu-nism to a market economy, poverty in Mongolia has soaredand inequality has increased. At present, 40 per cent of thepopulation can be categorized as poor or very poor. It is timeto start remedying these problems. Mongolia is at a cross-roads: will its government come up with home-grown poli-cies for economic development and introduce new, higherstandards in the way it leads political, economic and socialprocesses, or will it continue to slide on the path of impru-dent policies and the weak rule of law? <

Dr Sanjaasuren Oyun is Member of the Mongolian Parliament

since 1998 and leader of the Citizens Will - Republican Party since

2000. A geologist by profession, she has a PhD in isotope geochem-

istry from Cambridge University (UK). Oyun entered politics after

the assassination of her brother S. Zorig, the leader of the pro-

democracy movement in Mongolia. She heads the Zorig Founda-

tion, a non-profit organization aiming to advance democracy and

fight corruption in Mongolia.

[email protected]

[email protected]

Note >

* The Gini coefficient is an indicator of inequality in income distribution with a

scale ranging from 0 to 1: 0 means total equality of income, 1 signifies that one

person owns everything. By comparison: Indonesia scores 0.35 on this scale,

while the Netherlands comes in around 0.15.

Late on the night of 12 October 2002, Ali Imron walked into the al-Khurobah mosque in Denpasar andperformed a prayer of thanks. Shortly beforehand he had heard the massive bomb blast at the Sari Club and feltthe ground shake beneath his feet. He had played a key role in assembling the bomb and knew that manypeople at the crowded club must have been killed or injured in the explosion. He would later say that he was‘pleased and proud that the device he had built had exploded horrifyingly with its blaze reaching into the sky’and that ‘the bomb … was truly the great work of Indonesia’s sons’.1

Forum >General

Hating Americans: Jemaah Islamiyahand the Bali Bombings

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not done anything barbaric that is pro-hibited by God. The precise path I havetaken is God’s path. Have faith that thesoldiers of Muhammad will win. How-ever, that victory will certainly have vic-tims. Be certain that I am on the roadof istiqomah (sincerity), the road ofjihad. Even if I die, I’ll die a martyr. Iawait the enemy’s bullet or spear pierc-ing my breast so that I die a martyr.’4

Numerous scholars of the psychologyof terrorism have observed that religioncan impart a powerful sense of missionand purpose, which is often an impor-tant aspect of the terrorist mindset. Juer-gensmeyer, in his insightful study ofreligiously motivated terrorism, con-cluded that many terrorists see them-selves as involved in a conflict of cosmicproportions, something that transcendsordinary human experience. Images ofdivine struggle between good and evilare frequently found in terrorist rheto-ric. This phenomenon is not unique toMuslim extremists and can be foundamong violent militants of all faiths.5

Ba’asyir’s dualismA good example of this dichotomized,

absolutist view of the world is thepreaching of JI’s amir (commander),Abubakar Ba’asyir. He told his followersthat: ‘Allah has divided humanity intotwo segments, namely the followers ofAllah and those who follow Satan. God’sgroup [Hizbullah], and Satan’s group.For Hizbullah, one must be prepared toforfeit one’s life for the Shariah (Islam-ic law). [Hizbullah] do not embrace non-believers and would rather free them-selves of life than be lost in the world of

non-believers. We [i.e., Hizbullah] wouldrather die than follow that which you[infidels] worship. We reject all yourbeliefs and all your teachings. Betweenyou and us there will forever be a ravineof hate and we will be enemies until youfollow Allah’s law.’ He spoke of non-believers as posing an inherent threat toIslam. ‘There is no non-believer whoallows the development of Islam, whowill allow Islam to be free; non-believ-ers must work hard to threaten Islamand the laws thereof. Non-believers willexpend large sums to destroy Islam.This is the character of non-believers.’He told his followers that jihad againstnon-believers was ‘the highest form ofstruggle. To win in eternal terms and tolose one’s life is holy. This is the char-acter of Hizbullah.’ 6

Although Ba’asyir’s sermon does notexplicitly enjoin violence, it clearly con-veys a sense of monumental spiritualconfrontation, of a simplified ‘good ver-sus evil’ and ‘us versus them’ world,that may attract alienated and angryyoung Muslims to terrorism. Moreover,the satanization of non-Muslims andconcomitant endorsement of martyr-dom in the Islamic cause offer a potentsanction to those seeking to justify theuse of extreme violence.

Empowerment throughterrorism

Most of the bombers appear to havefound their involvement in the SariClub attack empowering and exhilarat-ing. Both Amrozi and Ali Imron, forexample, were boastful that they, aspoor village boys, could have strucksuch a blow against powerful Western

nations. The more ideologically drivenImam Samudra and Mukhlas viewedthe bombing in a broader setting ofglobal Islam fighting back against itsoppressors. All had a strong sense ofIslam under siege from ‘mortal ene-mies’ such as the United States andregarded terrorism as the best, if notthe only, way of protecting the faith.

Events subsequent to the Bali bomb-ings suggest that many JI membersremain committed to pursuing theirgoals through terrorism. When askedby reporters for his reaction to the US-led Iraq war, Amrozi replied: ‘It goes toshow that I was not wrong to bomb [theBali nightclubs]’. Imam Samudraresponded to the same question by call-ing the United States a ‘monster’ which‘will inevitably soon be destroyed’ andurged Saddam Hussein to be ‘patient’.7

Western and Indonesian intelligenceagencies reportedly have credible evi-dence of continuing JI planning forfuture terrorist attacks.

Southeast Asian terrorist groups areprobably the least studied of any in theIslamic world. The approaching trialsof the accused bombers will no doubtreveal new material about their think-ing and hopefully the perpetrators willbe subjected to intensive psychologicalexamination in order to gain a morecomplete picture of their motivationsand outlook. Disentangling interna-tional factors from local elementswould seem a particular priority of thisresearch. While it is clear that the ide-ology and rhetoric of al-Qaeda andother international terrorist groups hashad a powerful influence on SoutheastAsian extremists, the work of analysts

such as Sidney Jones indicate that sev-eral factors peculiar to the region havegreatly shaped the dynamics of JI.These include the historical, familial,and intellectual links with Indonesia’sDarul Islam rebellion of the 1940s and1950s, as well as the role that the Suhar-to regime’s intelligence services playedin manipulating and harshly repress-ing militant Islamist groups. 8

A good deal of the existing literatureon JI relies heavily upon intelligencereports and briefings. A prominentexample of this is the work of RohanGunaratna. His much-cited book, Insideal-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror(Columbia University Press, 2002),and his many press articles offer usefulmaterial on the operations of JI andother groups but pay scant attention tolocal factors. While JI is part of a glob-al terrorist phenomenon, it also hasregion-specific traits that are important

to comprehending its aims and activi-ties. Southeast Asia is home to morethan 200 million Muslims, of whomonly a small fraction is inclined towardsviolent Islamist struggle. Without asolid understanding of the local context,scholars will have trouble identifyingfactors that push non-violent radicals tobecome terrorists. We need only con-sider the ‘confessions’ of the Balibombers to appreciate the satisfactionwhich terrorism afforded at least someof JI’s members. <

Dr Greg Fealy is a research fellow and lec-

turer in the Research School of Pacific and

Asian Studies and the Faculty of Asian Stud-

ies, Australian National University. His main

research interests centre on Islamic politics in

Indonesia as well as the impact of globaliza-

tion on religiosity in Southeast Asia.

[email protected]

Note >

1 Associated Press, 17 January 2003; Jakarta Post, 17 January 2003; and Suara

Merdeka, 13 February 2003.

2 Kompas, 28 November 2002; Time (Asia), 20 January 2003, p. 18, and 27 Jan-

uary 2003, p. 16.

3 Istimata webpage: www.istimata.com (now shut down); and Kompas, 5

December 2002.

4 Kompas, 5 December 2002.

5 Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious

Violence, Berkeley: University of California Press (2001), pp. 145 and 216.

6 From a transcript on the ‘Four Corners’ webpage: www.abc.net.au/4corners

7 Laksamana.net, 26 March 2003; and Straits Times, 27 March 2003.

8 The International Crisis Group, ‘Indonesia Backgrounder: How the Jemaah

Islamiyah Terrorist Network Operates’, 11 December 2002; ‘Al-Qaeda in

Southeast Asia: The Case of the “Ngruki Network” in Indonesia’, 8 August

2002.

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

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By Peter J .M. Nas ( theme ed i tor )

I t is estimated that in 2000 about 50 per cent of the worldpopulation was living in cities and that this percentage is

constantly increasing. This figure applies not only to almostcompletely urbanized Western countries, where even farm-ing is completely mechanized, industrialized, and market-driven, but also to Latin America and particularly to Asia andAfrica. Their levels of urbanization may yet be substantiallylower but these regions nowadays contain the world’s largestcities, the magnitude of which completely ridicules earlierscientific debates on the optimum size of cities. Notwith-standing the great difficulties that can be envisaged in cre-ating a sustainable Ecumenopolis that honours human needs

while respecting environmental capacity, I am convinced thatthis Ecumenopolis is positive in principle. The city figuresprominently among great human inventions, such as the useof fire, the invention of the wheel, and the use of steam andelectric energy in industry. Generally speaking, by means ofhigh levels of population density cities create opportunitiesfor increased human cooperation and specialization, poten-tially leading to high levels of production, diversity of lifestyles and subcultures, and openness to innovation, inter-cultural contact, and interethnic relations. So, whether welike it or not, less than half a century from now the Ecume-nopolis will have become reality. The present airline, tele-phone, fax, and email network that connects all the centres,is nowadays conceived to consist of mega-urban areas of dif-ferent levels, but should rather be appreciated as Ecume-nopolis. The emerging Ecumenopolis and related forms ofregion-based urbanization with highly discontinuous pat-terns of land use cannot be explained by means of tradition-al concepts using, for example, an urban-rural dichotomy ordelineating a continuum from village, via town, to city.

Variety of mega-urban growthIn their work on Southeast Asia, I. Robinson and T.G.

McGee state that mega-cities are rapidly expanding beyondtheir boundaries. ‘Metropolitan growth tends to sprawl alongmajor expressways and railroad lines radiating out from theurban cores, and leapfrogs in all directions, putting downnew towns and industrial estates. Regions of dense popula-tion and mixed land use are created, in which traditional agri-culture is found side by side with modern factories, com-mercial activities, and suburban development.’ (McGee andRobinson 1995: ix).

The concept of the extended metropolitan region or desako-ta zones (Bahasa Indonesia for village-town zones) has beencoined for this amoebae-like spatial form of region-basedurbanization, which seems diametrically opposed to the city-based urbanization to which we are accustomed. Accordingto McGee, these urban regions have several components suchas the city-core, the metropolitan area, and the extended met-ropolitan area, the latter constituting a patched area withmixed agricultural and non-agricultural activities. Pertinently,mega-urban regions may follow divergent patterns of spatialgrowth. The growth triangle of Singapore is an example ofthe expanding state model, also involving part of MalaysianJohor and Indonesian Riau. Surabaya is a case in point fol-lowing the extended metropolitan region model, whereasJakarta and Manila are examples of high-density extendedmetropolitan regions.

In this special issue we provide a wide-ranging picture ofthe tremendous and highly varied impacts of present-dayAsian mega-urban growth and transformation, by high-lighting a substantial number of cases (namely Tokyo, Bei-jing, Nanjing, Kunming, Hanoi, Manila, Singapore, Jakarta,Surabaya, Phnom Penh, Delhi, and Tehran) and specificaspects of the urban development process. Some of themdescribe the spatial development and related planning efforts,for instance those in accordance with the expanding statemodel in Singapore or the extended metropolitan regionmodel in Surabaya. Others focus on the dynamics of mod-ernization, for example the role of the ICT sector in Nanjing’surban economic development, or the transformation of theretail sector from the open, traditional marketplace to themodern, air-conditioned shopping mall in Jakarta and Kun-ming. Specific urban problems such as regular flooding inManila, living and housing conditions of the poor in Delhi,and the change from a socialist to capitalist urban planningin Hanoi, are also important for the understanding of mega-urban transformations in Asia. Asian mega-urbanization asa component of the world informational society entails com-pletely new morphological contexts for living, and funda-mental changes in lifestyle, consumption behaviour and pro-duction conditions.

Region-based mega-urbanization has to be understoodwithin a broader global and Asian context characterized bythe emergence of new forms of international division oflabour, global and regional competition, international net-works, and development corridors, based on the spillover ofdevelopment incentives from one mega-urban region intoanother.

These developments in urbanization are often exclusivelydescribed in terms of overwhelming and almost insolubleproblems, pointing at excessive population density, deficientinfrastructure, traffic congestion, poor housing and livingconditions, and so on. These distorted images of immensi-ty, unsustainability, parasitism, extreme poverty, and poorquality of life do not generate adequate and realistic per-spectives. Without negating or underrating mega-urban prob-lems the full-fledged urbanization of Asia and the world isquite near and will offer tremendous opportunities for thedevelopment of humankind. <

References

- Doxiadis, C.A., City for Human Development, Athens: Athens Cen-

ter of Ekistics (1972).

- McGee, T.G., and I. Robinson (eds.), The Mega-Urban Regions of

Southeast Asia, Vancouver: UBC Press (1995).

Dr Peter J.M. Nas is associate professor at the Department of

Anthropology, Leiden University. His main topic of interest is urban

anthropology with a regional focus on Indonesia, where he has con-

ducted fieldwork.

[email protected]

Picture a grid connecting existing urban centres, avoiding the areas that are considered uninhabitable due to altitude, lack ofwater, extreme climatic conditions, and some other factors. In his effort to map the future of the city and urbanization, the famousGreek urbanist C.A. Doxiadis, who published the journal Ekistics, projected this world city and called it Ecumenopolis (Doxiadis1972). Then and now many feel horrified by the thought of a completely integrated settlement structure covering the earth’s crustwith tentacles on all continents. This article introduces this issue’s theme ‘Mega-Urbanization in Asia’.

Introduction >General

Ecumenopolis in Asia

Mega-Urbanization in Asia

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From its origins as a small castle town until the end of the Edo era, Tokyo’s urbanizationfollowed an orthogenetic process. In the mid-seventeenth century Tokyo’s populationnumbered one million, in a league with London and Paris. By the eve of the Meiji Restorationin 1868 Tokyo resembled a huge urban village. Twice destroyed in the twentieth century – byearthquake in 1923 and aerial bombardment in 1945 – Tokyo emerged as a speculator andbuilders’ paradise, a true global city, in the 1980s. Today Tokyo proper counts over 12 millioninhabitants while one-fourth of the Japanese population lives in the greater metropolitan area.The mega-city, warns the author, is awaiting another catastrophe.

Research >Japan

The Declining Capital

By Shuj i Funo

The politically powerful construction industry was one ofthe motors of rapid post-war economic growth. Relying

heavily on the ‘scrap and build’ method, concrete and steeltransformed the Japanese landscape. In the late 1960s, con-struction accounted for over 20 per cent of GDP. Highgrowth gave way to a period of stable but lower growth in thewake of the 1973 energy crisis; heavy industries lost groundto light industries based on advanced science and technolo-gy. The focus of urban development shifted from outwardexpansion to the full development of already urbanized areas.Money generated by the speculative bubble of the 1980stransformed Tokyo into a global city, wired to the dynamicmovements of the world capitalist economy.

The postmodern city: Tokyo at its zenithThe urban issues Tokyo faced in the mid-1980s were quite

different from those it had faced in the past. The city hadreached its limits for horizontal expansion. The ‘Tokyo Prob-lem’ and ‘Tokyo Reform’ became pressing issues for debate:scholars and critics discussed the negative effects of Tokyo’spolitical, economic, and cultural dominance, as well as pos-sibilities for relocating the Japanese capital.

In the 1980s Tokyo’s status as one of the world’s financialcentres attracted an unprecedented influx of foreign busi-nessmen and workers. The resulting demand for centrallylocated office space and 24-hour facilities sparked a specu-lative building rush that dramatically transformed thecityscape. Western architects with postmodern designs wereinvited to give Tokyo a fashionable facelift, befitting its sta-tus as a global city.

Further urban development necessitated the search fornew frontiers. The first frontier was unused public land inthe city centre. Investors snapped up properties in the citycentre, while large real estate companies launched re-devel-opment projects. Many of these destroyed the fabric of exist-ing central city communities. The second frontier was thesky: Tokyo still had more space in the air than New York. TheManhattan Project, revived after a long hiatus, is currentlyrenewing the central business district around Tokyo Station.The third frontier was under the ground, the so-called geofront. A project to create an underground city of 500,000inhabitants was seriously proposed. The fourth and final fron-tier was the Tokyo waterfront, hitherto the home to dockyardsand factories. Under the title ‘Urban frontier’, the World CityExposition Tokyo ‘96’ directed expansion towards Tokyo Bay.

New technologies, production systems, and building mate-rials shaped Tokyo’s urban transformation. Since the 1960sair-sealing aluminium sashes have been de rigueur, meaningthat all dwelling units are now air-conditioned. So-called intel-ligent office buildings came into fashion in the 1980s.

Domed, climate-controlled stadiums allow football games tobe played in the midst of storms. The daily lives of Tokyo’scitizens have become completely divorced from nature; mostspace in Tokyo is artificially, i.e. computer, controlled. Elec-tronic conglomerates enjoying symbiotic relations with gov-ernment are prominent players in this development process.So are the large construction companies, still wielding con-siderable political power. Tokyo is a temporary metropolisthat is constantly changing: in this repeated process of scrapand build, the city is losing its historical memory.

‘The 2003 Problem’Nobody controls a global city like Tokyo; nobody knows

who is behind the constant change. Something invisible,which we might call the World Capitalist System, guides thetransformation of the Japanese capital.

With the glory days of the bubble economy long gone andTokyo suffering from economic stagnation and post-bubbledebt, a curious phenomenon can be observed. Along theTokyo waterfront many new office buildings and flats areunder construction. The number of high-rise flats newly builtin 2002 is said to be unprecedented. Now as before, this con-struction is driven by the speculative activities of real estateagents and investors. While rumour of ‘The 2003 Problem’is spreading – companies will move to the waterfront leav-ing old inner city office buildings unoccupied – predictableoversupply is the result of individual realtors and developerspursuing their own short-term interests, even as they knowthey will later suffer.

Central government has tried to influence the fluctuatingannual number of dwelling units built by reforming taxincentives. Its current key phrases are ‘restructuring’ and‘urban rebirth’. What is actually happening, however, is thehollowing out of the inner city. Ishihara Shintaro, governorof Tokyo Metropolitan Municipality, has declared 16 policygoals, the first of which is to ‘create an urban city that facili-tates a balance of jobs and residences’. It consists of twostrategies: ‘Promotion of inner city residence’ and ‘funda-mental reform of the metropolitan housing system’. The for-mer includes bringing workplaces and residential areastogether in the suburban Tama area. The results have thusfar been disappointing: the only change for most people hasbeen their place of work. The remaining hope is that old innercity office buildings will be converted into homes.

The central government has established a special boardcalled ‘Urban Rebirth’ and has opted to deregulate buildingcodes and urban planning laws to stimulate building activi-ty. Local governments can now rezone areas and make deci-sions on the restructuring of districts. Most local govern-ments, however, are suffering from financial pressures andlack funds to realize new projects. And while policymakersbelieve promoting building activity through deregulation isthe only way to economic recovery, the idea seems far-fetched.

Tokyo has its natural limits; the city cannot grow indefi-nitely. Obviously, the city needs powerful leadership and theparticipation of citizens to implement new ideas. Unfortu-nately, while formal procedures for citizen involvement havebeen proposed, they do not function effectively: people seemreluctant to participate when their private circumstances arenot affected. Without citizen input, ‘The 2003 Problem’seems here to stay. Though blackouts and drought alreadythreaten the metropolitan area each summer, the current sys-tem of the production and consumption of spaces, however,is controlled by the profit motive, not social or ecologicalresponsibility. Tokyo, on its current course, is awaiting catas-trophe. <

Dr Shuji Funo is professor at Kyoto University and a specialist in the

field of Asian design and urban planning. The Architectural Institute

of Japan (AIJ) awarded him for his PhD dissertation ‘Transitional

Process of Kampungs and Evaluation of Kampung Improvement Pro-

gram in Indonesia’ (1991). He recently designed Surabaya Eco-

House, an experimental housing project, and is now conducting

research on Dutch colonial cities.

[email protected]

[email protected]

The rush of building activities on the Tokyo waterfront, 2003

Co

urt

esy

of

Sh

uji

Fu

no

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

Tokyo’s bullit train’s punctuality allows for commuters to set their

personal alarms to the scheduled arrival times.

Ph

oto

Dis

c

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[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

Research >China

Since opting for reform in the late 1970s, China has opened its doors to the opportunities and vicissitudes of the world economy.Opening up to foreign capital and technology impacted heavily on the development trajectories of China’s cities, which in the lastdecades of the twentieth century grew at an unprecedented rate. In the 1990s Beijing’s population increased from 10.8 to 13.6million, its urban area from 395 to 490 square kilometres. Concurrently the city’s economic base shifted from manufacturing toservices, spawning a new division of labour and transformations in the use of urban space.

The Sky is the LimitThe Economic Globalization of Beijing

By Huang Shizheng

Following the creation of specialeconomic zones along the coast,

the Pudong area of Shanghai wasdeclared open for development inApril 1990, the first such area withinthe limits of a large city. This opening-up ran counter to the hitherto domi-nant planning imperative of limitedurban growth. Since then, China’slarge cities have grown to competewith Singapore and Hong Kong as‘regional central cities’ in the worldurban hierarchy. Responding to thenew opportunities, city governmentsrevised their mid-term strategic plans.Beijing in its 1993 master planannounced its intentions of becoming‘a modern international city’: plannersunveiled visions of a metropolis withworld-class infrastructure and impor-tant financial and economic functionsin the Asia-Pacific region.

Industry to servicesThere were no modern industries in

the court city of Beijing before 1949. Bythe end of the 1970s, large-scale indus-

trial development had transformed Bei-jing into the centre of northern Chineseheavy industry and the country’s lead-ing economic centre. With the onset ofmarket forces in the era of reform, thetraditional sectors of the state-ownedeconomy, especially manufacturing, fellinto decay. In the 1990s, around620,000 Beijing residents lost theirjobs in the manufacturing sector.

The tertiary sector was the main ben-eficiary of the changing economy: itscontribution to GDP in the Beijingurban area (excluding counties)reached 59.6 per cent in 2000. WhileBeijing’s economic growth laggedbehind Shanghai and Tianjin, sectoralshifts in the economy were more pro-nounced in the capital than in thecoastal cities. During the period 1990-2000, the service sector – includingsocial services, scientific research andtechnical services, real estate, banking,and insurance – spawned 500,000 newemployment opportunities.

Contemporary Beijing developed onthe foundations of the ancient city ofthe Ming-Qing Dynasty. Since 1949,the urban area has expanded around

the old city following the ‘ring uponring’ (concentric zones) model. Prior tothe 1980s, the institute and college dis-tricts made up the north-western sub-urbs while the industrial areas com-prised the south-eastern suburbs.Commercial institutions were mostlylocated in the old city. While a CentralBusiness District as such did not exist,three historically important retail cen-tres and a number of lesser onesbecame the nodal points for a growingnetwork of roads around the ForbiddenCity. In the 1980s, new retail and busi-ness districts were built along the thirdring road.

Top-down transformationIn the late 1980s Beijing launched a

large-scale urban renewal programmeextending to the outer suburbs. Thebusiness sector was the key beneficiaryof this process. While new housingestates were built, poorer residentswere forced to relocate to the suburbs.Retail, business and financial centressprung up in concentric zones of thecity. By the end of the 1980s, a woodedgreen belt and ten newly built regions

along a planned fifth ring road encir-cled the central city.

In the 1990s, the newly constructedurban pattern was composed of the tra-ditional central area, transformed intoa service area; four sub-centres (theCBD, Zongguancun Core, OlympicPark, and Financial Zone); and twoindustrial belts (see diagram). Of thetwo industrial belts, one is a high tech-nology belt along the fifth ring road, theother a modern manufacturing beltalong the sixth. Manufacturing movedto the ‘satellites’ and now forms a newbelt surrounding the central city. Zong-guancun Science Park, China’s ‘siliconvalley’, expanded into ‘one zone of fiveparks’ surrounding the central city. Inthe outer-suburbs, nine developmentareas, including the seven square kilo-metre Beijing Economic TechnologyDevelopment Zone, were set up alongthe sixth ring road in 2000.

Beijing’s far-reaching spatial trans-formations are the result of govern-ment policies emanating from both themunicipality and district or county lev-els of the administrative hierarchy. Asthe planned urban transformations

mainly aimed to accommodate eco-nomic development and moderniza-tion, they gave rise to additional gravespatial adjustments elsewhere. Therecession in the traditional manufac-turing sector brought about risingunemployment and poverty. As manu-facturing dwindled in the city centre, itrelocated to the suburbs. As new sub-centres grew up on the outskirts of thecity core, the urban area swelled, fol-lowing the ‘ring upon ring’ model.Meanwhile in the old city, urban renew-al efforts often impede or annul preser-vation efforts as economic concernsprevail over socio-cultural and histori-cal ones. <

Huang Shizheng is an associate researcher

of urban geography, urban development

strategy and policy at the Institute of Urban

Studies, Beijing Academy of Social Sciences,

China.

[email protected]

[email protected]

The author extends appreciation to

Mrs Xiao Yizhuo for drawing the

diagram and for valuable sugges-

tions in translating this paper.

Author’s note >

Beijing: the city centre and its suburbs in the 1990s

Map

by

Mrs

Yiz

hu

o X

iao

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By Leeke Re inders

Throughout the past two decades, a remarkable processof urbanization has been taking place in parts of China,

where regional centres are developing into global junctions.With the substantial scale and pace of these developmentsthe local importance of these centres has become complete-ly overshadowed by the repercussions of their new interna-tional orientation. Numerous animal metaphors are used tointerpret current urban developments in China and otherparts of the Pacific Rim. Analogies with dragons (the Chi-nese dragon), tigers (the four fast-growing Asian economies),and frogs (mega-urban sprawl development), somehow sug-gest the astonishment of the Western observer, who mainlysees the growth of Asian cities as a spontaneous and unbri-dled natural organic process. Indeed, many want us to believethat a whole new urban landscape of mega-cities and conur-bations is taking shape, surpassing existing definitions ofcity and urbanity.

The recent urbanization of China is a continuing process,rapid and arbitrary, initiated and controlled by the Chinesestate. For a long period the Communist Party actively sloweddown the growth of cities, as the city was considered a threatto the sovereignty of the state for geo-political and militaryreasons. In 1978, however, a series of economic reforms wereformulated, including the selection of four Special Econom-ic Zones and, at a later stage, several ‘open cities’, ‘open eco-nomic regions’, and ‘special economic and technologicalzones’. A phased transition from a socialist to a liberal econ-omy was set in motion, drastically affecting the Chineseurban landscapes. Three interrelated processes of urbaniza-tion, modernization, and globalization, namely, a relentlessurban population growth of 200 million people, the con-struction of 450 new cities, and rapidly growing flows of peo-ple, capital, ideas, and artefacts, had marked repercussionson the public space in Chinese cities in various ways.

Kunming, located on a plateau 1,920 metres above sealevel, is a city of 3.5 million inhabitants in south-west China,near the border with Laos, Burma, and Vietnam. The city hasa long history of intercultural encounters and confrontations.The city had been threatened by the armies of the Tangdynasty, was rebuilt by the Mongolian prince Kubilai, andwas taken over by the Ming dynasty during the fourteenthcentury, and by the sultan of Dali in the nineteenth century.The French, who took control over Indochina, tried to capi-talize on the copper, tin, and lumber resources in the region.The city also functioned as a gateway to the Silk Route. Sincethe Second World War, when the allied forces installed a baseat Kunming, the city grew in size. Many industries werelaunched in and around the city, and it became home to astream of immigrants fleeing from the Japanese. Today thecity is marketed as a passageway for tourists, a ‘city of eter-nal spring’, set in clear blue skies, and the pristine naturalscenery of parks and lakes.

Over the past few years, however, the most drastic changeshave appeared. The city is in transition from communism toa ‘New Era’, as a recently realized hotel in Kunming is named.

An illuminating case in point is the area around Zhengy Lu,an amalgam of contrasting public places in the centre of thecity. The side street, leading to the main square and round-about (photo 1) is part of a Muslim district lined by two-storeyshophouses on both sides. The upper floors are used as livingspace; the ground floors as a commercial area. A walk throughthese kinds of streets is a rich social, visual, and sensual expe-rience: clouds of smoke escape from the drainage systems andsizzling frying pans fill the air with smells. There is a fluenttransition between the inside and outside area of the shop-house. Outside space is used for the display and storage of eat-ables, and the preparation of meals. These meals and drinkscan be had inside the shops and in part of their outer area.Multifunctional, hot and steamy; it is streets like these thatsatisfy notions of a ‘typical’, lively Asiatic urban realm.

China is in transition. During the past two decades a new urban landscape came into existence, which seemsto have severe consequences on the character and function of public space. This article throws light on theChinese city as a transitional object, presenting a short case study on the way processes of modernization andglobalization affect the public domain of Kunming.

Research >China

From Muslim Street to Brilliant PlazaConstructions of Urban Space in Kunming

When you turn the corner a totally different world appears(see photo 2). Over the last ten years the state has initiatedthe construction of a whole new city centre, consisting ofshopping malls, warehouses, luxury apartment buildings,offices, banks, hotels, billboards, and fast-food chains. Thesephysical elements are designed on the basis of what mightbe called a Chinese version of modernistic architecture, com-prising facades of blue plate glass, white-tiled exteriors, tri-angular-shaped mirrored buildings, and complexes toppedwith pagoda replicas. The roof of Brilliant Plaza, which is illu-minated by fluorescent lights in the evening, resembles anineteenth-century European passage. Widened and height-ened roads and sidewalks paved with large marbleized pan-els traverse this area. In Kunming a new retail trend has beenset in motion. Whole new shopping neighbourhoods havebeen created, including a Wal-Mart and a Price Smart, amembers-only shopping mall. A new shopping mall, whichwill accommodate different European and American ‘flavourzones’, meant to guide the future tastes of new Chineseurbanites, is under construction in central Zhengyi Lu.

Notably, these drastic physical transformations bring aboutrelatively small social changes. Young girls stroll along thewide boulevard on platform shoes, mobile phones withinreach and young crowds hang out around Kentucky FriedChicken, where fifteen servers welcome the guests. For mostof the day, however, the employees in the shopping arcadesoutnumber the customers. The modern city is a state-spon-sored project, in which few are able to participate. Amidstthe changed material and symbolic decor, young Chinese aregiving shape to their version of a Western-style metropolis.Inside the glass-panelled entrance of Brilliant Plaza a manpauses to expel his saliva into a gleaming new litter basket:a cultural habit adapted to new circumstances. <

Leeke Reinders, MA is an urban anthropologist, working at the OTB

Research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies, Delft

University of Technology (TU Delft). His research topics include the

social production and construction of space, and processes of urban

restructuring and social-spatial segregation.

[email protected]

1 Public space in a

side street off of

Zhengy Lu,

Kunming.

2 Promenade in the

shopping district on

Zhengy Lu, Kunming

Bo

th p

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Leek

e R

ein

der

s

In recent years China’s main cities have developed ‘electronic roads’: places where computerrelated shops, workshops, and information technology (IT) offices are concentrated. The mostfamous of these are located in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. That Nanjing also ranksamong the top IT cities in China is less well known. What is behind Nanjing’s electronic roadand how successfully does it compete with its rivals? Are electronic roads becoming dynamicdrivers of urban development in China? Is innovation, an important source of urban economicdynamism, taking place in Nanjing’s cluster of IT activity?

Zhujiang ElectronicRoad, Nanjing, China

By Meine P ieter van Di jk

Nanjing, with roughly 5.3 million inhabitants, is thecapital city of Jiangsu province and an important busi-

ness centre in eastern China. Nanjing’s per capita incomewas USD 1,998 in 1999, compared to the national averageof USD 840 (World Development Report 2002). The city ishome to several famous television manufacturers: NanjingHuafei, Suzhou Philips Electronics, and Nanjing PandaElectronics Group. Jiangsu province provides a favourableenvironment for IT activities; the manufacturing of elec-tronics is booming. Jiangsu exported 1.25 million TV setsworth USD 115 million in 2000, 135 per cent more than in1999. This growth is attributed to three factors: techno-logical innovation, research of world markets, and invest-ment from overseas.

In 1989 Nanjing municipality decided to construct an elec-tronic road in the city centre. Upon gaining greater autono-my in 1992, the municipal government began to implementeconomic policies favourable to small and medium-sizedenterprises. In due course over 1,000 IT and IT-related enter-prises found an address on Zhujiang Road and its adjacentstreets. Local government encouraged this concentration bybuilding and reserving ‘enterprise buildings’ for IT compa-

nies and related service providers such as accountants, clean-ers, and security guards.

The total industrial product of the firms clustered alongZhujiang Electronic Road was a modest USD 321 million in1998, comprising just over 3 per cent of Nanjing’s total prod-uct of USD 10.6 billion. This figure, and the contribution ofIT companies to Nanjing’s economy, grew by 40 per cent in1999 (Nanjing Science Committee, 1999). With active sup-port from different levels of government – including theestablishment of technology industry zones around the city– the upward trend seems set to continue.

The nature of the firms clustered on Zhujiang Road ismixed. One can find regular sellers of specific software andhardware, specialized firms providing hospital informationsystems and software for systems integration, companiesrepairing monitors and computer systems. Due to the pro-motional efforts of municipal and district governments,about two-thirds of the enterprises are private; some are col-lective firms and 6 per cent are state owned. One out of everytwenty is a joint venture, most commonly between a gov-ernment-owned enterprise and a foreign partner supplyinghard or software. There are also foreign joint ventures suchas the one between Philips and a Korean firm producing TVscreens. Many entrepreneurs along Zhujiang Road are ambi-

Research >China

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By Hara ld Le i sch

Urban planning, or the shaping ofthe city, is not a transparent

process in Hanoi. Not even the plan-ners themselves seem to know what isgoing on and changes in the city areoften far from what the authoritiesplanned. Although most higher gov-ernment officials are graduates of for-eign universities or have attended train-ing courses abroad, their ideas forurban development seem very limited.Most of them seem stuck in the old sys-tem, which intended to provide equaland simple housing for all and was con-servative rather than innovative. Otherconstraints are that ‘[…] urban planningand development in Vietnam is still atthe stage of trial-and-error’, as the direc-tor of the National Institute of Urbanand Rural Planning puts it (Chinh2001: 9), and that government’s wish-es differ remarkably from the realisticstarting points. Some examples serveto illustrate this.

Land speculation and urbanhousing

All land in Vietnam belongs to thestate. However, it can be allocated toorganizations, households, or individ-

uals. The revised Land Law of 1998grants land users five rights: of conver-sion, transfer, inheritance, mortgage,and lease. Although at present the sys-tem of land registration is still not com-plete with about 85 per cent of the coun-try’s urban households lacking some orall required legal documents, land spec-ulation is very high in urban areas.Between 1995 and 2001, land pricestripled in some districts of Hanoi, witha market price five to seven times theregulated price in the centre and aboutthree times that price in the urbanfringes (Toan 2001: 83).

Local individuals and investors arenot the only ones active in land specu-lation. The Chinese-led Ciputra-Groupfrom Indonesia, for example, alreadycheaply acquired about 360 ha of landclose to the West Lake, one of the mostattractive residential areas, many yearsago and could later reap high profitsfrom selling developed land and hous-es. As the Hanoi People’s Committeewas less patient, the Ciputra-Group hasbeen forced to develop at least 200 habefore the year 2006, and to finish theproject by 2010. State-owned construc-tion companies like Vinaconex and theHanoi Construction Corporation, bothbelonging to the Ministry of Construc-

the city’s infrastructure. In many pri-vate developments roads have not beenbuilt, and drainage and other basic serv-ices are inadequate (Forbes and Ke1996: 91f.). Most private constructorscare little about the master plan or otherregulations. Experts estimate that 80per cent of all private construction inHanoi is illegal. So far, the governmenthas remained aloof, since it was evidentthat the government could neither pro-vide the necessary houses nor effec-tively curtail illegal construction. How-ever, the housing problems of the poorremain unsolved. They cannot afford tobuild their own houses and prohibi-tively high rents render rental housesaffordable only for foreigners.

Planning vs market forcesUrban planners have clearly been

overtaken by the dynamic developmentthat started with Doi Moi and is char-acterized by a growing significance ofmarket forces. ‘Moving away from asocio-economic management systemthat was actually based on the principleof “equal distribution of poverty”, asso-ciated with the taboos and prejudicesagainst wealth which lead to wealthconcealment, people are now strivingtoward new “values” characterized bymottos of “self-help first”, “getting richby legitimate means”, “prosperous peo-ple and a strong country”’ (Luan andVinh 2001: 27).

Meanwhile, private individuals andinvestors, both local and foreign, arethrusting a modern (housing) lifestyleupon the population. As the influenceof the middle class burgeons at theexpense of the old bureaucratic stateclass ‘…different social impacts havebrought about a “transitional” urbanlife style in which a chaotic mixture ofnorms and values of urban social-cul-tural life have been imported andspread’ (Luan and Vinh 2001: 25).

Ideas for urban development, most-ly from foreign consultants, are few andfar between and lead to ubiquitous con-fusion. Social demands and market

Changing lifestyles and increased needs have led to remarkable urban changes in Hanoi.The Doi Moi reformation, changing a socialist system to a market-oriented one, led to socialstratification, to thinking in prestige terms, and towards social segregation in the city. Asland developers and construction companies have success at changing people’s lifestyles,housing has increasingly become a status symbol. Politics of equality, as reflected in the oldcityscape, has clearly had its day.

Research >Vietnam

The Government Plans, the People Act

forces are stronger than planning poli-cies. In fact, Hanoi is not developed byurban planners. Instead, the authori-ties mainly administer urban develop-ment, adjusting their plans accordingto whatever changes occur. Individuals,real estate developers, and even state-owned construction companies, whosework is now fully market-oriented,seem to be the real directors of urbanchange. They became active immedi-ately after the introduction of Doi Moi,while the authorities were still thinkingabout how to become active. <

References

- Chinh, Tran Ngoc, ‘Overview of urban

planning and development issues in Viet-

nam’, in: Institutional arrangement for

urban planning and development in Viet-

nam and Japan (Proceedings of the sym-

posium on 23 October 2001 in Hanoi –

unpublished), pp.4–9

- Forbes, Dean and Le Hong Ke, ‘A city in

transition – Socialist reform and man-

agement of Hanoi’, in: Jürgen Rüland

(ed.), The dynamics of metropolitan man-

agement in Southeast Asia, Singapore:

Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

(1996), pp.71–98.

- Luan, Trin Duy and Nguyen Quang Vinh,

Socio-economic impacts of ‘Doi Moi’ on

urban housing in Vietnam, Hanoi: Social

Sciences Publishing House (2001).

- Toan, Pham Khan, ‘Land administration

for urban development in Vietnam’, in:

Institutional arrangement for urban plan-

ning and development in Vietnam and

Japan (Proceedings of the symposium on

23 October 2001 in Hanoi – unpublished),

pp.79–86.

Dr Harald Leisch is a geographer, current-

ly working as coordinator of a collaborative

research programme in Vietnam adminis-

tered by the University of Hohenheim (Ger-

many). His current research interests lie

with social aspects of urban development,

urban ethnicity, and gated communities.

[email protected]

tion, develop their own plans for bigprojects in Hanoi.

Arguably, the private sector is mostimportant in housing development. Asprivate land tenure, construction, andinvestment was made possible in theDoi Moi era, individuals and real estatedevelopers exploited their opportuni-ties more rapidly than for any admin-istration to be able to follow or control.Already in the late 1980s, more thanhalf of new housing was in the privatesector. Collective housing units arebeing replaced by private houses, whichallow a higher quality of life and changethe monotonous architectural style(photo 1). ‘On the other hand’, Luan andVinh (2001, p.63) state, ‘newly builthouses along main traffic lines, thoughmodern and diversified, look like “ver-tical tube-houses” or “pole-like houses”as these houses are commonly built ona 50–60 square metres or even 20–30square metres land area and hold fouror five stories (photo 2). Their facades,normally three or four metres wide, area mélange of different architecturalstyles which break up the city’s archi-tectural space and planning and reflectthe social and physical disorder in thecurrent transformation of Ha Noi.’

Housing development is outpacing

2 Private housing

offers convenient but

expensive living

conditions.

1 Public housing

complexes from the

socialist times often

provide limited

space.

Bo

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Har

ald

Lei

sch

, 20

03

tious young men, eager to copy ideas and software to devel-op and expand their businesses. With two Chinese studentsI interviewed about fifty such entrepreneurs.

Through our interviews we learned that entrepreneurs inNanjing complain of the lack or very limited existence of rela-tions with universities and research institutes. This wasthought to hamper innovation. Many successful IT compa-nies dream of floating shares in the stock market, but this isnot easy. Entrepreneurs complain of petty corruption, suchas the obligation to wine and dine officials. While taxes arelow, they perceive the complex tax system to be a constrainton further development.

On the positive side, accountancy services offer advice ontax issues and help entrepreneurs with their paperwork. Localgovernment may also help enterprises to gain access to bankloans. Municipal and district authorities play an importantrole in developing Nanjing’s IT industry. According to theinterviewees, the advantages of this inner city cluster includemutual proximity, easy exchange of ideas, ample choice forcustomers, positive local government policies, and support-ing services in the business buildings.

Nation-wide competitivenessCentral government’s aim to develop Chinese IT translates

locally and regionally into severe competition betweendynamic IT clusters and centres across China. Many entre-preneurs stated that Nanjing’s network of enterprises lackscompetitiveness compared to similar clusters in Beijing,Shanghai, and Shenzhen. Underlying problems includeattracting gifted personnel with current wages; potentialemployees consider Beijing, Shanghai, or Shenzhen moreattractive. And while many companies feel the need to devel-op marketing strategies, many are unable to do so: ownerstend to be technicians with limited skills in marketing andmanagement. Relations with supporting institutions in thecity – universities and research institutes – are another prob-

lem. There is a trend to involve them in research and to askuniversities to supply employees; IT firms, however, laterkeep research institutes at arms-length. Local government,additionally, does little to bridge relations between the IT sec-tor and research institutes (their business culture and organ-ization vary greatly) in a systematic way. In short, Nanjing’slack of competitiveness at the regional, city, cluster, and enter-prise levels are interrelated and the general lack of competi-tiveness at the regional and city levels can only partially becompensated for by the advantages provided by the ZhujiangRoad IT cluster.

Almost every Chinese city and region aims to build up anIT centre. Some provincial or local governments provide sub-stantial benefits to investors. The national government andthose of the western provinces are actively promoting invest-ment in western China. Zhujiang Road notwithstanding, newstart-ups are easily lured by incentives provided elsewhere inthe country.

The development of the IT sector is a nation-wide phe-nomenon. China desires information technology and con-siders foreign direct investment – with the attendant capital,technology, and modern management methods – the bestway to obtain it. The logic is to conquer markets abroad andto assure economic growth at home.

Merciless competition at various levels notwithstanding,the IT sector is an important contributor to Nanjing’s devel-opment. The city’s IT sector, however, is currently not veryinnovative. Although the impact is still limited, the indirecteffects of a booming IT sector on Nanjing’s economy may besubstantial in the near future. <

Professor Meine Pieter van Dijk is professor of water services man-

agement at the UNESCO IHE Institute of Water Education in Delft

and IHS professor of urban management in emerging economies at

the Economic Faculty of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

[email protected]

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By Freek Co lombi jn

S ince the British founded Singaporein 1819 the city has been a trans-

portation hub and communicationcentre. After Independence (1965),export-led industrialization and a high-technology service industry have diver-sified the economy. The ever-expandingeconomy and growing population (2.7million people in 1990) of the limitedisland territory (roughly 600 square km)have demanded innovative measures.Land reclamation (taken up since the1960s) and the construction of high-risehousing and skyscraper offices couldreduce the pressure on land for only alimited amount of time.

Mega-urban development in the city-state took a decisive turn with the con-cept of the Singapore-Johor-Riau(SIJORI) Growth Triangle. Singapore-an Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yewlaunched this concept in 1989 at a timewhen the industrial development with-in the boundaries of the city-statereached its saturation point and when

costs of land and labour were risingsharply. The basic idea was that thethree regions pool their human andnatural resources in order to attract newinvestors. Each corner of the trianglewould put in its respective comparativeadvantage: Singapore its capital, tech-nical skills, and management; theMalaysian state of Johor its land andsemi-skilled labour; and the Indonesianprovince of Riau also its land and cheaplabour. In reality, SIJORI does not rep-resent a tripartite partnership but anarrangement by which Singapore’smega-urban growth can freely spill overinto the territories of its neighbours(Macleod and McGee 1996: 425). Sin-

six villages consisting of 2,200 familieswere relocated to make way for thefreshwater reservoirs (Anwar 1994:27–28, 31; Macleod and McGee 1996:429).

People’s responseSince Suharto resigned, the people

have felt free to rake over old coals. InJanuary 2000, demonstrators cut offthe energy supply to an industrial estateon Bintan. Police reinforcements wereimmediately flown in from Batam: oneoccupant of the powerhouse was shotdead. Immediately afterwards 40 com-panies contemplated leaving Bintan.Other demonstrators occupied a touristresort on Bintan, demanding that the1991 compensation of 100 rupiah persquare metre for their land, paid by theSalim Group, would after all beincreased to 10,000 rupiah per squaremetre. In 1991 the landowners con-cerned had grudgingly accepted thecompensation after pressure exerted bythe state: it was now revealed that theSingaporean investors had offered a farhigher price and there were questionsabout who had pocketed the price dif-ference. After the loss of the politicalprotection offered by the former Presi-dent, the Salim Group had come intodire financial straits and was less will-ing than ever to pay extra money. Aftera week in which tourist visits declinedby 85 per cent, the demonstrators werechased away from the resort. Environ-mental NGOs that express their worriesabout the sand quarries first and fore-most point to the Indonesian authori-ties that give out too many concessionsor do not stop illegal quarries. Singa-pore’s influential role yet remains inthe background. <

References

- Anwar, Dewi Fortuna, ‘Sijori: ASEAN’s

southern growth triangle; problems and

prospects’, Indonesian quarterly, volume

22, issue 1 (1994), pp.22–33.

- Grundy-Warr, Carl, and Martin Perry,

‘Growth triangles, international econom-

ic integration and the Singapore-Indone-

sian border zone’, in: Dennis Rumley et

al. (eds.), Global geopolitical change and

the Asia-Pacific; a regional perspective,

Aldershot: Avebury (1996), pp.185–211.

- Lindquist, Johan, The anxieties of mobility:

Development, migration, and tourism in the

Indonesian borderlands, Stockholm: Stock-

holm University, Department of Anthro-

pology (2002).

- Macleod, Scott, and T.G. McGee, ‘The Sin-

gapore-Johore-Riau growth triangle: an

emerging extended metropolitan region’,

in: Fu-chen, Lo, and Yue-man Yeung

(eds.), Emerging world cities in Pacific Asia,

Tokyo et al.: United Nations University

Press (1996), pp.417–464.

- Nur, Yoslan, ‘L’île de Batam à l’ombre de

Singapour; Investissement singapourien

et dépendeance de Batam’, Archipel 59

(2000), pp.145–170.

Dr Freek Colombijn is at present senior

researcher at the Royal Netherlands Insti-

tute of Southeast Asian and Carribean Stud-

ies (KITLV). His current research is on the

politics of housing in Indonesia between

1930 and 1960.

[email protected]

gapore was, and is, clearly in control: ittook the initiative, and it provided thecapital and management.

Fatal attraction? The encroachment of Singapore’s

mega-urban region into Riau started onBatam, the island just south of Singa-pore. A series of bridges connectsBatam to six other islands, which lie ina string to the south of Batam. Everyhalf-hour a speedboat leaves Singaporefor the thirty-minute ride to Batam,which has evolved as an industrial cen-tre and a tourist resort. The rise in thenumber of tourists in Batam is impres-sive: from none in 1983, via 60,000 in

1985, to 606,000 in 1991, 78 per centof whom Singaporeans and 10 per centMalaysians. In 1999, 1.14 million for-eigners arrived at Batam airport, thussurpassing Sukarno-Hatta airport inJakarta.

The island of Bintan is a freshwaterreservoir for Singapore; an underseapipe brings the water to the city. Bintanhas also been developed as a touristresort with 20 hotels, ten golf courses,and ten condominiums. Industrialestates can also be found on Bintan.

The other islands have more special-ized functions. The island of Bulan is acentre of agricultural production. It wasexpected to have about 400,000 pigsby 2000, enough to provide 50 per centof Singapore’s demand for pork. A croc-odile farm of 55,000 reptiles providesleather and meat. Chicken productionserves all the Kentucky Fried Chickenoutlets of the region. Bulan will, sure-ly, also become the world’s largest sup-plier of orchids. Karimun is used for oilstorage and shipyards, two pre-emi-nently space-consuming activities.Singkep will be developed into a centrefor ship-breaking yards. Over a hun-dred permits for sand quarries havebeen issued, spread over severalislands, large and small, and morequarries operate illegally (Grundy-Warrand Perry 1996; Macleod and McGee1996; Nur 2000).

The Indonesian government haslured foreign investors to the BatamEconomic Zone with inducementssuch as duty-free import of capitalequipment and duty free export ofexport-oriented production. Anotherattraction is that the Indonesian gov-ernment has nullified environmentalimpact laws for the island, so that Sin-gapore uses Batam as a depository forthe by-products of polluting industries,which are no longer allowed in the city-state itself, and a dump for dredged soilof dubious quality. Indonesia alsoaccepts the kind of entertainment thatSingapore prefers not to have under itsown roof: 5,000 prostitutes work onBatam. Hundreds of them are under-age girls, smuggled to Riau againsttheir will. The average tourist stay onBatam is 1.3 days, a typical weekendaway from Singapore complete withsex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll (Lindquist2002).

The Indonesian government thrustall these changes down the local peo-ple’s throats. Batam was placed underthe custodianship of the Batam Indus-trial Development Authority (BIDA),which remained outside the power ofregular local legislative bodies, and hadgained control of land through presi-dential decree. The Head of BIDA wasthe then Minister of Technology, J.B.Habibie, the most trusted favourite offormer President Suharto. In mostcases the Indonesian counterpart of theSingaporean investors was the SalimGroup, which again had very close con-nections with the Suharto presidency.The connection between the SalimGroup and the highest Indonesianauthorities helped them to acquireland: villagers were often pressed todecamp from their land with very littlecompensation. For instance, on Bintan

Chicks and Chicken:Singapore’s Expansion to Riau

Free

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mb

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[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

Research >Southeast Asia

The city-state Singapore has spilled over into its two neighbours, Malaysia and Indonesia.Singapore discovered in the Indonesian Riau Archipelago resources that are rarely foundnear the centre of mega-cities: cheap land and cheap labour. To what extent Singapore’spresence offers reciprocal benefits to Riau is the question. For example, Singapore has notonly moved the production of poultry for all Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets of the region toRiau, but also prostitution. This article will explore the consequences of Singapore’sexpansion for Riau.

A jet boat connecting

Singapore with

Batam

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By Greg Bankof f

The National Capital Region (NCR) is situated in a semi-alluvial floodplain encompassing a land area of 636

square kilometres, open to Manila Bay on the west and to alarge lake, Laguna de Bay, on the south-east. As such, it nowconstitutes a vast urbanized drainage basin that experiencesfrequent inundations from overflowing rivers and stormwa-ters, rendering the existing system of esteros, modified natu-ral channels constructed during the colonial period, inade-quate. Despite its vulnerability, however, rapid urbanizationcontinues unabated. Solutions are difficult to realize as themetropolitan area is currently divided into twelve cities andfive towns with a total population of 10,491,000 and a den-sity of 16,495 persons per square kilometre.

Any appreciation of flooding in the metropolitan area firstnecessitates an understanding of the role the twenty or sotyphoons that cross the Philippine ‘Area of Responsibility’each year have on the archipelago’s climate. The sudden andheavy rainfall that accompanies them is often associated withextensive flooding. While inundations affect all of the NCR,some areas are more vulnerable than others. About 20 percent of the capital is designated as flood-prone, with areas tothe east, south-east, and south, especially those adjacent toLaguna de Bay, acutely susceptible. In some particularlyexposed cities such as Muntinlupa and Taguig, all barangays(the basic unit of local government) are regularly inundatedand there is frequently a positive correlation between flood-prone areas and those cities and municipalities that have larg-er proportions of low-income residents.

Flooding has been a feature of daily life in Manila since atleast the nineteenth century, but the first recorded instanceof serious flooding dates to 1942. Major floods subsequent-ly occurred in 1948, 1966, 1967, 1970, 1972, 1977, 1986, and1988. The flooding caused by Typhoon Miding in 1986inflicted the most serious damage in recent years, with flood-waters extending to over 16 per cent of the total area of MetroManila. Matters have not improved much of late: thousandsof Metro Manila residents were stranded on the streets ortrapped in vehicles all night after heavy rains on 28 July 1995,

and major flooding incidents happened again on 28 May1996 and 18 August 1997. Over the past half-century, thesefloods have become both more extensive and more severe.Regularly inundated areas have spread from the low-lyingcoastal or riverine barangays to encompass the more subur-ban hinterland neighbourhoods, the newer urban develop-ments, and the shores of Laguna de Bay. Moreover, waterdepths have also steadily risen, making flooding a major haz-ard and prompting a recent newspaper article to quip that:‘Though the deluge mentioned in the Bible may be arguedas allegorical, the flooding that occurs in Metro Manila streetsafter a downpour is definitely not.’*

The extent of flooding has also been considerably aggra-vated in recent decades by land subsidence. Sediments thatunderlie river deltas have a high water content that is‘squeezed’ by the weight of succeeding deposits, a processthat is greatly accelerated when groundwater is extractedfaster than it can be replenished by natural recharge fromrain seeping back into the ground. Records taken at Manila’sSouth Harbour show that mean sea levels rose about 2 mil-limetres a year between 1902 and 1960, but that the subse-quent rate was about ten times faster. Such an increase can-not be explained as solely a consequence of global warmingand bears a marked correlation to the rise in groundwaterextraction. As the land around Manila Bay sinks and the levelof the sea rises, flooding has become more prevalent not onlyin the city but also in the surrounding provinces.

These climatic and environmental factors interrelate incomplex ways with the changes brought about as a result ofhuman activities to make Metro Manila flood-prone. Princi-pal among such developments is the size, density, and growthof the population. Since 1939, the number of people livingin the metropolitan area has risen from 993,889 inhabitantsto 10,491,000 (2000), an increase of over 10-fold. The sheerweight of numbers creates considerable pressure onresources and this, in turn, has substantial consequences onthe environment and intensifies both the severity and dura-tion of floods. Much of this population increase is attributa-ble to massive urban migration since the Second World War,as rural folk are attracted to Manila by higher incomes andgreater livelihood opportunities. Most of these people arepoor and cannot afford the rapidly increasing costs of land,housing materials, and construction. As a consequence, mostmigrants have to find accommodation in the informal hous-ing sector in neighbourhoods often situated on the urbanfringes of cities.

In Metro Manila, the banks of rivers, canals, and esteros fre-quently serve in this capacity. The resultant makeshift hous-ing often encroaches onto available waterways, blocking theaccess of maintenance personnel and equipment and, by agradual process of accretion, narrowing their capacity to han-dle discharge. It is estimated that squatters along the banksof the metropolis’ waterways now number some 164,000people, though the urban poor are not the only ones respon-sible for such encroachments as governmental, commercial,and industrial concerns also play a significant role. Nor isconstruction the only environmental problem related to thegradual infilling of the esteros: Metro Manila inhabitants dis-pose of about 6,050 tons of garbage daily (1995), of whichonly 71 per cent is collected and taken to landfills. Theremaining 1,750 or so tons are simply left on street corners,dumped on vacant lots, or thrown into waterways. Altogeth-er, this represents an amount of from 55 to 157 tons of solidwaste each day that clogs the network of drainage canals,poses a considerable risk to health, and greatly increases thelikelihood of flood.

After the widespread inundations of 1972, a major floodmitigation programme was undertaken that resulted in theerection of the first seven pumping stations, two floodgates,and four drainage mains between 1974 and 1978. In 1980,excavation of the 10-kilometre long Mangahan Floodwaydiversion channel was begun, linking the Marikina River toLaguna de Bay so as to use the lake as a temporary catchmentbasin in times of intense rainfall. Subsequently, the flow ofwater out of Laguna de Bay has been regulated by the con-struction of locks (Napindan Hydraulic Control Structure) tocontrol the reverse overflow into the lake through the rein-

forced channel of the Napindan River and alleviate floodingalong its shoreline.

There are three aspects of flooding in Metro Manila thatthis brief overview illustrates: firstly, the importance of anhistorical approach in understanding how hazard is gener-ated; secondly, the degree of interplay between environmentand society in creating risk; and finally, the manner in whichvulnerability is a complex construction. The notion that haz-ards are simply physical phenomena needs to be replaced byone that recognizes human agency as a major contributingfactor. The root causes of vulnerability lie in a variety of rela-tional exchanges; it is the dynamics between stakeholders(human agency and animal behaviour), the ecosystem(specifics of the environment), and nature (extreme physicalphenomena) that determine the increasing complexity ofsuch events. The construction of vulnerability to flood inMetro Manila, therefore, shows how societies and destruc-tive agents are very much mutually constituted and embed-ded in natural and social systems as unfolding processes overtime. <

Dr Greg Bankoff is a social and environmental historian of South-

east Asia who works on natural hazards and the role of disaster in

societal evolution. He recently completed a study of the effect of nat-

ural hazards on cultural formation entitled Cultures of Disaster:

Natural Hazard and Society in the Philippines (2003). Bankoff is

Associate Professor in the School of Asian Studies at the University

of Auckland, New Zealand.

[email protected]

Rather than regarding floods as purely physical occurrences that require largely technological solutions, suchevents can also be viewed as the result of human actions. Critical to discerning the nature of flooding is anappreciation of the ways in which human systems place people at risk in relation to the environment and toeach other, a causal relationship that is now mainly understood in terms of vulnerability. Only through aperspective that pays due attention to changes in topography, demographic growth, and urban developmentover time can the measure of flooding in Metro Manila truly be gauged. It is the interplay between three factors– history, nature, and society – that determines how the vulnerability of the city’s inhabitants is constructed.

Research >Southeast Asia

Vulnerability and Flooding in Metro Manila

* Afuang, B., ‘Floods and the City’, Philippine Star, 15

(2001), p. 290 (16 May: B4)

Note >

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

Met

ro M

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a D

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Flood prone areas in

Metro Manila.

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By Prat iwo

Two questions are prompted byJakarta’s expansion and the role

markets play in it. Firstly, is it possibleto build a new theory of urban designbased on this phenomenon in Jakarta?Or, secondly, is the city simply a mod-ern attainment of Le Corbusier’s Radi-an City or Ludwig Hilberseimer’s IdealCity, unplanned and unintended?

In the seventeenth century, Jakartawas established as a market place whencloves from the Moluccas and sur-rounding areas were brought there forsale. The city developed a reputation asa marketplace for selling and exportingcrops to the whole archipelago: duringthe colonial era the markets, whichwere scattered all over the city and out-side its walls, were under Chinese con-trol and were allowed to be open ononly one day of the week.

Today, Jakarta is a true shoppers’ par-adise. Cheap goods can be found inGlodok, Tanah Abang, and Mangga

Dua markets, Roxy Mas sells cell-phones, and both Dusit and ManggaDua Mall became specialized in com-puter hardware and software. Indeed,almost every neighbourhood in Jakartahas its malls where computers are soldand cheap illegal software can easily beobtained. Whereas some of the city’s 80shopping centres have specialized,other malls, such as Taman AnggrekMall supply a wide variety of productsand entertainment.

The old markets, Pasar Senen andPasar Tanah Abang, are now probablythe largest wholesale markets for elec-tronic wares, clothes, and other goodsin Southeast Asia, attracting merchantsfrom every part of the archipelago who,in turn, generate other economic activ-ities. Their economic importance isillustrated by the fact that, as a result ofthe fire at Pasar Tanah Abang in mid-February 2003, many clothes-relatedeconomic activities came to a haltthroughout Indonesia. More than5,000 kiosks, of which each was for

rent for 50 million rupiah, or EUR5,000, each year, were turned to ash.Probably as many as one million peo-ple – shopkeepers, coolies, salesmen,traders, and others who worked in thetextile industry – lost their jobs. A totalof 4 trillion rupiahs, or EUR 400 mil-lion, was lost with the fire (see Kompas22, February 2003, p. 1).

Above and beyond a classification ongrounds of sector, the markets can alsobe characterized according to their cus-tomers’ economic status. TamanAnggrek, for example, is a mall mainlyfor those with middle- and highincomes, who by and large come by car.This mall holds more floors for cars thanfor shops and parking is one of its mainsources of income. As opposed to spe-cialized malls, customers of variousincomes visit the Roxy Mas and ManggaDua Mall. The malls of Jakarta can alsobe classified according to the ethnicity ofits customers, correlating with therespective neighbourhoods’ ethnic com-positions. Whereas Taman Anggrek,

Mall Kelapa Gading, ITC Mangga Dua,and Pluit Mall mainly have Chinese cus-tomers, it is mostly non-Chinese whofrequent Block M Mall.

In addition to the present supply ofshopping centres and malls another 20shopping centres will soon be openedacross the city in the near future. Atpresent, crowded market places havecaused transportation problems. Notonly is the bus-dominated urban trans-port system far from effective, the trainnetwork connecting Jakarta to subur-ban areas, which is used by the low-income group is already overloaded inthe peak hours. People increasinglyuse their private car to get to work andthe ‘three-in-one-car’ scheme does lit-tle to curb traffic congestion. In theThamrin-Sudirman area, covered bythis scheme, drivers with less thanthree passengers found a loophole byoffering a couple of thousand rupiahs(less than a euro) for the ride. Manypoor serve as passengers several timesa day as the city government hasrecently taken harsh action againstsome other forms of informal employ-ment. Mega-urbanization and failureof the government to create sufficientformal sector employment have forcedpeople to peddle goods. Unfortunate-ly, in the Javanese New Year (Idulfitri),when the peddlers returned to their vil-lages, Sutiyoso, the governor of Jakar-ta, had their stalls raided and the ped-

dlers lost their chance to earn a living.The aforementioned development

projects have radically changed publicspace. Since many outdoor spaces havebeen made unpleasant due to parkedcars and traffic jams, a walk in a mallhas become the new Indonesian recre-ational activity. Many shopping centresare guarded by satpam (specialguardians) in order to make shoppersfeel secure on their mall strolls. Shop-ping has become the focus of Jakarta,and has developed as part of a long-existing ‘hedonistic’ lifestyle.

In the past decades many strategieshave been formulated for the develop-ment of Jakarta, yet every plan to estab-lish some kind of city order and controlhas failed. Only through proper lawenforcement can the city’s chaos anddisorder be changed and a workingurban plan, which will control the city’sdevelopment, be put into place. At pres-ent Jakarta is yet a place of negotiation,bargaining, and corruption, hence anurban plan to provide a liveable envi-ronment for the city dweller remains adistant goal. <

Dr Pratiwo is an urban and regional plan-

ner and is the director of the Research Insti-

tute for Constructive Habitat in Jakarta. His

present research is based on the role of the

traditional market in urban sustainable

development, in the Indonesian context.

[email protected]

Markets and Malls in JakartaJakarta, the largest metropolis in Southeast Asia and a province in itself, is divided into fivemunicipalities and headed by a governor. The city is a metaphor for modernity for the 200million people in the Indonesian archipelago. Its urban area has sprawled past its boundaries,incorporating smaller towns in the city’s outskirts, consisting of Bogor, Tangerang, andBekasi. Many workers living in these areas commute to the centre hence the number of peoplein Jakarta varies from over ten million in the evening to over twelve million during the day.Both massive movement and rapid expansion are characteristic of Jakarta’s mega-urbanization. One aspect that has recently become contentious is the conversion of tradecentres to shopping centres, or ‘new style of markets’, throughout the city.

Research >Southeast Asia

Research >Southeast Asia

By Johan S i las

I t seems expedient to discuss different models of urban-ization in order to gauge the specific situation in Greater

Surabaya. An overriding element applying to all models isthe interrelation between the host-city and neighbouringtowns and cities. Those seeking employment in the citiesdrive intensification (‘in-urbanization’), whereas investorsfrom the city, seeking to reap profits from cheaper land andlabour, drive expansion (‘ex-urbanization’). In-urbanizationtakes place when under-used areas or wastelands are put intouse. New migrants often transform these areas with theirsquatter constructions and by introducing hawking in pub-lic places. Clearly, city governments despise this type ofurbanization, which so often creeps upon them. Ex-urban-ization results when economic growth reaches beyond thecity limits. Large investors play an important role in it, cre-ating new suburbs and towns, while investments by lower-income migrants generate an urbanization process of dif-ferent quality and at a different scale.

Studies into ex-urbanization in Surabaya have revealedthree types of mega-urbanization around this city. Southward‘self-contained urbanization’, which can be found near theairport, depends on local support and involvement. In thesecond and most common type of ex-urbanization, whichhas a ‘strong link with and depends on the city’, the subur-ban area serves as part of the host-city. The third type, ‘cen-tred mega-urbanization’, basically occurs in small townsaround the main city that are independent but maintainstrong links with the host-city’s centre.

Both in-urbanization and ex-urbanization are crucial forthe future development of Surabaya, yet only when the localadministrative authority creates the right conditions willmutually beneficial economic cooperation result.

As Greater Surabaya’s growth has been mainly realizedthrough local investment with little central governmentinvolvement, a network of cities and towns has developed inwhich different land-uses can be observed. With this situa-tion there is only limited urban problems such as traffic con-gestion, flooding, and pollution.

Economic interest generates different types and forms ofdevelopment and, as such, is a dominant factor in forcing theurbanization process far beyond the city boundaries. Mean-while, non-economic intervention has also been transformedinto profitable economic ventures, such as the constructionof very low-cost housing in order to stimulate developmenton the periphery. New economic potential, such as the risingdemand for shrimps and prawns in East Asia and Europe,

stimulates urban expansion to the rural coastal areas. If com-munication in surface transport can be provided furtherexpansion will doubtlessly follow. The combination of roadand ferry services between Surabaya to the adjacent islandshas shifted the mega-urban frontiers as far outward as Sum-bawa and East Kalimantan. Simpler and cheaper movementof people, goods, and services than ever before has allowedmedium-size enterprises to do business in the outer areas.

As goods and services from the city easily penetrate deepinto the rural area, there are strong ecological repercussions(Reese 1992). People from rural areas also move to urban areasto seek better jobs and incomes. Some arrive well prepared,but most do not. Some stay for a limited time, most end-upstaying longer and become permanent residents. Comple-mented by the reformation and ‘democracy in learning’, urbanlife is deteriorating at such a rate that only harsh and uncom-promising actions by city government can keep the situationnormal. Pressured by unrest and conflict in many areas, morepeople are pushed to the cities with a laissez-faire policy, whichmakes the situation difficult to resolve. Would a better under-standing of mega-urbanization enable city governments todeal with the issue more adequately? Is it possible to maxi-mize the positive and reduce the negative impacts of mega-urbanization without eliminating the favourable options forthe underprivileged to improve their future livelihood?

We may conclude that in Surabaya the processes of inten-sification and expansion have led to different types of mega-urbanization. Local authorities have to create the optimalconditions for these processes to take a sustainable course.Mutually beneficial economic cooperation of the urbanparts and integral consideration of the ecological footprintof town and hinterland are crucial for further solid mega-urban development in general and in the region of Surabayain particular. <

Reference

- Reese, W., ‘Ecological Footprint and appropriated carrying capac-

ity’, Urbanization & Environment, Vol. 4 No. 2 (Oct. 1992).

Professor Johan Silas is a professor of housing and human settle-

ments at the Institut Teknologi 10 Nopember (ITS) in Surabaya.

[email protected]

After the abortive coup in 1965 and as Indonesia started to rebuild itself, cities such as Surabaya reformulateddevelopment plans to accommodate the need for growth beyond the administrative boundaries. Greatconstraints in spatial management necessitated the inclusion of neighbouring areas far beyond the city limits.Hence the planning region of GERBANGKERTOSUSILA (Gersik, Bangkalan, Mojokerto, Surabaya, Sidoarjo, andLamongan) was formed. Moreover, by means of local government law no. 22/1999 and the law on the balancedredistribution of national resources (no. 25/1999), local government has now acquired greater autonomy indrafting and approving local development plans without intervention by central authorities.

Greater Surabaya:The Formation of a Planning Region

The contrasting

urban landscape of

Surabaya.

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By Caro l ine Hughes

The strategies used by state officials to deal with the urbanpoor reflect these two faces of the city. An overarching

policy of infrastructural redevelopment for the city, knownas the Beautification Plan, envisages clean, wide boulevards,restored colonial mansions, parks, fresh air, and exercise. Italso encompasses official corruption, and the dispossessionof the urban poor. The twin practices of beautification andcorruption, pursued by the city authorities, serve a comple-mentary purpose: the strengthening of the state, and the dis-ruption of efforts by the poor to gain official recognition ascitizens of the city.

The treatment of squatters within Phnom Penh clearlybrings out the entanglement of these apparently distinctstrategies. The emergence of ‘anarchic’ (anatepetey) devel-opment by the urban poor, from 1991 onwards, offered asharp contrast to the strict controls on urban residence thatpertained in the socialist era. In 1975, the Democratic Kam-puchea regime infamously evacuated the city. The People’sRepublic of Kampuchea resettled Phnom Penh, by allocat-ing free housing to state officials, but maintained state own-ership of all property. In 1989, reforms offered rights of own-ership of city properties to their occupiers, thus aninflationary land market, in which large fortunes could bemade, was created overnight.

However, the complexity of the new land registrationprocess and a lack of regulation of the subsequent propertymarket permitted uncontrolled land appropriation by anyonewith the means to take it, during the early 1990s. A lack ofdemarcation between privatized and public land meant thattowns of squatters’ shacks mushroomed, without legal sanc-tion, on usurped plots of land in public parks or on river banksand dykes, and were subsequently bought and sold freely.

Many of the poorer residents of these anarchic develop-ments made attempts to gain recognition of their right toownership of the plots they purchased and inhabited. Often,the lodging of an application for the issue of an ownershiptitle was beyond their means, as it involved the payment offees and bribes to officials at five different levels of govern-ment. However, since registration of residence with localauthorities was required, many considered that by paying abribe and gaining a stamp in their family identification book,they had succeeded in gaining an officially-sanctioned rightto illegally appropriated or purchased land. Such rights, how-ever, were highly reliant upon the continued status and favourof the official in question. When powerful outside actors,such as property developers or visionary mayors, intervened,the brittle shelters of right and recognition constructed bythe urban poor became mere matchwood.

Sometimes literally. In May 2001, a large squatter area builton a patch of land by the Tonle Bassac river was burned tothe ground. Persistent rumours suggested that the fires had

been started deliberately and that fire fighters were underorders not to save the burning homes. What is unequivocal-ly the case is that the following morning, bulldozers, underorders from City Hall, came to clear the remaining housesthat had escaped the fire. Squatters protested briefly but wereevicted by police. Within weeks the area had been grassedover and re-designated as a public park. Resistance was alsoquelled by the offer of land in a new village to be built justoutside Phnom Penh.

Squatters, interviewed in 2001, recounted their experiencesof the corruption of local officials and their exploitation ofthe poor. One squatter family commented: ‘A group of vil-lagers whose houses were burned… haven’t got a house yetbecause they don’t know anyone working in the government.So they’ve got no land yet… But those who have relativesworking in the government have no difficulty getting land.’Another villager went further: ‘Those who have relativesworking in the government got two or three plots of land, sothey could sell some and make money.’ Donations of mate-rials to the squatters, by international agencies, were subjectto the imposition of ‘transport fees’ by local officials. Inter-viewees commented that any attempt to complain aboutunfair treatment would be disadvantageous – ‘We don’t wantto be thought of as rebellious. We are afraid that if we arethought of as rebellious, there’ll be some problem.’

The experience of the Tonle Bassac squatters illustrates thetwin strategies of corruption and beautification, and the waythese combine to strengthen the state at the expense of thepoor. This was achieved through confiscation and destruc-tion of the resources the poor had appropriated, and the dis-ruption of the strategies they had pursued to protect thesemeagre accumulations from the arbitrary intervention of thepowerful. Such strategies comprised the hundreds of privatenegotiations, connections, and recognitions that the poor hadpursued over the years, through the cultivation of personalrelationships with, and the bribing of, local officials.

Equally, the eviction strengthened the cohesion of the state,in line with the drive to modernization that the Cambodiangovernment pursued since the economic reforms of the late1980s. The reforms of 1989 awarded officials at all levels ofthe state apparatus opportunities to accumulate wealththrough corruption and rent seeking, and by this meansstrengthened their loyalty. From the late 1990s onwards, theerratic but profitable everyday operations of the state appa-ratus, in this respect, were increasingly overlaid by grandmodernizing schemes such as the Beautification Plan.

The two strategies are symbiotic. Schemes such as theBeautification Plan could not be implemented without thestrengthened cohesion of the state. At the same time, theseschemes offer rent seeking bonanzas for officials. Theyheighten the uncertainty which the poor must negotiatethrough the pursuit of official connections; they weaken sol-idarities within the ranks of the poor; and they increase thepossibility of state surveillance. Together, these twin strate-gies undermine the capacity of the poor to develop copingstrategies that, over time, could coalesce into customaryrights, and into collective action to defend these.

At a time when a growing mood of protest amongst the pooris discernible, beautification also offers a welcome opportu-nity to gain control of the city’s landscape, and to stamp it withthe imprint of the ruling party. The period surrounding the1998 elections saw unprecedented public demonstrations inthe city. Trade unions, whose members populated squatterhousing areas, organized prominent protests in Cambodia’snew garment industry. Responses to such protests have beenviolent. A protest in March 1997 outside the National Assem-bly Building was the target of three hand grenades, allegedlythrown by a member of the military, killing twenty and injur-ing up to 100 demonstrators. Post-election protests in 1998were broken up by armed riot police, with some deaths.Attempts by the Sam Rainsy Party to raise a memorial to thosekilled by the 1997 grenade attack were violently resisted bypolice in 2000. In late 2002 and early 2003, violence againststrikers on picket lines in the city was widely reported.

However, via the Beautification Plan, the nascent politi-cization of the main protest site – a park outside the Nation-al Assembly Building known by opposition activists as‘Democracy Square’ – has been quashed through a redesignof city space. The National Assembly is to be moved to a newpurpose-built building on a site opposite the Hun Sen Parkdown the road. A new city square, purpose-built for the hold-ing of officially sanctioned demonstrations, is currently underconstruction – on a small peninsular of land across the TonleSap River, which is being developed as a tourist site and con-vention centre, far away from the centre of government.

Whereas the early, deregulated, and voracious privatizationof property in Phnom Penh put the urban poor at the mercyof corrupt local officials, it also allowed the poor to appropri-ate limited resources and recognition, in return for a streamof small payments to those with locally relevant powers. Beau-tification swings the initiative back towards the state, by per-mitting the arbitrary and unpredictable disruption of suchstrategies, in a manner which continues to benefit corruptlocal officials, but which renders the poor ever more helpless.

At the same time, Beautification offers a respectable faceto the outside world and to middle class city-dwellers, help-ing to legitimize a state much criticized for its venality. Thechief architect of Beautification, Phnom Penh’s erstwhilemayor, Chea Sophara, portrayed the plan as an effort to makethe city safer and healthier, characterizing squatter areas asstinking, filthy, and crime-ridden – playing to middle classfears of a criminal class and an influx of ‘Vietnamese’ pros-titutes. Indeed, the rhetoric of the plan awards no space tothe poor at all – Chea Sophara, interviewed in 2001, com-mented: ‘We want to keep a high standard of living by notencouraging the poor to live in the city.’ This attitude wasexemplified by the removal of street-side hawkers and thethreat to round up and deport street children to the provinces,before the ASEAN Tourism Forum. Yet the rhetoric relies,arguably, on the knowledge that rural-urban migration con-tinues, and that those sporadically deported from the citymust, of necessity, find a way to return. A year after the depor-tation of the Tonle Bassac squatters, a dearth of jobs near theirnew village meant that many of the poor abandoned it, andreturned to the city.

Beautification offers a vision of a healthy, crime-free citycreated through the regulation of space, the exclusion of mis-fits, the disruption of personal links with the state, and thedisconcerting reorganization of places that had acquired,however briefly, political resonance as sites of resistance. Itundermines the strategies used by the urban poor – privatenegotiation and public protest – to attempt to claim resourcesand rights for themselves in the city. Yet, it depends upon anongoing relationship of corruption, exploitation, and abusebetween state and society. The violence of the anti-Thai riot-ing that broke out in January 2003 was arguably a displace-ment into patriotic anger of the ugly side of Beautification –the ongoing problems of poverty and personal insecurity.Phnom Penh’s cosmopolitan and beautified facade concealsa troubled and frightened soul. <

Reference

- Heder, Steve and Judy Ledgerwood (eds.), Propaganda, Politics and

Violence in Cambodia: Democratic Transition under United Nations

Peace-keeping, London: M.E. Sharpe (1996).

Dr Caroline Hughes is a lecturer at the University of Nottingham,

United Kingdom, who researches responses to international democ-

racy promotion in Southeast Asia. Her recent monograph is enti-

tled, The Political Economy of Cambodia’s Transition.

[email protected]

Phnom Penh: Beautification and Corruption

In the last week of January 2003, the ASEAN Tourism Forum saw 1,200 delegates converging upon thescrubbed and beautified city of Phnom Penh. In the same week anti-Thai rioting culminated in the sacking ofthe Thai embassy and the destruction of Thai businesses. These two events reflect two apparentlycontradictory faces of Phnom Penh. The city appears at the same time to be an emerging and orderly model ofauthoritarian developmentalism, and the arena of an ongoing struggle on the part of the poor and destitute toclaim recognition and resources from a venal and unregulated state.

Research >Southeast Asia

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

From Slum to Park:

Grassing over the

site of the Tonle

Bassac squatter

settlement, following

the fire of May 2001.

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Migrants, Squatters, and EvictionsDelhi’s phenomenal growth rate of around 50 per cent per decade since India’sindependence (1947) is indicative of its lasting appeal to new migrants. The city has becomeone of the most populous cities in Asia, its urban agglomeration counting almost 13 millioninhabitants in 2001. It is striking that up until 1980 the largest growth spurts occurred inthe central parts of the city, while from then onwards a substantially greater populationincrease has been recorded in the fringe areas. Which internal population movements havetaken place; which policies have been pursued in this respect; and which new socio-spatialorder has emerged?

Research >South Asia

By Hans Schenk

The first wave of immigration toDelhi followed Partition when no

less than 500,000 Sikh and Hindurefugees fled to Delhi, then home toone million inhabitants. The refugeecamps that were then set up in the city’scentre and on its periphery graduallydeveloped into housing colonies. Fromthe 1950s onwards an increasing num-ber of rural migrants followed, mostlyfrom the densely populated and poorstates of North India. Most of themsought jobs in small industrial andservice enterprises in central parts ofthe city, and naturally tried to find shel-ter in squatter settlements close to theirplaces of work. By the late 1950s,almost 300,000 people lived in suchsettlements.

Against the background of the largerefugee population and the swellingstream of impoverished migrants, a20-year master plan for Delhi’s futureland use and development was initiat-ed and implemented from 1962onwards. This master plan included

the resettlement of central city squat-ters in arranged colonies, not very farfrom the city core and places of work.The aim was to relieve the centre andprovide better infrastructural ameni-ties. Lack of funds, due to the cost ofland, amenities, and housing, led tothe scheme’s failure, and the numberof squatter settlements rose from about300 in 1961 to over 1,100 in 1973. Dur-ing the Emergency (1975-1977), whendemocratic and legal rights were sus-pended in India, over 700,000 centralcity squatters were forcibly evictedfrom the centre and removed from thecity to the urban periphery. Few of theevicted squatters were actually reset-tled; many were simply dumped out-side the urban limits.

At the end of the Emergency, thenumber of squatter settlements had sig-nificantly decreased to 70 in 1977. Thesubsequent long period of inactivityregarding city squatters led to a gradualincrease of the number of illegaldwelling complexes: by the early 1990sthere were, again, over 1,000 of them,in which 20 to 25 per cent of the urban

population lived. This increase wasmainly due to the reluctance to enforcethe reckless Emergency-style evictions,which had caused massive unrest;vague and inconsistent policy hadencouraged the urban squatters to set-tle back in the centre of Delhi.

Squatters and the NewEconomic Policy

From the 1990s onwards a new waveof evictions took place, marking achange of policy that can be explainedby the macro changes in the politicaleconomy of India. In the face of inter-national pressure, India was forced toreduce its budget deficits and struc-turally adjust its economy. Many exist-ing protective measures, favouring Indi-an industries but discouraging foreigninvestors, were partially or completelywithdrawn. India’s New Economic Pol-icy included invitations to foreign com-panies to invest in the Indian economy,either alone or under a joint venturewith an Indian entrepreneur.

Foreign investors were attracted toIndia’s major cities, initially in particu-

lar to Mumbai (Bombay) and then shift-ing to Delhi. Company headquartersand expatriate staff established them-selves in (central) Delhi, as proximityto various ministries proved usefulwhen dealing with lengthy bureaucrat-ic procedures. The factories properwere often opened in new industrialestates in neighbouring states, thustrading off cheap land and poor infra-structure. Local authorities in Delhidecided that foreign investors wouldprefer a ‘clean and orderly’ environ-ment, at least in the relevant parts of thecentre of the city.

This explains the renewed focus onthe eviction of squatters. The wish toclean up and beautify the central citywas based on the perception that squat-ter settlements were an unhealthy eye-sore and a nuisance, as were the manythousands of workshops, informalsmall-scale industrial and service units,and pavement encroachments.

A growing riftThe resettlement activities of the

1960s-1970s and those of the 1990sshow some similarities. In both periodssquatters were forced to leave the cen-tral parts of the city and settle on theperiphery, away from work sites. Dif-ferences prevail, however. In the 1960s-1970s, Delhi was a rather small city: itsperiphery at a modest distance fromworkplaces. In the 1990s, some reset-tlement colonies could only be reachedafter a two-to-three-hour bus ride at thecost of half-a-day’s urban earnings.Thus, the impact of the more recentforced resettlement to the urbanperiphery was much more severe.

In many of the new colonies jobscannot be found at a reasonable dis-tance. In some others, local jobs, forexample in the factories of foreign com-panies, are mostly for skilled workersand not for the urban poor who hadpreviously survived in informal sectorjobs. For women, employment is evenharder to get; many were employed inthe households of the city’s middle andupper class, and can no longer reachtheir workplace. Whereas the geo-graphical scale of segregation in the1960s-1970s allowed the urban poor toearn a living in the city centre andremain connected with it, life on the

modern-day periphery paints a cruelpicture of the realities of geographicalsegregation.

Spatial segregation is enforced byanother process. Between the 1960sand the 1990s, the city’s middle andupper class tended to move out of thecentre to the south and south-west.Resettlement colonies were almost alllocated to the south-east, east, andnorth-west. Attempts to house the mid-dle classes north of the city have com-pletely failed. Today it is said that anydeveloper intending to develop a hous-ing estate for the urban affluent in thewest, north, and east is committingcommercial suicide, and that any non-governmental organization or otherconcerned agency wanting to protectthe few remaining squatter settlementsin the south will be silenced by brutalforce: the south is for the elites, theother areas for the poor. (see map).

In spite of plans and intentions, thelevel of services in resettlement coloniesis poor, even poorer than in the remain-ing inner-city squatter settlements. Thewater and electricity supply, and the pro-vision of communal toilets, are limited,and improvements can hardly be expect-ed under the structural adjustmentregime of the New Economic Policy.Social provisions relating to health andeducation are lacking for the same rea-sons, while even security of tenure is notguaranteed. Hence, one can specificallyspeak of a north-western, eastern, andsouth-eastern degenerated periphery inDelhi. Those landless labourers andmarginal farmers from northern India,who could no longer survive in their vil-lages and fled to Delhi, have ultimatelybecome trapped there. The urbanauthorities dumped them once more,into a no-man’s land between the cityand the countryside. Evidently, they areneither wanted nor needed in either partof India. <

Dr Hans Schenk is affiliated to AGIDS,

Department of Social Geography, Universi-

ty of Amsterdam. He has been engaged in

urban Asian issues both as a researcher and

consultant, focussing on living and housing

conditions of the urban poor, urban man-

agement, and fringe development in major

Indian cities and Vietnam.

[email protected]

Due to specific migration patterns out of Central Delhi, segregated urban

and peripheral urban zones emerged.

Marginal Suburbs,

2002

Street scene, 2002

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Tehran: Paradox CityOver two hundred years, decreasing mortality rates and an influx of migrants transformedTehran from a 7.5 square kilometre city of 15,000 inhabitants into a mega-city of ten millionsprawling over 600 square kilometres. Having subsumed flatlands to the east and west andseventy villages on its adjacent mountain slopes, today’s Tehran varies 800 metres inelevation from south to north. The city’s topographical variation is paralleled by the markeddifferences in class and life-style of its inhabitants. All of Iran’s urban and pastoral nomadicareas are represented in Tehran’s population, as are the country’s religious minorities:Zoroastrians, Jews, Armenians, and Assyrian Christians.

Research >Gentral Asia

By Sohe i la Shahshahani

To the differences in culture andgeographical origin of Tehran’s

inhabitants, we can add political ten-sions: modernization, nationalism,monarchy and religion collided in themodern city. Tehranis have witnessedtwo revolutions, the toppling of twomonarchies, and a number of assassi-nations. Urban life has thus come tobe associated with hope for progress,but also with fear of tension andchaos.

The same can be said aboutTehran’s history of urban develop-ment. While early changes includedthe destruction of the old city’s gatesand fortifications, these were replacedwith the new symbols of modern gov-ernance, massive ministerial and mil-itary buildings. Universities, banks,boulevards and huge statued squareswere built, the squares and the uni-versities containing elements of oppo-sition to religious authority. Architectswere either brought in from Europeand the United States, or they wereIranians who had studied abroad orhad graduated from Dar al-Fonun(Polytechnic of Iran, established 1851).

Tehran was built to different archi-tectural tastes without a cohesiveurban plan. As the city outgrew its pre-vious limits, land ownership emergedas a serious problem. In 1918 the firstlegal act regarding land registrationwas passed. The transition from tra-ditional ownership following Shari’aor royal decree to modern legal own-ership became the source of wide-spread corruption. The monarchy, mil-itary, various ministries, banks, thereligious foundation of owqaf, andinfluential people registered millionsof square meters of land under theirnames.1

In 1951 oil was nationalized. Fol-lowing the defeat of the nationalistPrime Minister Dr MohammadMossadeq, the royal tendency was tochannel oil wealth to the urban areas,particularly Tehran, at the expense ofinfrastructure for agriculture andindustry. In 1968 Tehran’s firsturbanization plan, the Tehran Com-prehensive Plan (TCP), was officiallyapproved in parliament. A twenty-fiveyear project proposed by Iranian andAmerican firms, the TCP identifiedproblems of density in the city cen-tre, pollution, commercial activities,transportation, unemployment, andmigration into the city. The solutionswere ambitious: the TCP extendedthe city limits to reduce concentra-tion in built-up spaces, and estab-lished ten districts of 500,000 peo-ple, each with its commercial,industrial and high-rise buildings. Itfurther sub-divided areas into neigh-bourhoods of 15-30,000 people withtheir own schools and facilities.

Land speculation and construction,however, remained among the mostprofitable activities in the country. The

legal system related to land continuedto allow for its appropriation while itsambiguities encouraged corruption.The increase in the price of oil in the1970s induced Mohammad Reza Shahto dream of a grand civilization forIran’s future. The project of Shahes-tan Pahlavi, with ministries,embassies, cultural and recreationalcentres, built on 554 hectares of landand employing 189,000 people, wasto symbolize the future modern city inthe heart of Tehran.2

Eleven years after the Tehran Com-prehensive Plan, in 1979, the IslamicRevolution shook the city. Two meas-ures were of prime importance informing the face of the city in the yearsto come. One was an oral decree byImam Khomeini that all Tehrani hadthe right to possess a house. Thisignored the city limits set by the TCPand, overnight, small houses were builton the outskirts of the city. The secondwas the government’s decree, in 1989,after the war with Iraq, that differentsectors of the government had tobecome economically self-sufficient.This encouraged the municipality toallow, and then fine, illegal buildings.Fines thus became permits and build-ings were constructed in ways thatwere not permitted by law.

Old gardens and mansions weredestroyed to clear space for massivenew apartment blocks. Fines for cut-ting trees or building high-risesbrought colossal amounts of money tothe municipality. In modernizing thecity, the municipality was in the para-doxical situation of planting trees andflowers to make small parks whilebenefiting from the destruction of the

‘lungs of Tehran’, the gardened north-ern section of the city. Previously thegardens had brought cool weatherdown from the mountains, sweepingpollution into the lowlands beyond thecity.

Pollution, traffic congestion and acci-dents thus became facts of daily life.Painting pedestrian crossings white,allowing advertisements to appear onbuses and walls, placing billboardsalong highways and lining streets with

lights and colourful flags for festivitiesadded to the transformation of the city,but not necessarily in welcome ways.Hardly any street-names from beforethe revolution remained, making peo-ple recall previous names or ponderbefore giving directions. When trans-formation arrives with paradox, itbecomes more incomprehensible:When new mosques lose their domes,and new high-rise buildings gaindomes, one loses the bearings of iden-tity. When Tehran University remainsthe site of Friday prayer 24 years afterthe Revolution, one wonders about thesymbolic meaning of such displace-ment.

Perhaps these are matters of littleimportance when compared to whatmay happen with the next earthquake,which records show strike Tehran every150 years. Should the epicentre of amajor earthquake fall on the city, wecan expect immediate casualties in thehundreds of thousands. In a matter ofdays, millions could die as a result offire and lack of facilities. Who wouldbear responsibility for neglecting thenecessary precautions for such an even-tuality?

Every year, during the many holi-days, particularly during the long NewYear holiday which marks the begin-ning of spring, the Tehrani, like theinhabitants of all mega-cities, leaveTehran. The city breathes, its arteriescleared of congestion, and under theblue sky and at the foot of the magnif-icent Alborz mountains the city hastime to reflect upon the two hundredyears which have transformed it tohold what was then the entire popula-tion of Iran. <

Bibliography

- Adle, C. and B. Hourcade (eds.), Teheran

capitale bicentenaire, Paris/Teheran: Insti-

tut Francais de Recherche en Iran (1992).

- Madanipour, Ali, Tehran, The Making of a

Metropolis, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons

(1998).

Dr Soheila Shahshahani is an anthropolo-

gist teaching at Shahid Beheshti University,

Tehran. Her research interests include pas-

toral nomadic societies, urban areas, and

material culture.

[email protected]

1 Owqaf: is money or property that wealthy citizens allocated to the poor and

to religious students and dignitaries.

2 Shahestan Pahlavi was one of the most important urbanization projects of

the Pahlavi period, using the investment funds for urbanism of the whole

country for ten years. A British firm designed the project, which was to cover

over 550 hectares of land on the hills of central Tehran.

Notes >

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

A modern mosque without the traditional

dome.

A non-religious

building featuring

a dome.

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> Research & Reports

Humour in Indonesian PoliticsA Case Study of the Political Marketing of Gus Dur

Among the many astonishing aspects of Indonesian democracy in the early Reformasi era (1997–2001) are the rather unusualpublic appearances of several of Indonesia’s top politicians. A prime example of this would be Abdurrahman Wahid’s (Gus Dur’s)first appearance on a variety show during his time as President of Indonesia (1999–2001). During the programme, broadcast onTPI (Televisi Pendidikan Indonesia) in 2000, the Indonesian President portrays himself as a jester, telling one humorous taleand/or joke after the other.

Research >Southeast Asia

By Arndt Graf

Below is an example of the specialcharacter of these tales/jokes told

during the programme.Wahid: ‘The funniest one is from the

PR China. Once … not in my times …there was a military delegation lead byAmerica. It was lead by the Joint Chiefof Staff. Okay, they come. He talks verylong, that Head of the Joint Chiefs ofStaff. Very looong…. But it is translatedjust in one very short sentence, andeverybody is laughing. … So he asks …..You are an amazing translator, mylooong speech you could translate inonly one short sentence, and everybodylaughed….. what is your secret? … Theanswer is: well, that’s easy. I just saidthat this person was telling a joke, soplease everybody laugh’ (translation:AG).

What makes the joke so funny forIndonesian audiences is that it plays onand reconfirms two stereotypes in one.The first is the stereotype of the mili-taristic and self-important American,illustrated by the evocation of militarymight (a Chief-of-Staff, or head of a del-egation) and by emphasis on the verylong speech, an indication of a self-

aggrandizing aspect. The other Indone-sian stereotype reinforced in this jokeis that of the witty Chinese who knowshow to save himself work by not givinga long translation, and therefore treat-ing a joke like any other economic activ-ity. Does this mean that AbdurrahmanWahid, then acting President ofIndonesia, is relentlessly reaffirmingethnic and national stereotypes? Initialimpression of the joke might suggestsuch a reading.

Interestingly, there is also a printedversion of the above humorous talepublished in one of the many compila-

tions of Gus Dur’s jokes. Here, nation-al stereotypes apparent in the televisedjoke are reversed. In the printed versionthe main figure is not a big-mouthedAmerican general, but rather Gus Durhimself. The witty translator is not Chi-nese, but Arab; the scene now takingplace in Qatar rather than China.1

My research departs from a close tex-tual analysis of this and other of GusDur’s jokes in the above mentioned tel-evision show, as well as in the printedjoke collections. One observation fromthe variety show is that Gus Dur con-centrates his jokes into the first third of

the interview. It seems that, in rhetori-cal terms, his joking has an introduc-tory function, bridging the social gapwith the interviewer, while serving toease possible tensions and gain publicsympathy. In classical Latin rhetoric,one would call this strategy the captatiobenevolentiae (getting the goodwill ofthe audience). In the interview, it is alsoreminiscent of a communicative strat-egy often employed in Indonesia andMalaysia in which the speaker humblesthemselves in the introductory sen-tences by saying how unimportant theirown contributions are, or by makingfun of themselves. The interlocutorshould, of course, not misunderstandthese humorous passages as a sign ofweakness: the opposite is the case.

For my research, these observationsserve as a starting point for a deeper,culturally specific reading of Gus Dur’sspecial kind of humour. A centralnotion in this is the popular Java schol-ar’s interpretation of the humorouspresident as Semar, the clown-servantand half-god from the world of theJavanese shadow-theatre, wayang kulit.Apparently, the image and importanceof Semar has shifted in Javanese andSundanese society since the beginningof the New Order. This populist char-acter did not just replace Gatotkaca –popular during Sukarno’s presidency –as the main hero of the shadow-theatre.The servant Semar, according to somereports, now even sometimes exertsfunctions of power.2

The climax of the wayang is the gara-gara scene, when the earth undergoesgreat political, social, cultural, and cos-mological turmoil. It is here that Semar,the joking clown-god-servant, usuallyappears in a central role. In these cir-cumstances, Semar serves as a wise ori-entation figure whose joking wit helpsto bring the audience safely through allkinds of dangers.

During Indonesia’s early Reformasiera, with all its economic and politicalproblems, many Javanese may havebeen reminded of the gara-gara in thewayang. Given his physical appearanceand his continuous joking, as well ashis high social and religious rank, GusDur appeared, for many, to be very sim-ilar to Semar. Seen in this perspective,the humorous performance of theIndonesian President in a variety showprobably made sense to many viewers.In addition to the growing popularity ofthis image in popular culture, thenotion of Gus-Dur-as-Semar was alsopopularized by certain intellectuals whomight have had their own agenda

regarding the Javanese belief system,kejawen.3

However, Gus Dur’s heightened pub-lic use of humour can also be explainedin Islamic terms. Historically, humourhas played an important role in Islam:probably a much more central role thanit has played in the spreading andteaching of Christianity. This is espe-cially true for the Sufi versions of Islamthat strongly influenced Indonesia dur-ing the early period of Islamization inthe archipelago. Even today, many reli-gious leaders (kyai) in Gus Dur’s homeregion of East Java are notorious fortheir use of humour in spreadingIslamic messages. There seems to beeven a special genre of pesantrenhumour, named after the religiousboarding schools of the kyai. From thisperspective, Gus Dur’s humorous per-formance in a TV variety show is againnot as unusual as it may seem in thefirst place.

Having said this, it is important tonote that the clowning performanceswere also criticized by voices from othertraditions within Indonesian Islam.Apparently, the understanding and per-ception of blending humour, Islam,and politics is a point of contestationand debate amongst, on the one side,reformist Islam and, on the other, moretraditional Islam. This is in line withthe findings of Peacock, who discoveredsomething like a watershed-linebetween the Islamic currents ofIndonesia regarding their particularsense of humour.

Finally, one should perhaps also takeinto account the marketing characterand function of Gus Dur’s humorousperformance. There is some reportedevidence that he was advised by hisassistants (spin doctors?) to emphasizethe notion of a humorous president.This may have been part of a strategy topresent him as an unconventionalpolitician who would be the right rep-resentative of the people (the rakyat) inthe partly chaotic turmoil of the (early)Reformasi era. <

Dr Arndt Graf teaches at the Indonesian

Department, Asia-Africa-Institute, Univer-

sity of Hamburg, Germany. He was an IIAS

affiliated fellow (24 February – 31 March

2003) researching ‘Humour as a tool of

political marketing in Reformasi Indonesia’.

[email protected]

1 Basyaib, H., and F.W. Hermawan, Gitu aja kok repot! Ger-geran gaya Gus Dur,

Jakarta: AlvaBet, (5th ed. October 2000), p. 57.

2 Foley, Kathy, ‘The clown in the Sundanese wayang golek: democratization of

a feudal ethos’, in: C.P. Epskamp et. al., Scenarium, Deel 9: Theater of Java

(1985), pp. 88–99.

3 Bonneff, Marcel, ‘Semar révélé. La crise indonésienne et l’imaginaire poli-

tique javanais’, Archipel, 64, (2002), pp. 3–37.

Notes >

Antons, Christoph (ed.)

Law and Development in East and Southeast AsiaLondon and New York: RoutledgeCurzon/IIAS Asian Studies Series (2003), 387 pp., ISBN 0-7007-1321-2 (hb)

Benjamin, Geoffrey and Cynthia Chou (eds.)

Tribal Communities in the Malay World: Historical, Cultural and Social PerspectivesSingapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies/IIAS (2002), 489 pp., ISBN 981-230-167-4 (hb)

Campbell, Gwyn (ed.)

The Indian Ocean Rim: Southern Africa and Regional Co-operationLondon and New York: RoutledgeCurzon/IIAS Asian Studies Series (2003), 268 pp., ISBN 0-700-71344-1 (hb)

Chou, Cynthia

Indonesian Sea Nomads: Money, Magic and Fear of the Orang Suku LautLondon and New York: RoutledgeCurzon/IIAS Asian Studies Series (2003), 222 pp., ISBN 0-7007-1724-2 (hb)

Hockx, Michel and Ivo Smits (eds.)

Reading East Asian Writing: The Limits of Literary TheoryLondon and New York: RoutledgeCurzon/IIAS Asian Studies Series (2003), 299 pp., ISBN 0-7007-1760-9 (hb)

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

Abdurrahman Wahid

(Gus Dur) joking

during his visit to

Iran.

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esy

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usd

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N e w I I A S P u b l i c a t i o n s

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Islamization of the Sama Dilaut in Sabah, Malaysia

The Sama Dilaut (lit: ‘maritime’ Sama), or the Bajau, are a subgroup of the Sama-speaking people. The SamaDilaut of Kallong village, Semporna District, Sabah, Malaysia, are migrants from Sallang Island, SuluArchipelago, the Philippines, approximately 100 km away. Until the 1960s-1970s, the Sama Dilaut in bothcountries were politically and religiously marginalized. In the late 1990s, the Sama Dilaut of Sallang remainedmarginalized, disregarded in local politics and considered impious Muslims, even kafirs (non-Muslims)despite the fact that most of them professed Islam. The Sama Dilaut in Kallong, however, had improved theirstatus. They occupied village political posts and enjoyed their own district representatives; their status asMuslims was acknowledged by local society. This essay discusses the historical dynamics of the Sama Dilaut’sIslamization, the process by which they gained acceptance as Muslims in post-colonial Malaysia. Thediscussion is based on historical and ethnographic data collected between 1997 and 1999 in SempornaDistrict, Sabah.

Research >Southeast Asia

By Nagatsu Kazufumi

Following independence, Islam increasingly became a pil-lar of identity for Malaysia’s dominant Melayu popula-

tion. With Islamic revivalism (dakwah) prevailing in the1970s, the government began to directly involve itself inIslamic affairs; federal and state governments alike strength-ened their commitment to the administration of Islamthrough religious institutions. Islam was thus made officialthroughout Malaysia.

Sabah gained independence as a state within Malaysia in1963. Direct government involvement in Islamic affairs herestarted relatively late. It was not until 1971 that the first offi-cial Islamic institution, the Sabah Islamic Council, or MUIS(Majelis Ugama Islam Sabah), was established. Since it emu-lated the system already organized in Peninsular Malaysia,MUIS was able to institutionalize its administrative systemeffectively and rapidly. Through its branches it began toadminister religious activities at district and village levels.MUIS also assumed the management of religious schools inthe state.

IncorporationAt the end of the British colonial period in Sempora, local

Muslims attributed Islamic legitimacy to the Sulu Muslimsociety, heirs to the once flourishing Islamic Sulu Sultanate.Muslim intellectuals of Sulu origin thus held prominence inlocal religious affairs. This situation changed dramatically inthe post-colonial period. In 1960, a native political leaderbuilt the first religious school in Semporna. He appointed aMelayu from Negeri Sembilan, a state in peninsular Malaysia,as its headmaster and concurrently as chief imam of the dis-trict mosque. In the 1970s, the MUIS branch in Semporna

began to take charge of local Islamic affairs, appointing vil-lage religious leaders and integrating them into its religiousbureaucracy. In running religious schools, it employed asteachers peninsular Melayu intellectuals and, later, localgraduates of the state religious schools.

As Islam became increasingly officialized, Muslim socie-ty in Semporna was divorced from the Islamic order of Suluand incorporated into that of the Malaysian state. Religiousprofessionals of official standing and MUIS came to repre-sent Islamic authority. The district socio-religious order wastransformed: a dichotomous notion of Islam prevailed, whereanything official was considered more legitimate, anythingunofficial less legitimate. Traditional Muslim intellectuals ofSulu origin therefore became less and less influential, unlessthey were granted official standing.

Becoming MuslimUntil the 1950s, the Sama Dilaut believed in supernatural

or ancestral spirits and held rituals for these spirits. In themid-1950s, a government-appointed district khatib (Islamicpreacher) invited a Sama Dilaut leader to convert to Islam.The leader accepted the khatib’s invitation and, together withsome Sama Dilaut youngsters, learned the prayers. Thismarked the beginning of their Islamization. In the late1960s, he built a simple prayer house, a surau, in the village.Meanwhile, the youngsters studied Islam at the khatib’shouse. Although the Sama Dilaut were initially not acceptedinto the local Muslim community, this changed after the1970s.

Here it is worth recalling the fate of the Sama Dilaut ofSulu in the Philippines. Although they began to embraceIslam in the 1940s, their neighbours still do not fully recog-nize them as Muslims. This is largely due to the persistenceof the myth that Allah once cursed the Sama Dilaut, thus dis-qualifying them from the status of ‘correct’ Muslims. How,then, did the Sama Dilaut of Semporna gain their recogni-tion as Muslims? Three phases of their Islamization – par-ticipation in public Islamic activities; acquisition of Muslim

community symbols; formation of a new class of Islamicintellectuals – are discussed below.

In the mid-1960s, some Sama Dilaut tried to enrol theirchildren in the religious school. Parents of the other Muslimstudents expressed strong objections to this, as the above-mentioned myth still prevailed. The peninsular Melayu head-master rejected their objections, claiming that such a mythwas nowhere present in the Qur’an. None of the parentscould challenge him on this point. In like manner, the Melayuchief imam criticized local Muslims for their exclusion of theSama Dilaut from the district mosque. Soon after the SamaDilaut were admitted into the religious school and the dis-trict mosque.

Sama Dilaut youngsters who studied Islam under thekahtib became imams in Kallong village in the early 1970s.In 1977 MUIS granted three of these imams a letter ofauthorization, certifying that they were ‘correct’ Islamic lead-ers. MUIS also permitted them to hold Friday congregationalprayers at the village surau. The surau was then administra-tively re-categorized as a mosque. The Sama Dilaut therebyofficially acquired symbols of a Muslim community, name-ly, religious leaders and a mosque.

From the late 1980s onwards, MUIS and its schoolsemployed Sama Dilaut religious high school graduates, whoformed a new generation of Islamic intellectuals commonlyreferred to as ustaz. Renowned for their Islamic knowledge,they were invited to deliver religious lectures and becamepart of a regional intellectual authority on Islam. The ustazsensured the Sama Dilaut’s status as Muslims; since they wereteaching Islam in the village, the impression prevailed amonglocal Muslims that the Sama Dilaut were practicing Islam‘correctly’.

The Sama Dilaut’s Islamization was intrinsically linked tosocio-religious change in Semporna, brought on by the ‘offi-cialization’ of Islam in Malaysia. Essential to their Islamiza-tion was the separation of local Muslim society from the con-ventional Islamic order of Sulu, from which the Sama Dilauthad been stigmatized as outcasts. As official – state sanc-tioned – religious personnel and institutions came to repre-sent Islamic authority, local Muslims had no choice but toaccept as legitimate the Melayu teacher’s claims and Islam-ic symbols that MUIS authorized. As the official-unofficialdichotomy of Islamic legitimacy reformed the district’s socio-religious order, the presence of the ustazs was proof of the‘correctness’ of the Sama Dilaut’s religious practice.

Touching upon one final perspective, it is important to addthat the Sama Dilaut imams sought the authorization ofMUIS as part of their strategy to fight discrimination. Giventheir intentions, their Islamization was, at least in part, a vehi-cle for attaining social position within the new socio-religiousorder of post-colonial Malaysia.<

Nagatsu Kazufumi, MA is a research associate at the Graduate

School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University, Japan,

and is presently completing his PhD thesis on the Sama Dilaut’s his-

torical experience of the Malaysian state system.

[email protected]

Young Japanese Researchers on Southeast Asia - SeriesNagatsu Kazufumi wrote the third contribution to a series that aims to present current research of young Japanese scholars on Southeast Asia. Origi-

nal Japanese research on Southeast Asia has a long tradition, is abundant and sometimes takes different routes from European or American research

on the region. Moreover, many Japanese scholars publish in Japanese or in Southeast Asian languages and consequently the interaction between Japan-

ese and non-Japanese scholars remains somewhat limited. By means of this series we draw attention to the original research of young Japanese schol-

ars with research interests in Southeast Asian affairs. In case you would like to introduce your own research on Southeast Asia, please contact the edi-

tors of the IIAS Newsletter or the author of this introduction.<

Dr Rogier Busser, Coordinator of Academic Affairs at the IIAS.

[email protected]

A Sama Dilaut imam

delivering duwa’a, or

voluntary prayer, at

the village mosque.

He was the first

Sama Dilaut in

Semporna to study

the Qur’an in the

1960s. As a devout

imam, he leads

religious practices

in the village.

The research area

Nag

atsu

Kaz

ufu

mi,

19

98

Nag

atsu

Kaz

ufu

mi

> Research & Reports

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Elite Music and Nationalism in South and Southeast Asia

How Music Becomes ClassicalLike related scholarly fields, ethnomusicology in the 1980s and 1990s began critically re-evaluating a series ofconcepts central to the field, from culture, tradition, and identity, to modernization and westernization. Thedisciplinary framework increasingly recognized the historical contingency and cultural construction of the veryphenomena we hoped to understand. In the wake of abundant scholarship in a variety of related fields, it hasbecome clear that ethnomusicology in fact embraced nationalism as one of its central theoretical concerns.The concepts of the canonic and the classical have been re-evaluated in recent years, in the European musicalcontext as well as elsewhere, yet the term classical continues to be applied to certain music in Asia without agreat deal of critical reflection. Whereas most contemporary ethnomusicologists would reject the notion thatclassical music is simply qualitatively superior to other repertories, attempts to define the classical with regardto South and Southeast Asian music range widely.

Research >Southeast Asia

By Pamela Moro

Some authors have isolated certain features in socio-musi-cal context (for example, structures of patronage, meth-

ods of musical transmission, presence of articulated theory),whilst others have engaged in highly particularistic analysesof discourse. Dichotomies have been particularly compelling,such as classical/folk, urban/rural, written tradition/oral tra-dition and, especially in the study of South Asian music,Great Tradition/Little Tradition. Most recent evaluations con-sider these dyads over-simplified, helpful to a certain extentbut ultimately limiting as foundations for analysis.

In my own work, the theoretical works I have found mostuseful are those which favour constructivist approaches. Keyamong these are discourse-centred studies of music byMatthew Harp Allen on India (1998), Jennifer Lindsay onJava (1985) – both of which pay special attention to shifts invocabulary and terminology – and Partha Chatterjee on theprocess of classicization in general, as a deliberate and nego-tiated process of national culture formation (1993). To Chat-terjee, a classicized tradition has been reformed, recon-structed, fortified against charges of barbarism andirrationality, and hence made palatable for the tastes of mid-dle class people...an appropriate content for a nationalizedcultural identity (Chatterjee 1993:27). This kind of classi-cization is a form of sanitizing and systematizing, tied to thenegotiation of history and a sense of the past, a past that, heargues, is integral to nationalism itself.

Reflecting my own interest in and familiarity with themusic of Southeast and South Asia, my current work exam-ines classicized music in India, Indonesia, and Thailand inthe first half of the twentieth century during the period ofemerging Asian nationalisms, or whenever the classicizingof music became prominent. My goal is to elucidate theprocess of classicization by comparing these three specificcases, isolating certain common factors which emerge invarying levels of intensity throughout: the rise of mass edu-cation and innovative forms of musical transmission, includ-ing the development of systems of written notation; the insti-tutionalization of music theory and music scholarship;dynamic influences from hegemonic powers (leading to, forexample, use of the Western term ‘classical’); the tensionbetween homogeneity and heterogeneity in constructions ofnational culture; the impact of print and electronic media,especially in relation to state power; and transformations inthe roles of musician, patron, and audience. In all cases, thetiming and nature of the growth of a middle class has had atremendous impact on the position of classicized music with-in the nation.

High culture and the courtSince the late nineteenth century, India has offered the

clearest and best-documented example of classicized musicin the service of nationalism. Music that had been fosteredby the princely courts (and, in southern India, the temples)was embraced by nationalists from the very beginning of themovement in the late nineteenth century. Court-fosteredmusic – as well as new compositional forms intended specif-ically to arouse patriotism – was one among several aspectsof culture which could contribute to a new identity, one inwhich a political movement towards nationalism could flour-ish. But the operative goals of such nationalism were tochange over time, and the music had to be reshaped some-what before it was suitable for such a project. A number ofprominent music scholars and teachers of the late nineteenthcentury set out to revitalize what they felt had become a neg-lected and tarnished musical tradition. At fault were not theBritish – who were only marginally interested in South Asianmusic – but a growing sense of a Hindu classical past, aHindu Golden Age of Spirituality, leading to negative valua-tion of Muslim contributions to music during the long peri-od of Mogul patronage and support for the performing arts.

This revitalization took place through efforts to classicize, inChatterjee’s sense of the term, for example by foundingschools, inventing systems of notation (a topic of great con-troversy), crafting modern music scholarship and historiog-raphy (based on the study of Sanskrit treatises, intended toestablish norms for performance), organizing music con-ferences, and instituting the public concert. The classiciza-tion of music was one of a number of movements aimed atfostering Indian culture, both national and regional, by a new,self-aware, British-educated middle class.

In Indonesia, as in India, music had a key place in thevisions of nationalists, from the very beginnings of the move-ment towards independence in the early years of the twenti-eth century. However, in contrast to the solid embrace of clas-sicized musical traditions by the Indian nationalistmovement and middle class, court-associated forms of per-formance from the region that came to be Indonesia havebeen subjects of heated debate. Despite the profound musi-cal diversity of the region, central Javanese music alone hasbeen the subject of most intense classicization, as well as thatof controversy regarding its place in twentieth century nation-al culture. Java’s centricity in conceptions of a national clas-sical music is, of course, a microcosm of a much larger issue:the status of Javanese and other regional cultures within thenation. While Indian court music was to pass from the oldruling class to a new, urban middle class – with relatively lit-tle tinkering by the British – in Indonesia the transfer in ques-tion was from Java to the whole, new nation, with theJavanese elite at least attempting to hold on to its position asgatekeeper of the arts by opening schools and training acad-emies for the arts. The strong interest of colonial scholars indocumenting and promoting certain forms of music in theDutch East Indies has played a role in the image of centralJavanese gamelan after independence, as have attitudestowards the elite Javanese of the colonial period. Post-inde-pendence, the traditional performing arts have continued tobe a focal point for top-down efforts at cultural engineering,from the extension of Java-focused arts curricula in the con-servatories to New Order attempts to upgrade and normal-ize performance standards.

High culture and the bureaucracyThere is no doubt that the court tradition of music in Thai-

land has been classicized in the ways developed in Indone-sia, through the establishment of training academies withcentralized curricula, written musical notation, scientificanalysis, and the development of prestigious, Sanskrit-basedvocabulary separating classical music from other forms. Butwhile the path to such status leads us to many of the sameissues we have seen in India and Indonesia, it diverges inintriguing ways due to Thailand’s atypical experience withnationalism in the Asian context. While Siam was not for-

mally colonized by a European power, it has nonetheless beenintensely concerned with the construction of national iden-tity and the extension of hegemony through a centralized cul-ture. Yet, in striking contrast to our earlier examples, tradi-tional court music was not initially embraced as an emblemof modern nationalism. It was, in fact, studiously set asidein favour of highly westernized musical forms until the lastdecades of the twentieth century, when it caught the atten-tion of a nostalgic, identity-seeking urban middle class.

During the period when the Indian and Indonesian inde-pendence movements struggled over the place of court artsin modern society, Thailand wrestled not with tensionbetween colonizer and colonized but between the monarchyand an increasingly powerful bureaucracy, culminating in the1932 change to constitutional monarchy. In the era of cultur-al revolution under Phibun Songkhraam’s first government,1938-1944, westernized musical forms were favoured andcourt music came under bureaucratic control. Since that time,the former court arts have retained strong associations withmonarchy and past-oriented constructions of identity, whichpostulate a sort of High Culture of Old Siam. Today, this musicfigures prominently in government-generated presentationsof culture such as official publications, websites, and touristshows. It is supported by the national educational system, andsince the 1970s and 1980s has been valued highly by the largeand increasingly diasporic middle class.

What accounts for the similarities amongst our threecases? To note that the three share certain features, and thatIndia was the earliest – and most representative – examplein terms of the complete embrace of classicized music by thenationalist movement, is not to suggest that the phenomenaspread from India across Southeast Asia, as earlier histori-cal interpretations stated. Asian countries did not exist ingeo-historical vacuums during the colonial period, and thevarious nationalist movements of the region were aware ofand to some degree inspired by one another, but a betteranswer probably lies in the globalization of the late nine-teenth century, which was, paradoxically, operating at thesame time as the localizing visions of nationalism. Western-derived transnational trends such as capitalism, colonialism,ideological constructs (such as the idea of progress), and tech-nological inventions (like photography) contributed to uni-fying a global cultural elite (Peleggi 2002). It is likely that theset of ideas and institutional changes we are calling classi-cization were part of this global flow, including the ironicmixing of western-derived phenomena with constructionsof a classical Indic past, in India, Indonesia, and Thailand.

In a longer version of this work, I also consider factors,which might account for some of the differences in our threecases. Key amongst these are the nature and timing of theappearance of a sizeable urban middle class (early in India,much later in Thailand and Indonesia), and the position ofcolonial power-holders and/or old elites vis-à-vis emergingnationalism and twentieth-century national culture. <

References

- Allen, Matthew Harp, ‘Tales tunes tell: deepening the dialogue

between classical and non-classical in the music of India’, Year-

book for traditional music 30 (1998), pp. 22–52.

- Chatterjee, Partha, The nation and its fragments: colonial and post-

colonial histories, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1993).

- Lindsay, Jennifer, Klasik, kitsch or contemporary: a study of the

Javanese performing arts, Sydney: University of Sydney (1985). PhD

dissertation.

- Peleggi, Maurizio, Lord of things: the fashioning of the Siamese

monarchy’s modern image, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press

(2002).

Dr Pamela Moro (Pamela Myers-Moro) is associate professor of

Anthropology at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon, USA. She

received a PhD from University of California, Berkeley in 1988, and

authored Thai Music and Musicians in Contemporary Bangkok.

Moro has conducted fieldwork on music in Bangkok and Chiangmai

and the spent September-December 2002 as an affiliated fellow at

the IIAS.

[email protected]

College students in

Chiangmai, northern

Thailand, practice

music from the

Bangkok-derived

classical tradition,

1992.

Pam

ela

Mo

ro

> Research & Reports

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Shifting Identities in Kali SalwaarIndian cinema, now widely recognized in the West, has attained a highly mainstreamprofile. Popular Hindi cinema, nicknamed Bollywood, is increasingly popular thanks to themany non-resident Indians in the US and UK stimulating the DVD market and organizingfilm-screenings in mainstream cinemas in major cities. The popularity of Indian films andfilm stars is growing so rapidly that British film officials recently travelled to Mumbai todiscuss working on potential co-productions, fearing that they will soon lose too muchground to popular Hindi cinema. Ironically, popular Hindi cinema was until recentlycompletely ignored by Western film scholars and journalists, who seemed to assume that itcould have no relevance for a Western audience. In light of this new interest, we examineone of its main themes, and how its portrayal varies.

Research >South Asia

By Thomas Voorter & Mar i jke de Vos

One of Bollywood’s main themes,seen and enjoyed by a (still mainly

non-white) worldwide audience, is mid-dle-class family life and its preoccupationwith marriage, respect for the father, andthe ambiguous position of sons anddaughters stranded between Eastern andWestern standards. The other concen-trates on the forces trying to destroy theunity of Mother India. Cinema has hadits fair share of battles between Good andEvil, and Evil has come to have manyfaces. With the perception of the enemyhighly depending on the cultural and his-torical context, the enemy has naturallychanged over the decades.

In Hindi popular cinema the imageof the enemy has changed from the out-sider (the British Empire) in the thir-ties, to the feudal landlord and themean moneylender in the fifties, thecorrupt big city businessman in the six-ties, the equally corrupt police officeror member of the local government inthe seventies, to the bhai (mafia) in theeighties and nineties. It had long beenat the popular and official mainstay ofIndian cinema that the enemy couldnever be one of India’s own ethnicgroups, i.e. Hindu-Muslim rivalry wasnever portrayed. Yet after the 1992Bombay riots, following the demolitionof the Babri Masjid mosque, this com-mon agreement seems to have weak-ened and as underlying awareness of‘difference’ has been increasinglybrought into the open, the enemyimage took on a different shape.

However ‘subtly’ done, there is a ten-dency to either romanticize the Muslim(as in Bombay, 1993) or to emphasizethe cultural differences between Hinduand Muslim (as in Gadar, 2001). In aHindu-dominated film industry, the(implicit) argument is that the Muslimis the other, has another homeland, andtherefore has a split or even other loy-alty. No longer unquestionably part ofthe larger Indian family, today’s Bolly-wood Muslim must prove his loyaltytowards India (Sarfarosh, 1999) and dis-tance him- or herself from Pakistan.

Only a few films allow us a glance ofthe Muslim perspective, such as Fiza(Khalid Mohamed, 2001) and Naseem(Sayeed Mirza, 1995), both made byMuslim directors. Some Hindu direc-tors, for example M.S. Satyu (GaramHawa, 1973) and Shyam Benegal(Mammo, 1995), have also made Mus-lim-oriented films. Yet, on the whole,one could say that political correctnesshas recently been traded for an accept-ance of the Muslim as the new Evil. Theonly mainstream exception to this rule,Lagaan (2001), a typical feel-good film,returned to the tried and tested formu-la of branding the former colonizer asthe enemy so as to bring back togetheragain Hindu, Muslim, and all othercommunities in this vast and tumul-tuous region.

So, it may be argued that there isample scope for subtlety and criticismin the depiction of class, gender, reli-gion, community, and society at large –the Indian nation, if you will – in(inter)national blockbusters. Yet, it ismostly in less widely distributed anddiscussed crossover-, offbeat-, or artfilms in which a genuine attempt tocomment on present-day society ismade, and in which the mainstreamtendency to stereotype the Muslim asevil is successfully countered, be itthrough social realism or intimate para-bles. Among them, Fareeda Mehta’sdebut film Kali Salwaar (The Black Gar-ment, 2001) tries to approach majorthemes in a more philosophical way.

Centred on a Muslim prostitute com-ing from Muzzafarpur to Mumbai, KaliSalwaar is an almost abstract odysseyinto migration, marginalization, anddisplacement. Fareeda, who was trainedby Kumar Sahani, is an admirer ofGhatak and the French cinematogra-pher Bresson, and follows in the foot-steps of the famous cinematographerRitwik Ghatak, who used cinema forsocial criticism as much as for con-templation and dialogue, like his stu-dents Kumar and Mani Kaul. Her filmis based on a story by Saadat HasanManto, the leftist Urdu short storywriter of the nineteenth century.

Almost the entire film was shot inher neighbourhood in Mumbai, focus-ing on a lively bazaar. Although the

main themes are displacement and thesense of loss in an anonymous metrop-olis, the setting breathes a striking inti-macy. Sultana, the main character,together with her husband and pimpKudabaksh, soon find out that life inMumbai is often beyond their control.With nothing left to make ends meet,Kudabaksh is attracted to fakir mysti-cism, leaving behind his wife, alone withthe desperate wish to find a black gar-ment to wear during Moharram, theIslamic month of mourning. Mantohimself, as the author of the story,appears in the film, together with someof the characters from his other shortstories, such as the local gangster M’ah-mmad Bhai, Babu Gopinath, and Sug-handi. Some of the characters meet,while others do not. These separate lifestories constitute a web of relations andinterconnections, in which money andgoods, gestures and glances, and desiresand fulfilments are exchanged betweenpeople in the bustling bazaars of the city.We get a sense of an imagined commu-nity, in which the shared sorrowfulmemories and experiences of Partitionstill linger under the surface, occasion-

ally shining through the dialogue. This film is an intimate study of

urban life, focusing on details in the waypeople are dressed, the decoration of therooms, the colours, the smells, and takestime to consider the personal thoughtsof people on the street. It is rich in sym-bolism, for example in the way in whichHindu art in placed in Muslim culture,such as the tree (Krishna’s tree, thephilosophical ‘Self’, which balancesinternal nature with the outside world)painted on the wall of Sultana’s apart-ment. In a daring shot Sultana preparesherself for Moharram, slowly pouringwarm water over her naked back andtouching her face with the soft satin ofthe black scarf.

Fareeda captures the poetics of life, inwhich ornate Urdu and street slangalternate, friendship dispels loneliness,hope turns into despair, yet poverty isrealistically harsh. Big Art is sold assmall art, characterized by the picture ofthe Taj Mahal on postcards and the clas-sical tune of Beethoven’s Für Elise play-ing in a cheap cigarette lighter; the richcourtesan culture is perpetuated in acheaply dressed prostitute withoutmoney or clients, and references to clas-sical ghazal songs are sung in glossyfilms. According to Fareeda, Kali Sal-waar does not have a message per se, butdeals with exchange of energies. In asilent way it creates ‘contemplativespaces’ in which the audience can pauseand let imagination, emotions, andmemory roam free.

Fareeda succeeds in weaving genresand symbols into the texture of life insuch a way that the film is not only aboutIndian Muslim culture, but about a com-munity of people living around a Mum-bai bazaar, who share to a certain extenttheir memories, symbols, emotions, anddesires. This notion only once gets overt-

ly expressed, in a dialogue between Sul-tana and Shankar, a petty criminal wholives day by day. When she remarks tohim that he, being a Hindu, cannotunderstand her concerns for the obser-vance of Moharram, he replies: ‘At leastspare this hallowed place from commu-nal issues. Your bazaar has the magicalability to bleach both saffron and greento pure white. Here all identities are for-gotten.’ Here, Sultana’s body is anexplicit metaphor for the market out-side. Shankar’s riddle, however, seemsto contain some kind of message. Theethnic composition of individuals – gov-erned by primordial principles – are notimportant, but identities, articulatedunder the pressures of ever-changingsocio-economic forces of the market,are. Or as Fareeda poetically puts it:‘Bombay – a city where identities andicons are formed violently and brokengraciously.’ <

Thomas Voorter, MA is the Public Relations

Officer of Asian Studies at the University of

Amsterdam. He has conducted research into

oral histories and traditions in the Ferghana

Valley of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. As a

freelancer he lectures and organizes work-

shops on multimedia authorship in the

social sciences, humanities, and arts.

[email protected]

Marijke de Vos, MA is a freelancer, and

studied Theatre Research at the University

of Amsterdam and Painting at the Gerrit

Rietveld Academie. Since 1990, she has

been programming mainly Indian film

screenings at the Royal Tropical Institute

and the Amsterdam Film Museum and

mediating the contact with Indian film per-

sonalities. She also writes, lectures, and

gives introductions to Indian Cinema.

[email protected]

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

Sultana (Sadiya

Siddiqui) and

Shankar (Irfan Khan)

in Kali Salwaar

Fare

eda

Meh

ta

Fare

eda

Meh

ta

Fareeda Mehta was in Amsterdam to

lecture at the three-day masterclass on

Hindi Popular Cinema, entitled ‘Spicy

Spectaculars’, held at the Asian Stud-

ies department (University of Amster-

dam), together with Marijke de Vos,

programmer of Indian film-screenings

at the Royal Tropical Institute in

Amsterdam (KIT).

For more information:

http://go.to/asianstudies

Info >

Sultana (Sadiya Siddiqui) in Kali Salwaar

Th

om

as V

oo

rter

> Research & Reports

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Modernization, Medicine, and Powerin Nineteenth-Century Iran

Following the interregnum and anarchy of the eighteenth century, Iran was politically re-united under the Qajardynasty (1794-1925). The Qajar period marked Iran’s long and at times bloody transition from a traditionalkingdom – where the existence of semi-independent magnates limited political unity – to a socially andpolitically integrated nation-state. The centralization of power during the Qajar period was the major impetusfor the modernization of the military, the administration, education, and medicine. In this article the authorargues that medical modernization in nineteenth-century Iran is (1) best understood within the framework ofthe evolving power structure of the Qajar state; and (2) was underpinned by transformations in traditionalmedicine, which paved the way for the radical integration of the modern sciences in Iran.

Research >Central Asia

By Hormoz Ebrahimnejad

Among the events that aggravated the political crisislinked to the succession of Fath‘Ali-Shah in 1833-34 were

plague and cholera epidemics that broke out in 1829. Theiroutbreak led to a greater role of physicians in the state, the-oretical discussions among Persian physicians on the natureand causes of epidemics, and changes to the prevailing med-ical discourse.

The changing description and understanding of epidemicscan be seen in the works of Shirâzi, a traditional court physi-cian of the time.1 Breaking from his predecessors, Shirâziput forward an argument based on his clinical observations,using humoral theories to distinguish cholera from cholerin,and to prove that, despite their similar symptoms, cholerawas an epidemic while cholerin was not. When Shirâzi wrotehis treatise on the difference between cholera and cholerinin 1835, most physicians in Europe and Iran could not clini-cally discern these two diseases. While Shirâzi’s work washardly a breakthrough in the description or treatment ofcholera, it shows that traditional medicine was undergoingtheoretical transition.

Shirâzi was not an isolated case. Nineteenth-century Per-sian medical literature bears witness to a traditional medi-cine in transition, including changes prompted by the intro-duction of Western ideas and practices. Contrary to what hasusually been assumed, modernization did not occur throughthe straightforward replacement of traditional by modernEuropean medicine. Rather, the integration of modern med-icine went through a long process that included both the re-interpretation of traditional theories by traditional physiciansand the assimilation of modern theories through the prismof traditional medicine. The theory of replacement, as pro-posed by Dr Tholozan, the French personal physician toNaser al-Din-Shah (1848-96), owes much to the fact thatmedical modernization in non-European countries has gen-erally been studied in the colonial context.

Medical reform and state powerThe study of traditional medical institutions and their

transformation illustrates the linkage between the evolvingstructure of state power and medical organization. The grow-ing number of physicians employed by the state is a case inpoint: as Qajar administrative structures expanded, the num-ber of court physicians multiplied. This prompted the cre-ation of dozens of medical titles besides that of the traditionalchief physician: malek al-atebbâ (prince of physicians) sehatal-dowla ([keeper of the] health of the state), hakim al-mulk

(physician of the kingdom), ra’is al-atebbâ (chief of the physi-cians), nâzem al-atebbâ (supervisor of the physicians) and soforth. In an era predating hospitals and medical schools, theproliferation of court physicians enjoying regular income,prestige and titles was a major step in the institutionalisationof medicine.

Some Persian medical manuscripts of the time advocatedinstitutional reform. One author saw state hospitals as insti-tutional centres for various branches of medicine wherephysicians, surgeons, and pharmacists would collaborateunder the control of the government. As such they providedthe solution for improving medical knowledge by means ofthe educational role that they had in addition to their disci-plining role.2 Court patronage, moreover, was extended toEuropean physicians. While Western physicians in Indiaworked in the colonial medical service, their counterparts innineteenth-century Iran worked alongside traditional physi-cians in the court’s medical organization.3

Such was the institutional context in which modern med-icine was introduced in Iran. Clearly, there was no social orpolitical impediment to intellectual contact between tradi-tional and modern medicine. In stark contrast to the situa-tion in India, Western medicine was not seen as an instru-

ment of colonial domination but as a modern science wor-thy of study. In both countries traditionally educated physi-cians played an important role in the transmission of mod-ern medical theories. Nevertheless, due to political andinstitutional differences, in Iran the traditional medical sys-tem integrated and transformed itself into modern medicine,while in India traditional medicine maintained its institu-tional and theoretical fortresses.4

In both the political and medical spheres, modernizationinvolved: (1) re-organizing existing institutions; and (2) local-ly adapting and justifying new ideas and institutions by refer-ring to tradition. Straightforward modernization – the sub-stitution of traditional institutions and knowledge byEuropean ones – has always faced problems of impractical-ity due to the traditional system if not outright resistancefrom traditional forces in Iran. To the extent that reformistsaimed to modify and not replace, their efforts generally result-ed in internal change.

The modernization of medicine, when compared to mod-ernization in the social and political spheres, remains a spe-cial case. While attempts to modernize the country by invok-ing traditional values and institutions resulted in the socialand political reinforcement of traditional forces, in the sci-entific domain internal change paved the way for the radicalintegration of the modern sciences. The internal transfor-mation of traditional medicine as the underpinning processof Iranian medical modernization illustrates how the mod-ern sciences, which originated and developed in Europe, wereepistemologically transmitted to nineteenth-century Iran. <

Dr Hormoz Ebrahimnejad is affiliated to the Wellcome Trust Cen-

tre at University College London. A specialist on the social and med-

ical history of Iran in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he

researches the history of epidemics and their effects on social and

political integration.

[email protected]

Doctor and his

patient, painted by

Hosein Sheikh

1 Cf. Hormoz Ebrahimnejad, ‘La médecine d’observation en Iran du XIXe siè-

cle’, Gesnerus, 55 (1998), pp. 33-57.

2 Anonymous manuscript on the establishment of a public hospital, Library

Majles, Tehran, no. 505. Translated into English in: Hormoz Ebrahimnejad,

Medicine, Public Health and the Qajar State: Patterns of Medical Modernization

in Nineteenth-century Iran (forthcoming)

3 Notably, in this article nineteenth-century Iranian medicine is neither limited

to the court nor to the colonial institution. In Iran, as in India, the vast

majority of the population was not covered by court or colonial medicine.

But as opposed to India, in Iran, it was court medicine that played a major

role in medical modernization.

4 In addition to socio-political factors, cultural, economic, and demographic

factors in India favoured the survival and reinforcement of Ayurvedic and

Yunani medicine.

Notes >

Hon

ar v

a M

ardo

m (

Art

and

Peo

ple)

No

. 16

4,

196

5, T

ehra

n,

Iran

. C

ou

rtes

y o

f th

e au

tho

r

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ] [ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

> Research & Reports

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Indian Medical Thoughton the Eve of Colonialism

British colonial power decisively established itself on the Indian subcontinent between 1770and 1830. This period and the century following it have become the subjects of muchcreative and insightful research on medical history: the use of medical institutions andpersonnel as tools for political leverage and power; Anglicist/Orientalist debatessurrounding medical education in Calcutta; the birth of so-called Tropical Medicine. Despitemuch propaganda to the contrary, European medicine did not offer its services in a vacuum.Long-established and sophisticated medical systems already existed in India, developing innew and interesting ways in the period just before the mid-eighteenth century.

Research >South Asia

By Dominik Wujastyk

In recent years my research hasfocused on the Sanskrit texts of clas-

sical Indian medicine (Sanskrit: Ayurve-da, ‘the science of longevity’). System-atic medical ideas, embodied inayurveda, began to be formulated at thetime of the Buddha (d. ca. 400). TheBuddha was the first to explicitly statethat disease arises from an imbalanceof three humoral substances (wind,bile, and phlegm), an idea that wouldbecome a cornerstone in Indian med-ical theory. After a lacuna of severalhundred years, medical encyclopaediaswere compiled, edited, and re-edited.Two of these compendia are relativelywell known today as the Supruta andCaraka. A third work, named Heart ofMedicine (AQSAKgahOdayasaI-hitA) andcomposed by the Sindhi author Vag-bhasa shortly after 600, brilliantly syn-thesized earlier compendia. Due to itsmany translations and adaptations, andits wide adoption as a medical schooltext, it ranks among the most importantmedical treatises in Asia

Like other medical historians trainedin Sanskrit, I have been mesmerized bythese early and important works onmedicine filled with extraordinaryideas. They seem to represent the inter-ests and values of a section of Indiansociety that was Sanskritic and yet freefrom orthodox Brahmin values such asvegetarianism, even caste. Many ques-tions surround these works; the histo-ry of medicine that we can recover fromthese treatises is necessarily condi-tioned by the sources themselves – doc-tor’s manuals – and can only be partial.There also remain other under-researched medical topics worth inves-tigating, such as the social history ofmedicine, non-Sanskritic medical prac-tice, religious and folk healing, barber-surgeon traditions (including the his-tory of the Ambastha caste), the historyof healing halls, clinics and hospitalsrecoverable from epigraphic records,and the continuing search for patientrecords and narratives of disease andhealing.

A rich medical traditionTwo recent developments have taken

my own research in a different direc-tion. First, between 1999 and 2002, DrG. Jan Meulenbeld’s gargantuan A His-tory of Indian Medical Literature waspublished. Its five thick tomes are adetailed survey of the body of Sanskritmedical literature, born of a scholarlylifetime of reading the original textsand noting the important features oftheir contents, their intellectual andmedical innovations, the biographicaldetails of their authors, and much elsebesides. Volumes IIa and IIb are of spe-cial interest as they survey thousandsof Sanskrit medical works from 600 up

to the present, laying bare for the firsttime the sheer volume and diversity ofthe scientific production of the post-classical period. Production in no waydiminished in the sixteenth, seven-teenth and eighteenth centuries, whichspawned rich and vitally importantmedical treatises of all kinds.

The late sixteenth century saw thecomposition of such critically influen-tial medical works as Bhavamipra’sencyclopaedic BhAvaprakAPa, the evenlarger VodarAnanda, produced forvodaramalla at the Mughal court, theRAjanighaLtu (the largest extant lexiconof Indian materia medica), Lolimba-raja’s incredibly popular VaidyajGvana,and Harqakgrti’s YogacintAmaLi. A cur-sory examination of any manuscriptlibrary in India reveals hundreds ofcopies of these works, which wereenergetically copied, distributed, andstudied throughout the subcontinent.Printed editions of some of these worksare in wide circulation and use in Indiaeven today, in traditional medicine col-leges and clinics.

The seventeenth century continuedthe rich production of medical texts,including those of Trimallabhassa, andseveral works commissioned byMaharaja Antpasiiha of Bikaner.Other authors worthy of study includeBharatamallika, who wrote on thegenealogy of the medical families ofBengal, and Praharaja who wrote amedical text in the novel form of adramatized dialogue between husbandand wife. Several medical works werealso produced under the patronage ofthe Maratha dynasty of Thanjavur inSouth India.

The eighteenth century witnessed,apparently for the first time, the emer-gence of a linguistic situation in whichmedical authors began to develop liter-ary discourses spanning languages. Inthis, so far as we can tell, medical writ-ing seems to differ from other disci-plines of Sanskrit intellectual life. Forexample, Diler Jang composed in bothSanskrit and Persian, while Mahade-vadeva wrote two works, which containPerso-Arabic terms and introducedIslamic medicine to a Sanskrit-readingaudience. Vyasa Kepavarama composeda bilingual Gujarati-Sanskrit medicalglossary, which referred to Persianmedicine, and Maharaja Pratapasiihaof Jaipur wrote in Marwari, and thentranslated his own work into Sanskritverse and Hindi prose (incidentally dis-tinguishing five new types of insanity).In Thanjavur the Maharajas themselvesbegan composing medical texts. Thisperiod is marked by a growing aware-ness of foreign medical traditions inIndia: Rakgajyotirvid mentions Englishoperations for piles, and refers to sev-eral contemporary foreign physicians.Govindadasa introduced various for-eign medical innovations, while refer-

ring to the views of contemporaryphysicians.

The second major influence on myresearch has been the recent work ofSheldon Pollock, professor of Sanskritat Chicago, and the invitation to partic-ipate in his ‘Indian Knowledge Systemson the Eve of Colonialism’ projectwhich has brought together a researchgroup interested in similar social andintellectual issues in disciplines asdiverse as astronomy (jyotiQa), logic(nyAya), poetic theory (alaKkAra), litur-gical hermeneutics (mGmAIsA) and, ofcourse, medicine.1

Pollock’s recent research, publishedin articles such as ‘Indian knowledgesystems on the eve of colonialism’(Intellectual History Newsletter, 2000),‘The death of Sanskrit’ (ComparativeStudies in History and Society, 2001),and ‘New intellectuals in seventeenth-century India’ (The Indian Economicand Social History Review, 2001),explores and develops ideas from hisearlier work, for instance the meaningin the Indian context of such crucialconcepts as modernity and novelty.Based on close readings of an unusu-ally wide range of texts from Sanskritand other languages, Pollock offers agrand narrative of social, literary, andlinguistic change. In his more recentwritings he identifies novel genres ofliterary production and the growth ofcertain types of potentially anti-tradi-tionalist questioning that seem to havebecome acceptable, even fashionable,in more than one intellectual discipline.

While some of Pollock’s argumentsand evidence have been challenged byscholars such as Juergen Hanneder,nobody has plausibly replaced or dis-placed Pollock’s overall argument aboutthe forces at work within language andthought in second-millennium India.

Sanskrit systems of thoughtAn intriguing feature of Pollock’s

work is the status it grants to the intel-lectual history of Sanskrit South Asia asa formation of great, possibly uniquelygreat, importance in the global historyof human thought. Pollock encouragesus to adopt an approach to under-standing Sanskrit systems of thoughtthat place them on the world stage, aswell as the application to India ofsophisticated ideas and tools that havedeveloped in studying pre-modernEuropean thought. Additionally, theideas and contributions of Sanskritauthors and scholars are discussed in asocial as well as purely intellectualmilieu. This is only possible when areasonable amount of biographicalinformation survives, as is the case withintellectuals from the last millennium,especially from the centuries precedingcolonialism.

The medical authors of the sixteenthto eighteenth centuries illustrate the

possibilities for integrating the historyof ideas with that of the social process-es that shaped their production andtransmission through this period ofIndian intellectual history. Data on rela-tionships connecting families and onlines of academic tutelage can beretrieved, and it now appears possibleto begin exploring the social basis of‘knowledge making and knowledgeholding’ (Steve Shapin) and the socialand intellectual links among thinkers

whose ideas have been passed down tolater generations. <

Dr Dominik Wujastyk is a senior research

fellow at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the

History of Medicine at University College

London (www.ucl.ac.uk/histmed). His cur-

rent research interests involve the social and

intellectual world of Indian medicine, 1550-

1750.

[email protected]

1 See: http://dsal.uchicago.edu/sanskrit

2 See also: Randall Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of

Intellectual Change, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press (1998).

Notes >

A physician and

nurse attending a

sick patient and her

servant. Watercolour.

seventeenth century.

Wel

lco

me

Lib

rary

, Lo

nd

on

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

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Adam Stainton’s Cultural Observations

A Plant Hunter in the HimalayasThe early field botanists working in the Himalayas, such as Frank Kingdon-Ward, GeorgeForrest, Major George Sherriff and Frank Ludlow, were respected for their thoroughness ascollectors of little-known flora. Less well-documented is the attention that these ‘planthunters’ gave to the cultural details of the communities whose villages and pasture landsthey entered. Unlike many early anthropologists working in Nepal, who chose to focus onone region or ethnic group, the botanical collectors roamed across the country, oftencovering a number of districts and climatic zones in a matter of weeks. Where they mayhave missed the depth of rich ethnographic detail, they made up for this in regionalbreadth, and were both sufficiently informed and well-positioned to compare theagricultural patterns or housing styles of the different communities they encountered. Onesuch explorer was J.D.A. Stainton, whose field note manuscripts from journeys to Nepal inthe 1960s, I came across in the Botany Library of the Natural History Museum, London.

background that provided him with enough financial secu-rity to pursue his interest in botanical exploration withoutbeing dependent on funding from scholarly institutions.

He made a great contribution to Himalayan botany, despitebeing virtually self-taught. Stainton was also an accomplishedphotographer, taking more than 4,000 slides on his travels.On his later field trips to Nepal in the 1960s, he took a num-ber of 16 mm cine reels illustrating the plants and people heencountered.* He remained, however, a most private man,and his Memoirs, published in 1988, three years before hisdeath, reveal little about his character or personal ambitions.It was a pleasant surprise to discover that his field notes bearwitness of both a developed sense of humour and an eye forsocial observation. This short article offers a few culturallyand historically revealing citations from his expedition notesfrom Nepal in the 1960s.

Stainton was careful to subdivide his writings into differ-ent sections, and his accounts invariably commence with areference to the porters he hired. In General Notes on Travel

from his 1964 expedition, we learn that he ‘used Sherpaporters almost exclusively, and paid them at the rate of 6rupees Nepali per day. They were mostly friends or relativesof our respective Sherpa sirdars, and as a result we wereentirely free from porter troubles throughout the trip. Occa-sionally delays due to the social importance of chang-drink-ing in Sherpa country were a small price to pay for freedomfrom any further transport problems’. This description offersan interesting contrast to an experience from the previousyear, on a trip to West Nepal. In Dolpo, he writes, while‘porters were not difficult to obtain, and were very cheerfuland willing: a European visitor who had preceded me a shorttime before had paid a rate of 8 rupees, so that there was noprospect of getting any porters for less’. This Dolpo expedi-tion was not without tensions, one of which he describes indetail: ‘From Tarakot to Tukucha I paid a rate of 10 rupeesper day. Porters from Mukut crossing the high pass into theKali valley attempted to increase this rate when at the top ofthe pass by giving me the alternatives either of paying moreor of being abandoned there. They were surprised to find thatin such circumstances I preferred abandonment, and in theend they completed the journey at the agreed rate.’

His interest in, and respect for, the Sherpa communities heencountered deepened over time. In 1964 he noted thatthroughout eastern Nepal, there was ‘no doubt that the Sher-pa areas are very much richer than most other parts’, while ofRolwaling he wrote that ‘the people are Sherpas, and comparedto the Sherpas of Khumbu who have become somewhat satedwith mountaineering expeditions they are an unsophisticat-ed and very cheerful community’. ‘Since 1949’, he continued,

By Mark Tur in

Adam Stainton, born in 1921, was one of the second waveof botanists to work in the Himalayas. The first record-

ed botanical explorations of Nepal date to the early 1800s,but extensive exploration of the Kingdom of Nepal onlybecame possible with the opening of the country to foreignvisitors in 1950. Stainton first visited Nepal in 1954 as partof an expeditionary team alongside Leonard How, JohnWilliams, and William Sykes. Their stated objective was togather a comprehensive collection of pressed specimens andthus to build a lasting record of the flora of the region. Stain-ton came from a family of lawyers and whisky distillers, a

‘Khumbu has been visited by so many mountaineering expe-ditions that its people show a considerable degree of sophis-tication. They possess a wealth of climbing equipment, and itis not unusual to be addressed in English by persons dressedin European style’. Describing the porters they hired in Kath-mandu for a journey to West Nepal the following year, Stain-ton noted that ‘these Sherpas viewed the ways of the local peo-ple with some surprise. Having myself travelled in Sherpacountry the previous year it was very evident to me that theSherpa people are a much more progressive community thanthese inhabitants of West Nepal’. While interested in the cul-tures and languages of the people he met on his travels, Stain-ton did not present himself as an expert. His one-time travel-ling companion, Tirtha Bahadur Shrestha, a well-respectedbotanist from Nepal, wrote in an obituary: ‘Adam never spokeNepali nor did he make any attempt to do so.’

While languages may not have been his forte, Stainton’sinterest in the morphology of plants also manifested itself inhis attention to architectural structures. He wrote: ‘One ofthe pleasant features of Dolpo, and a great contrast to otherBuddhist areas in Nepal is the excellent state of repair inwhich all religious buildings and monuments are kept. Thered, grey, orange, and white wash with which they paint theirgompas and chortens adds much colour to the scene. Some ofthese gompas are orthodox ones and some of the Pon-po [sic]sect; they alternate with a frequency confusing to all exceptan expert Tibetologist.’ Stainton remained, however, wary ofreductive logic: ‘It is tempting to assume that these flat roofsindicate a drier climate here, but one is hardly justified indoing so without further knowledge of the cultural back-ground of the villagers.’

Stainton recorded a number of the socio-cultural changesaffecting the communities he met on his journeys. In the late1960s, established Himalayan anthropologists were begin-ning to talk of cultural transformations and of Sanskritiza-tion, a process which the botanist also noted: ‘Any travellerto Nepal soon appreciates the tendency of people to upgradethemselves in reply to questions about their caste. I suspectthat some of the people who for the benefit of the inquisitivesay that they are Chetri, Borah, and the like have in fact inthe recent past had very close relationships with the Bhotea[sic] peoples to the north.’ On occasion, Stainton buried enter-taining asides in his otherwise serious field notes, as illus-trated by his thoughts on the Tharu inhabitants on Dang,who ‘…live in long spacious one-storeyed houses with reed-thatched roofs, and they decorate them with symbols and pic-tures drawn in wash or carved in wood in a distinctive style.These decorations have an antique appearance, but amongstbirds and beasts carved on a wooden well-head at Tulsipurwhich seemed to be of great age I observed a stylised but per-fectly recognisable carving of a DC 3. The airstrip on whichthe aeroplane from Katmandu [sic] lands is close by’. <

Mark Turin, MA is completing his grammar of the Thangmi lan-

guage, spoken in central eastern Nepal. He is currently affiliated to

the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge

and is manager of the Digital Himalaya Project.

[email protected]

* The Digital Himalaya Project recently digitized an hour

of Stainton’s 16 mm cine footage.

Note >

Digital Himalaya is a pilot project to develop digital col-

lection, archiving, and distribution strategies for multime-

dia anthropological information from the Himalayan

region. Based at Cornell and Cambridge universities, the

project began in December 2000. The initial phase

involves digitizing a set of existing ethnographic archives

comprised of photographs, films, sound recordings, field-

notes, and texts collected by anthropologists and trav-

ellers in Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Indian Himalayas

from the beginning of the twentieth century to the pres-

ent. Please take a look at www.digitalhimalaya.com

Information >

Research >South Asia

One of Adam Stain-

ton’s Nepali helpers

pressing specimens

of a minute primula

Villagers from the

alpine zone of Nepal

Ad

am S

tain

ton

Ad

am S

tain

ton

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Digital Himalaya As I walked up the Kali Gandaki river valley from the Mustang district headquarters of Jomsom to the ethnicallyTibetan village of Lubra, located in a remote side canyon, the portable Panasonic DVD player and its extra 12-hour battery weighed heavy in my backpack. On my mind were equally weighty questions about how thedigitized 16mm film shot in Lubra by anthropologist Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf in 1962, which I wasplanning to show during my visit, would be received. I had been coming to Lubra regularly for the last eightyears and was close to many of the village residents, but nevertheless I was anxious about this first experimentin returning cultural property through the Digital Himalaya Project. Would people be interested in the film?Would the cultural taboo of displaying images of the deceased make the showing of old film offensive? Wouldvillagers be angry that they had not seen the film until now?

Research >South Asia

By Sara Shne iderman

After arriving in the small village of fifteen houses, I sentaround word calling the villagers to a community film

showing in the village gompa (Buddhist temple) for the nextafternoon. ‘You don’t have to worry, everyone will show up –perhaps even early!’ reassured a local friend when I expressedmy concern that people would not be interested. ‘They’venever seen a film in their own village before, and certainlynot one of the village itself. It will be the most exciting thinghappening all winter.’ Lubra remains without electricity orphone access, and although many of its young and able-bod-ied residents spend the cold months of the year as traderselsewhere, children and the elderly are left behind to weath-er the bitter Himalayan winter.

It was in fact this latter group, the village elders, whom Isought most eagerly for my audience. They were most like-ly to remember the individual characters and events shownin the 1962 film. To my satisfaction, as the time for the film-showing approached, a group of around 25 people, includ-ing five over the age of sixty, gathered in the gompa courtyard.I set up the portable DVD player on a ledge inside, where thewooden windows could be closed to create a temporary cin-ema atmosphere. Upon giving a brief introduction to ourproject and noting the date of the film from Lubra, 1962, Ichose not to provide any additional contextual informationabout the silent footage, hoping instead to elicit viewers’ com-ments about both the content and form of the film.

As I pressed ‘play’, a hush fell over the group and theycrowded closer around the small screen. Fade-in to a groupof local women dancing in a circle wearing their ritual fin-ery. No response from the audience. A few village scenes,everyday activities like goat-herding and hair-combing flashedacross the screen. Not a word. Two minutes of the five-minutefilm clip gone, and I was beginning to worry. Cut to an imageof what appears to be an argument, with a group of villagerssilently shouting at each other in black and white.

Suddenly a deep belly laugh erupted from the senior lamaof the village, a jovial man of around sixty-two. ‘That was theargument about my cousin’s wedding! I know those people!Look, look!’ he commanded the other villagers, pointing adirty finger right up against the faces on the small screen.With the silence broken by such a respected communitymember, everyone began chattering excitedly. ‘That’s mygrandmother Chimi Dolkar!’ shouted one old woman. ‘No,it’s not, it’s my husband’s aunt Palsang!’ After the initial dis-orientation of seeing moving film of the village for the firsttime, it all began to fall into place for the viewers, and therace was on to identify each individual appearing in the film.

‘I can’t believe it, it’s as if our lifespan is doubled,’exclaimed Rinchen Lhamo, a sixty-five-year-old woman whohad been present during the events that Haimendorf filmed.‘Now that we have this machine we can meet people we neverthought we’d see again.’ I asked whether this contravenedthe taboo on displaying images of the deceased. ‘Not at all,’

she chuckled, ‘this is different from a photograph, which onlyreminds us of death. Here they are alive, so there is no prob-lem.’ An interesting indigenous summary of the power ofmoving image.

As the afternoon wore on, we watched the five-minute filmclip again and again. Each time, we paused on different sec-tions, and the villagers debated the identity of each individ-ual. Many people there could find an aunt or an uncle, and afew older villagers even recognized their own parents. Smallchildren were called in to ‘meet’ the grandparents they hadnever known. After extensive discussion, the details of theargument at the wedding captured in the film emerged, asdid other important information that expanded uponHaimendorf’s own field notes from that day. In particular, it

became clear that several of the early scenes in the film werenot actually from Lubra, but from the neighbouring districtof Dolpo. Apparently Haimendorf had spliced these scenestogether without making a note of their different sources. Inaddition, the four villagers who could actually recall Haimen-dorf’s visit all concurred that the women’s dance early in thefilm was not in fact a natural part of the wedding ritual, butrather a feat of anthropological engineering: Haimendorf hadasked all of the village women to put on their finest clothesand dance so he could film them.

By twilight we had watched the film at least thirty times,and people began to drift away to do their evening work.Exhausted but happy, I packed up the DVD player andreturned to my host family’s house. As I was enjoying a glassof warm local spirit, two of the older women who had beenat the film showing all afternoon walked through the doorand asked for a personal showing. Clearly the film held morethan a passing fascination for the villagers, and could be use-fully integrated into the existing structure of cultural mem-ory. We spent the evening talking further about the film andits possibilities. Late in the evening, as the fire was dying low,Rinchen Wangmo asked whether I could leave the DVD andthe magical ‘machine’ in the village with them. ‘Not until thevillage gets electricity. As it is, the battery will last only a fewmore hours, and then it will be over.’ She nodded and set offfor home with a pensive look on her face.

The next morning, as I was preparing to leave, her sonoffered to accompany me on the two-hour walk to the districtheadquarters. In his hand was a petition to the Chief DistrictOfficer to re-examine the possibilities for electrifying the vil-lage – among the twenty or so villages in the immediateregion, Lubra is the only one that remains dark. ‘We askedbefore,’ he said, ‘but the effort was half-hearted. This filmhas given us a new reason to try.’ <

Sara Shneiderman, MA is a PhD student in Anthropology at Cor-

nell University, Ithaca, NY. She has been working in the Himalayas

for five years, particularly in Nepal and north-east India.

[email protected]

Sara Shneiderman

introducing the Digi-

tal Himalaya project

to the villagers of

Lubra, December

2002.

A still from the 1962

cine reel taken by

professor Christoph

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Revolutionary Mongols, Lamasand Buddhism (1921-1941)

The history of Buddhism in Mongolia dates back to the thirteenth century when Kublai Khan established ties with the influentialhierarchs of the Mahayana sect, Sakya, in Tibet. It was not until the sixteenth century when Altan Kan of the Tumet devotedhimself to the then leading school, Gelug (the yellow faith), that this strand of Buddhism had been actively spreading acrossMongolia. By the beginning of the twentieth century Geluk had become the official and dominant religion regulating all areas ofeveryday life. Yet in contemporary Outer Mongolia, Buddhism no longer plays its former great political, social, and cultural role.The Buddhist sangha of Outer Mongolia had been the main obstacle for the Mongolian People’s Party (MPP) and the People’sGovernment to maintain and enhance their power.1 Therefore, the revolutionary and socialist changes in the Mongolian People’sRepublic (MPR) partly sought to dismantle the religious institutions causing them to vanish almost entirely. What happened tothe Buddhist sangha and the Buddhists in Outer Mongolia in the early twentieth century? For 70 years the original sources whichcould provide the answer to this question were inaccessible to the West. However, the recent opening of Mongolian and Russianarchives has allowed the author to reconstruct the facts and shed light on historical events.

Research >Central Asia

By I r ina Morozova

In the 1920s, lamas accounted for onethird of the population and the Bud-

dhist monasteries, which functioned aspolitical, economic, educational, andcultural centres, had established a net-work in Mongolia as well as abroad.The clergy had its own administrativedistrict, Shabinar, and consolidatedmore than 30 per cent of the nationallivestock. The monastic administrationworked closely with the local secularauthorities in matters such as taxation(involving payments in both money andin kind and even corvée labour). Thusstrong monastic corporations preservedthe local system of social and econom-ic redistribution for centuries. In addi-tion the monasteries held a monopolyon education. In short, any significantevent in the life of a Mongolian alwaysinvolved the presence of a lama.

At the beginning of the twentieth cen-tury, Outer Mongolia was associatedwith the head of its Buddhist sangha andShabinar, Bogdo-Gegen. The eighthBogdo-Gegen, Jebtsundamba Khutagt,the Living Buddha, was a charismaticpolitical leader, who was highly popularwith the Mongols. As a result of thenational revolution against the Qing rulein 1911 he became the first and last theo-cratic monarch of Mongolia.

The authority of Bogdo-Gegen, histheocratic government and influentialkhutagts, the Shabinar and monasticcorporations, formed the main opposi-tion to the Mongolian revolutionaries,the Soviet Bolsheviks and the agents ofthe Comintern, who had diversifiedtheir activities in East Asia during the1920-1930s.2 The Mongolian revolu-tionaries, instructed by their Sovietadvisers, had to work out the generalstrategy and tactics. The aim of theirpolicy was the elimination of Buddhistclergy as a political and social institu-tion and the secularization of educationin Mongolia. This process wentthrough five main periods.

The anti-Chinese alliance The period from 1921 to 1924 wit-

nessed the tactical alliance of revolu-tionaries and lamas. The revolutionar-ies promised to liberate Mongolia fromthe Qing administration and Chinesecolonialists and to declare Bogdo-Gegen the constitutional monarch. Inreturn, the court of Bogdo-Gegen guar-anteed the MPP full support in the ‘liq-uidation of hereditary nobles and pop-ularization of revolutionary ideas intothe masses’.3 On 1 November 1921, thePeople’s Government and Bogdo-Gegen signed the ‘Treaty on Oath’,according to which the JebtsundambaKhutagt remained the nominal leader

of the Mongols and the symbol of theMongolian State, but with the realpower passing into the hands of the rev-olutionaries. Subsequently, the People’sGovernment placed restrictions on therights of Bogdo-Gegen and graduallyimplemented the administrativereforms of the Shabinar, according itthe same status as other administrativedistricts.

During this period the MPP wasweak and insignificant; its memberswere concentrated in the capital, Urgaand large parts of the population livingin distant regions were even unawareof the existence of the party. At thattime, the revolutionaries could notoperate without the lamas’ administra-tive experience and their support inpopular campaigns. Many lamas occu-pied key government positions andsome even became members of theCentral Committee of the MPP.

The new government was able tomaintain its power in Urga thanks tothe tolerant attitude of many high-rank-ing khutagts and nobles. Despite theevents in Urga, the monastic lamas,continued busying themselves withlocal and internal affairs, as they per-ceived the MPP as a temporary politicalally and remained fully unawares thatthey would soon become the victims ofthe revolution.

The death of Bogdo-Gegen and thedeclaration of the Mongolian People’sRepublic in 1924 seriously affected thepolitical rights of the sangha, markingthe end of the first period. The lamasconcern became tangible and they nowsearched for ways to reach political con-solidation, however in vain as between1925 and 1928 the revolutionaries hadpolitically neutralized them.

Meanwhile the MPP (since 1925 theMongolian People’s RevolutionaryParty (MPRP)) had been successfullyrecruiting new members and raisingnew cadres. The new left-wing Partydeviators (the Leftists) proposed dras-tic measures against the sangha andeven against Buddhist religion. As theirimplementation could easily result inmass protests among the Mongols, theComintern instructors recommendedto the MPRP that they employ the tac-tics of ‘social stratification of the lamas’,that is instigating revolutionary agita-tion among the lower lamas against thehigh-ranking ones. The strategy failedbecause Buddhist ethics and the tradi-tional respect for the elderly in nomadicsociety did not match with the mood ofrebellion, which the Comintern agentstried to spread.

Crackdown on the lamasAt the fourth Congress, the MPRP

openly declared the struggle against the

high-ranking lamas and confessed tohave accepted their assistance onlyunder difficult circumstances. Soonafter the law separating religion andstate was passed in 1926, the Shabinarwas abolished and its population wasintegrated into the other districtsaccording to territorial principles.

In 1928 the revolutionaries placed aban on seeking reincarnations, thusrefusing the demands of the sangha forthe ninth reincarnation of Bogdo-Gegen. Since that time, no other LivingBuddha has been allowed to appear andperform as political and spiritual sym-bol of Outer Mongolia.

By refusing political authority to thesangha, the MPRP did not solve the‘lama question’. The majority of thepopulation kept on worshipping Bud-dha’s disciples and sending children tothe monasteries to study and themonastic livestock and property alsocontinued to expand. The former aneye-sore, the latter was most threaten-ing and challenging to the power of theMPRP, which decided to confiscatingthe property of nobles and lamas at itsSeventh Congress at the end of 1928.This event marked the beginning of anew period in revolutionary politics andproved fatal to the lamas.

From 1929-1932 the economic foun-dation of monasteries was eliminated.The confiscation of monastic propertyduring the jas campaign formed part offorced mass collectivization between1930 and 1932.4 It is interesting to notethat the Comintern and Soviet adviserswarned the MPRP against launchingthis campaign, considering it to be toorisky.5 This time, however, the Mongo-lian Leftists acted on their own initia-tive. Local party authorities confiscatedmonastic livestock by force and trans-ferred it to collective pastures. Leftistenthusiasts violently overturned thesocial and economic relations of thenomads that had evolved over cen-

turies, instigated compulsory measuresagainst the lamas and furthermore,profane Buddhist objects of worship. Itis no wonder that such a campaignresulted in lama-led mass revolts inwhich 70 per cent of the populationparticipated. The rebellions started inMarch 1930 and were suppressed onlywith the help of Soviet military by Octo-ber 1932, resulting in around 10,000deaths.

The main goals of the jas campaignwere to destroy the corporate monasticsystem and in its place to develop localparty structures. Although these aimswere achieved to a certain extent, the cul-tural influence of lamas remainedstrong. Even in 1932, Mongoliannomads regarded them as respectableteachers, doctors, and skilled craftsmen.

The years 1933-1935 provided a shortand relative economic relief after themass collectivization. For the sangha itwas a period of slight restoration, dur-ing which the lamas briefly increasedtheir numbers, built new temples, hadtheir titles restored, and continued touse the population as labour force. Therevolutionary government, on its part,increased the tax on monasteries andeven interfered in internal monastic life,attempting to control appointments ofBuddhist hierarchs. The impossibility ofthe two systems coexisting, the MPRP

and the Buddhist sangha, became moreobvious than ever.

The newest (and the latest) stage of‘lama policy’ started in 1936, when H.Choibalsan consolidated power andpromoted repressive organizations thatintroduced the reign of terror in theMPR. At that time, not only high-rank-ing khutagts, but all lamas were labelled‘number one contra-revolutionary ele-ments’, ‘enemies of the Mongoliannation’, and ‘agents of Japanese impe-rialism’. From 1937 to 1940 the Bud-dhist sangha of Outer Mongolia was liq-uidated. According to most Mongolianhistorians, around 35,000 lamas suf-fered some form of repression; rangingfrom mental torture to execution. Someresearchers suggest the numbers of upto 90,000 (out of a total 100,000).

In 1937 many Mongols wanting tobecome Buddhist monks were prohib-ited from doing so, and those lamaswho were ready to give up their reli-gious status gained social benefits fromthe government. In 1938 alone, 760monasteries out of a total 771 had beenclosed and the expropriation of allmonastic property was completed inthe next year. These events meant theend of a former socio-economic andpolitical elite in Mongolia – the lamas.

The last assault was made on the cul-tural front. The Tibetan and Mongolianwriting systems, which were the basicmeans of Buddhist teaching, were to beeliminated. As long as people contin-ued to read and write in these lan-guages, which, as the revolutionariesbelieved could not express modern con-cepts, they would remain deaf to thecultural achievements of the revolution.Thus, in March 1941, the CentralCommittee of the MPRP announcedthe adoption of Cyrillic as the new Mon-golian alphabet. This step was crucialin the formation of a secular, Soviet-style educational system. It had takenthe revolutionaries about 20 years(1921-1941) to liquidate the great andpowerful Buddhist sangha of OuterMongolia. <

Dr Irina Y. Morozova received her PhD in his-

tory from the Institute of Asian and African

Studies of Lomonosov Moscow State Univer-

sity. She wrote her dissertation on the social

transformation of Outer Mongolia in the twen-

tieth century. Her research interests cover the

modern and contemporary history of Central

Asia. Dr Morozova is presently an IIAS affili-

ate fellow, working on the project ‘Conflict,

Security and Development in the Post-Soviet

Era: Towards Regional Economic Cooperation

in the Central Asian Region’.

[email protected]

1 The sangha is the community of Buddhist monks, linked together by internal

structure, hierarchies and regulations. The Mongolian sangha is represented

by different types of lamas and high-ranking lamas, called khutagts.

2 The politics of the Third Communist International in Mongolia is described

in: Morozova, Irina Y., The Comintern and Revolution in Mongolia. Cambridge:

White Horse Press (2002).

3 Russian State Archive of Social-Political History (RSASPH). F. 495. Sch. 152.

D. 3, l.2.

4 Jas (Mong.) are monastic households.

5 RSASPH. F. 495. Sch. 3. D. 55, l. 16; D. 72, l. 31; Sch. 154. D. 391, l. 56; Sch. 4.

D. 73, l. 8, 9.

Notes >

Gandan Monastery in Ulaanbaatar (founded in 1838), the central and largest monastery in

Mongolia, is one of a few Buddhist temples that survived the socialist period.

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By Shauna S ingh Baldwin

In the 1970s, Subhadra Butalia foundherself among a crowd watching in

horror as the bride next door, HardeepKaur, became a human torch and wastaken to hospital on a stretcher. With 70per cent burns, Hardeep Kaur becameyet another ‘bride-burning’ statistic,murdered by her in-laws for not bring-ing enough in cash and kind. Hardeephad been sent back to her parents witha list of her husband’s dowry demands,but her parents decided she should bereturned to her husband and in-laws.The blackmail continued until the par-ents could pay no more, and then Hard-eep was murdered. Why did Hardeep’sparents send her back, Butalia won-dered? And she questioned why thenewspapers had failed to carry a singlereport about Hardeep’s murder. Of allthe neighbours who had stood beforethe spectacle of a burning woman, onlySubhadra Butalia agreed to testify. Thusbegan her 35-year struggle to help vic-tims of dowry-related violence.

Now 81 years old, Subhadra Butaliahas written a succinct volume that shedescribes as ‘neither a memoir, nor abook about dowry’. Yet it has elementsof both. Using names and stories of vic-tims of dowry death and disagreement,the author explores this deeply embed-ded tradition and shows us the prob-

lems of social organizations and work-ers dealing with domestic violence inthe extended family.

The memory of a childhood friend,Madhu, moved me to read The Gift of aDaughter. Madhu, a lovely young Pun-jabi woman, came from a wealthy, pro-fessional class family. She was head girlof my school, studied French and soci-ology at college and dreamed of travel-ling the world. She married for love inthe early 1980s, and was shunned forit by her family. By 1983, she was gone.Poisoned, it was rumoured, by her in-laws. And the reaction from people inDelhi: ‘What did she expect, marryingagainst her parents wishes? Her in-lawsshould have known there would be nodowry given to her, no matter what theirdemands. This is what happens to a dis-obedient girl.’

Madhu’s story is not unique. Thedowry tradition is now practised byHindus, Sikhs, Muslims, and Chris-tians alike. Moreover, dowry demandshave made their way overseas, so thatwedding season for brides of Indian ori-gin in the North American diaspora ofIndians, is also dowry season. For all itssensational appeal when mentioned inthe Western press, bride-burning andthe dowry system are Indian expres-sions of ‘domestic violence’ in materi-ally developed countries, spanningclasses and education levels. A 1997

estimate by UNICEF placed the annu-al number of reported dowry deaths inIndia at 5,377, a 12 per cent increase onthe previous year. While men living inNorth America who believe women tobe non-persons, might verbally abuse,beat or eventually shoot them (with nostatistics available as to whether eco-nomic demands were made to rela-tives), men and mothers-in-law withoutaccess to handguns might, in India,douse a woman in kerosene and light amatch.

Subhadra Butalia and the organiza-tions she has founded, Stree Sangarshand Karmika, have intervened hun-dreds of times in India to prevent adowry killing, or have sought to bringmurderers to justice. In a tone of sad-ness, she describes the elusiveness ofjustice. Yet her outrage must have beenstrong enough to carry her throughmany rescue missions over the years,and to prompt her to write.

The perennial question arises: howcan any parent value his or herrespectability higher than the life of hisor her daughter? As in Hardeep Kaur’scase, an Indian daughter facing dowrydemands is highly likely to be sent backto her in-laws to ‘adjust’, facing abuse,violence, and even death. Butalia offerstwo explanations, the first mythological– an unwed Hindu woman becomes aghost – the second economic. Eco-

nomic reasons outweigh any myths inthe stories she presents, for the list ofexplanations begins with the under-ground cash economy and the ostenta-tious display by the nouveaux riches.And the book’s ever-present backdropis the large-scale dependence of Indianwomen on husbands, and atavisticideas of women as property.

Having introduced the problem ofdowry by displaying the faces andnames of its victims over her years ofactivism, Butalia leaves us with manyopen questions for further research,such as: why do women (sisters andmothers-in-law) participate in dowrydemands? How can we penetrate thewilful denial of parents of marrieddaughters that dowry demands are ille-gal and dangerous to their daughters’physical safety? How is the practice ofbride-endowment (mehar) changing todowry in the Indian Muslim commu-nity? How does the implementation ofHindu inheritance law underpin dowrydemands experienced by women sub-ject to Hindu personal law?

By the end of this little gem of a book,you feel the author’s ruminating voicefill with wonder and delight in the sto-ries of young women who, in the pastfew years, have thrown femininerespectability to the wind, and called offor walked out of weddings when adowry demand was made. Subhadra

The Gift of a DaughterSubhadra Butalia’s father was determined to marry her to a husband who would not expect or demand a dowry. At the time shemarried, soon after the independence of India in 1947, a bride might be nagged or grumbled at for little or no dowry, but therewere no threats of violence. However, many families ‘taking’ a bride had begun to expect, hint, demand, solicit, and finallythreaten a woman and her parents for not giving expensive presents. By 1961, the Indian government recognized the custom hadbecome an opportunity for extortion and passed a law to prohibit it. But a bride’s wedding gifts had turned into a husband’sentitlement, and Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, and Christian families increasingly began taking recourse to violence to obtain it.

Forum >South Asia

Butalia’s father would have been proudof his courageous daughter’s manyarduous years of helping victims, andof agitating for changes in the law andits enforcement. Though too late formany like Hardeep and my friendMadhu, social workers like Butalia haveraised our consciousness and made itconceivable for young women to ques-tion and protest at this pernicious insti-tution. <

- Butalia, Subhadra, The Gift of a Daughter.

Encounters with Victims of Dowry, Delhi:

Penguin Books India (2002), pp. 170,

ISBN 0143028715

Shauna Singh Baldwin is a Canadian-

American writer of Indian origin. Her books

of fiction include What the Body Remembers

(Knopf Canada; Doubleday USA) and Eng-

lish Lessons and Other Stories (Goose Lane

Editions, Canada). This review is also avail-

able online at BlueEar.com, and published

in India by Manushi magazine.

[email protected]

Preserving Tibetan Cultural HeritageAs the situation deteriorated in Tibet, the odds for Akong Tulku’s refugee party looked more unfavourable eachday of their perilous journey to India. Leaving behind the familiar and accommodating world of Eastern Tibet,which they had enjoyed and cherished for as long as their memories reached, they now found themselvesdisplaced and lost in the freezing winter of the southern mountain ranges of Tibet, all of a sudden fugitives intheir own land. After many months of arduous hardships, their group, which included the 11th Trungpa Tulku, theleader of the party, had dwindled from several hundreds to just a little more than a dozen. Too hungry andexhausted to move, they huddled together in a Himalayan cave, waiting for death to take them one by one.Fortunately, local hunters chanced upon them and took pity. Having thus escaped certain death through thekindness of strangers, Akong Tulku resolved to dedicate his remaining life to providing aid and refuge to peoplein distress, in Tibet and elsewhere.

Research >Central Asia

By P im Wi l lems

I t was with this defining experience in mind that AkongTulku Rinpoche founded, in 1980, the humanitarian aid

organization Rokpa, which in Tibetan signifies ‘help’. Head-ed by Rokpa International in Switzerland, 17 branches in 16countries raise funds for projects in education, healthcare,environment, culture, and social economy. At present, thereare 135 projects in Tibet alone. Through publication of rareTibetan texts, many of which are on the verge of being lostforever, preservation of Tibetan cultural heritage is activelysought. These efforts have so far resulted in two multi-vol-ume collections: Tibetan medical texts and Kagyupa collegetexts. These collections will be entrusted to the care oflibraries all over the world, in the hope to better preserveTibetan heritage, which has proven to be so vulnerable to thevicissitudes of history.

Since 1998, members of Rokpa have actively searchedmany regions of Tibet for rare medical texts, while also try-ing to locate commentaries on the basic texts and docu-ments identifying crucial medicinal herbs. The collectedtexts are electronically edited and arranged into volumes,while prefaces, illustrations, and footnotes are added. Ulti-mately, Rokpa Tibet and the Sichuan Minority PrintingHouse will print some twenty-seven 600-page volumes ofTibetan medical texts.

Of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism: the Gel-

ugpa, Sakyapa, Nyingmapa, and Kagyupa, the first three havetheir own college texts. To ensure that in Kagyupa college stu-dents can be taught from their own textbooks, and to saveKagyupa traditional knowledge from being lost, Rokpa Inter-national has decided to locate and collect all texts of theKagyupa system of instruction in the ten traditional sciencesor areas of learning. In a joint venture with the Xining Print-ing Press, 2,000 copies of the twenty-volume Kagyupa text-book collection will be printed for Tibetan colleges, univer-sities, and libraries all over the world. The contents include:

poetry and modes of expression, dramatic and creative arts,the healing arts, valid cognition, graduated path, abhidhar-ma, madhyamika, prajnaparamita, treatises relating sutra andtantra, commonalities of tantra, and commentaries on tantra.

The first copies were formally presented to the Kern Insti-tute Library at Leiden University during the IIAS-initiatedcultural event ‘Appreciating Tibet in the West’, held inNovember 2002 at the occasion of the official presentationof the proceedings of the ninth seminar of the InternationalAssociation for Tibetan Studies. <

Pim Willems is secretary of Rokpa Netherlands.

[email protected]

Rokpa International

[email protected]

www.rokpa.org

Information >

Tibetological Collections & Archives SeriesPim Willem’s article on ‘Preserving Tibetan Cultural Heritage’ is the tenth contribution to the Tibetological Collections & Archives Series, which is devot-

ed to important projects on cataloguing, ‘computerization’ (inputting and scanning), editing, and translation of important Tibetan language text-col-

lections and archives. In this series various colleagues briefly present their initiatives to a larger public, or update the scholarly world on the progress of

their already well-established projects. Some are high-profile projects, of which at least Tibetologists will generally be aware, yet some may also be less

well known. Nevertheless, I trust that it will be useful to be informed or updated on all these initiatives and I also hope that the projects presented will

profit from the exposure and the response that this coverage will engender. If you are interested in any of the projects described, feel free to contact the

author of the article. In case you would like to introduce your own (planned) work in the field, please contact the editors of the IIAS Newsletter or the

author of this introduction. We should very much like to encourage our contributors to keep us informed on the progress of their projects by means of

regular updates. <

Henk Blezer, Researcher at the CNWS

[email protected]

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Utopian Identities, Real Selves

Anthropological Futures

Whereas most of the voluminous critical discussion of ‘postcolonialism’ and literature has concentrated on issues of ‘writingback’ in colonial situations and in European languages to empires past and present, the focus of the IIAS workshop ‘Chewing theWest’ was on indigenous literatures and the broader issue of the multiple ways in which not only Western literary genres, but alsonon-Western modern identities have been configured in literature outside the West.*

Following 32 years of Suharto’s New Order rule in Indonesia, the startling, occasionallymarvellous, and all too often frightening developments of the last four years of Reformasiand its aftermath challenge us as scholars to consider the political-historical conjuncturesin which we work and to think anew the ethnographic contexts of which we write. Thenagging sense of crisis across the archipelago (with varied manifestations in differentplaces), the recurrent political turmoil and communal violence, the novel experiments withdemocracy, civil institutions, and forms of publicity, the stubborn persistence of powerfulforces opposed to change, the processes and by-products of decentralization, and, last butnot least, the diverse negotiations by Indonesians of their positions within a post-9/11global world order, all demand our urgent attention. The exploratory conference‘Anthropological futures for twenty-first-century Indonesia’ was convened with theseinterrelated purposes in mind.

By Tony Day

The workshop’s very conceptualization promised a shiftfrom a narrow concern with the legacies of colonialism,

which, as many commentators have observed, has tended toreinforce the very dominance of European languages and lit-eratures that indigenous authors and post-colonial scholarsare contesting. If the presenters effectively ‘provincialized’and localized the dominant West, they also indicated thatmuch remains to be done, through the study of literary formsthemselves, before we understand how the worldwideprocesses of literary creation occur and lead to the emergenceof ‘world literature’. Particularly fascinating were the hintsof a tension between utopian possibilities for identity con-veyed through literary forms, whether ‘Western’ or ‘indige-nous’, and the ‘real’ selves, whether in the guise of charac-ters or authorial personae, conveyed by the literary text. Thetension between idealized past or future identities and realselfhood in the present has less to do with the formation ofthe nation state than with the creation of literary selves. Read-ers around the world can recognize the latter in their ownactual everyday, modern contexts (for several stimulating def-initions of realism and the self in literature, see Karatani1993, Makdisi 2000 and Zhao 1995).

Thus, according to Daniela Merolla (Leiden University), areal self emerges in modern Berber Kabyle literature that isdistinct from those portrayed in either French ethnograph-ic, Berber folkloric, or official (classical) Arabic linguisticterms. According to Thomas de Bruijn (Leiden University),Premcand’s Hindi short story, Kafan, effectively presentsIndia’s economic and social realities in the 1930s not throughWestern techniques of narrative and psychological realism,

but by using older, indigenous rhetorical forms. Madhavaand Ghisu acquire a selfhood which late-colonial Hindi read-ers could recognize as similar to their own through forms ofcharacterization that derive from traditional ideas about pos-sibilities for individuality and freedom. One such possibili-ty occurs in the last stage of human existence, the ‘sphere ofrenunciation’, which is governed by the dominant emotion-al state (rasa) of ‘the gruesome’. Another is embodied in thearchetype of the saintly drunk. The self thus brought to lifein the story is poised between the utopian promise of socialcustoms and beliefs that offer an all-encompassing meaningto and release from life’s suffering, and the paradoxical real-ization that, as Ghisu observes, ‘someone who did not get arag to cover her body when she was alive, needs a new shroudwhen she dies’. The story argues against any realistic hopeof either a utopian modern future or a return to an idealizedtraditional past by means of a rhetoric saturated with Hindureligious idealism.

Merolla and De Bruijn, as well Kwadwo Osei-Nyame, Jr(University of London), Evan Mwangi (University of Nairo-bi), and Said A.M. Khamis (University of Bayreuth) in theiressays on African literatures, do not present national identi-ties as unitary but, rather, as multiple, layered, and gendered.The complex reality of war in Vietnam as portrayed in DuongThu Huong’s Novel Without a Name (1991) cannot be reducedto the heroic, ideal male stereotypes of Communist Party slo-gans, as Ursula Lies (University of Potsdam) demonstratesin her analysis. Yet that novel also conjures up a timeless,utopian kind of national identity that transcends the limitsimposed by national boundaries, state doctrines, or genderdifferences. The role of the Sherlock Holmes-like detectivesin the 1930s Sumatran novels discussed by Doris Jedamski(workshop convenor) is similarly utopian, not only as an ide-alized ‘manifestation of modern rationality and subjectivity’,as she puts it, or as a representation of the quintessentialJavanese nobleman brought back to life in the late colonialDutch East Indies, but also as an endorsement of a desired,future state of absolute law and order. As represented in the

Indonesian detective figure, the ‘real’ self is concealed behindthe mysterious masks of a paternalistic superman who onlyambiguously represents either the independent modern selfor the national citizen. This is reminiscent of Franco Moret-ti’s and Umberto Eco’s claims that the detective fiction genrein the West negates individualism and freedom in the inter-est of promoting a paternalistic kind of social order (Moret-ti 1983; Eco 1979). As Moretti notes, detective fiction invokesscience for defensive rather than developmental purposes,for it reinstates ‘an idea of status society that is externalized,traditionalist, and easily controllable’ (Moretti 1983: 145, ital-ics in the original). The fetishist preoccupation with outwardappearances and the hyperphysical details of the modernizedcolonial world, as noted by both Matthew Cohen (Universi-ty of Glasgow) and Keith Foulcher (University of Sydney) intheir papers on theatre and the novel in early twentieth-cen-tury Java respectively, may also convey a similarly ambigu-ous message: the tension between a ‘real’ national or mod-ern self in the colonial present and a protean world ofhypothetical, utopian identities without limit or possibilityof attainment. <

References

- Eco, Umberto, ‘The Myth of Superman’, in: The Role of the Read-

er, Bloomington: Indiana University Press (1979).

- Karatani Kojin, Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, Durham and

London: Duke University Press (1993).

- Makdisi, Saree, ‘Postcolonial Literature in a Neocolonial World:

Modern Arabic Culture and the End of Modernity’, in: Fawzia Afzal-

Khan and Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks (eds.), The Pre-Occupation of

Postcolonial Studies, Durham and London: Duke University Press

(2000).

- Moretti, Franco, Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of

Literary Form, London: Verso (1983).

- Zhao, Henry Y.H., The Uneasy Narrator: Chinese Fiction from the

Traditional to the Modern, Oxford: Oxford University Press (1995).

Tony Day is visiting lecturer within the Curriculum for Comparative

Literature and senior associate at the Carolina Asia Center, both at

the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is interested in

the literature and history of Southeast Asia, literary theory, and

world literature.

[email protected]

By Patr ic ia Spyer

Among other issues raised, the con-ference convener addressed the

need for new research agendas that canbetter address the complex socialdynamics and political processes char-acterizing Indonesia since Suharto’sstep-down. Are the same intellectualparadigms employed in research car-ried out under New Order conditionsequally valid today, or did ‘the appear-ance of order’ – in John Pemberton’sfelicitous formulation (Pemberton1994) – put in place by the Suhartoregime cause us to look in some direc-tions and not others? Has a new set ofcomplex problems emerged which haveonly now become accessible?

Along with the refiguring of unfold-ing circumstances, the legacy of theSuharto era and, equally important, that

of the scholarship of the New Order canbe explored from new perspectives.Amongst other issues, conference par-ticipants were invited to consider, in ret-rospect, the ramifications of legalrestrictions and policies of the New

Order with respect to media and labouras well as the impact of the regime’scultural politics vis-à-vis religion, eth-nicity, and gender. The bankruptcy ofthe former regime’s historiography, thesilences covering the massacres of

1965-66 and the New Order’s humanrights record, and the relative paucityof scholarship regarding Islam and thecountry’s ethnic Chinese, seem espe-cially worthy of reconsideration. Issuesof globalization and the nation state’sredeployment within an increasinglyheterogeneous world are matters ofconcern together with, more specifi-cally, current revisions of the nationstate project and related issues of sov-ereignty, regional autonomy, and his-torical and political revisionisms.Amongst these more volatile issues,participants were asked to consider thekinds of imaginings, experiences, andordinary and extraordinary events thathave come to characterize the everydayacross Indonesia since 1998.

Besides an afternoon of film-screen-ings by Garin Nugroho and ArjoDanusiri, introduced by the latter, anethnographic filmmaker from Jakarta,the conference featured six speakerswho engaged the issue of Indonesianand anthropological ‘futures’ in a rangeof compelling ways. Thinking aboutand imagining the future involved adetour through the past (Keane, Steed-ly), an engagement with the shiftingtemporalities woven through women’slife cycles of work as well as with thesubjective narrative of this variableexperience (Saptari), a consideration ofthe conditions as well as possible out-comes to be pursued in the aftermathof violence (Laksono, Manuhutu), andthe problem of ‘making the future’through a process of ‘decolonizing’ thedisavowed national historiography ofthe New Order (Henk Schulte Nord-holt).

A focus of discussion was how think-ing about the future necessarily impliesa vantage point with respect to whichnot only the future – or a range of pos-sible or alternative futures – come intoview but also particular perspectives onthe present and past as well. Imaginingthe future, in Indonesia – as elsewhere– means being cognizant of the possi-bilities alive at any given moment, com-pels the exploration of the differenttemporalities and positions that people

* Foulcher and Day, Clearing a Space: Postcolonial Readings of Modern

Indonesian Literature, Leiden: KITLV Press (2002), p. 2, n.1

Note >

Report >General

Report >Southeast Asia

5–7 December 2002Leiden, the Netherlands

27-28 November2002Leiden,the Netherlands

Two films were screened at the conference. Maiden of the Morning Star, an episode on Papua

from the TV docudrama series Library of the Children of the Archipelago, focuses on expectations for the future

in this frontier of the Indonesia nation state as seen through the eyes of a young Papuan schoolgirl. Viva

Indonesia: Letters to God, a compilation of four produced as part of the ‘Visual House of Papua’ project,

addresses the pervasive Indonesian stereotyping of Papuans, ethnic tensions, local ambitions of inde-

pendence, and the Indonesian school curriculum, specifically the teaching of national history. The film fea-

tures five children across the archipelago who, confronted with crisis in their post-New Order lives, each

write to God asking him to intervene in their own particular troubling circumstances.

Presentations were given by Webb Keane, P.M. Laksono, Wim Manuhutu, Ratna Saptari, Henk Schulte

Nordholt, and Mary Steedly. Discussants were Kees van Dijk, Frans Hüsken, Nico Schulte Nordholt, Fridus

Steijlen, Heather Sutherland, and Leontine Visser. The CNWS Research School and the Faculty of Social and

Behavioural Sciences at Leiden University, the KITLV Vereniging, IIAS, the Royal Dutch Academy funded

project ‘Indonesian Mediations,’ the National Museum of Ethnology, and WOTRO/NWO all provided valu-

able conference support.

> Research & Reports

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Gay Literature from China:In Search of a Happy Ending

Gay literature in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is still ‘underground’, but it reflectsthe growing self-awareness of a subculture. What lies ahead? The texts themselves – somehave already been made into films – provide no easy answer. Be that as it may, Chinese gayliterature is thriving.

Research >China

tricks of fate. Nevertheless, these sto-ries depict an imaginary and often ide-alized world, a refuge from harsh real-ity, which would appeal to gay readers,especially young people with access tothe Internet. Some of the early novelshave become real Comrade classics.Though not very realistic, the stories dorepresent the lives of other gay people,and let readers imagine what it mightbe like to live openly as a gay instead ofhaving to hide one’s sexual preference.It is safe to say that the communicativefunction of Comrade novels has alwaysbeen more important than their aes-thetical aspects. Even an influentialpiece like A Story From Beijing shows lit-tle formal sophistication. This is partlyexplained by the nature of the mediathrough which these stories circulate:the Internet. Anybody can publish any-thing on the Internet – and that is basi-cally what happens. There are a lot ofwebsites with gay discussion forums(even the homepage of Beijing Univer-sity has its own!) and chat rooms.1 Mostof the novels start as feuilletons on oneof these sites, with new chapters addedevery day, readers commenting on thestory as it is being written. When a storybecomes truly popular, it will end up onother sites that collect Comrade novels.2

Over the past few years, the storieshave gradually become more realistic.Instead of just telling the story of twopeople who seem to live entirely intheir own world, recent novelsdescribe the lives of gay people in aworld that is predominantly shaped byheterosexual vision. Stories about uni-versity life on campus are popular,because most of today’s readers andauthors are either students themselvesor belong to the same age group. Thestories feature issues such as comingout and the difficulty of finding a part-ner. In recent Comrade novels there isalso room for subplots unrelated tohomosexuality, and some authors paymore attention to form and style. As aresult, pornography is completelyabsent in recent novels. Anotherimportant development is that the sto-ries no longer necessarily end in mis-ery, although the characters’ futureoften remains uncertain.

Subculture and societyAn important reason for these

changes is that Chinese society has alsochanged a lot in the past ten years. Afterseveral decades of poverty and frugali-ty, consumerism as a result of eco-nomic development now goes hand inhand with rapidly spreading individu-alism in urban China. Wearing trendyclothes and armed with fancy phones,young city people flamboyantly expresstheir identities. This has led toincreased diversification in art and lit-erature, whereas until the end of theCultural Revolution (1966–1976),state-enforced uniformity was the rule.Nowadays, gay people in the cities nolonger need to hide in the dark, and

may inhabit at different points in theirlives, and an engagement with theirown imaginings and narratives of theseprocesses. If this conference did notplot the anthropological futures fortwenty-first-century Indonesia (whichwas hardly its intent) it did bring homethe importance of attending to thespecificities of particular historical andpolitical junctures imagined and con-ceived in some sense as ‘beginnings.’For scholars of Indonesia, this may bethe real challenge of the moment: totrack the complex processes throughwhich the wide range of possibilitiesattendant on ‘beginnings’ such asnational independence or Reformasiare subsequently narrowed down withsome options foreclosed while othersremain to guide the making of newIndonesian futures, presents, andpasts. <

Reference

- Pemberton, John, On the Subject of ‘Java’,

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press

(1994).

Professor Patricia Spyer is Professor of

Anthropology of Contemporary Indonesia at

Leiden University. Her current project con-

cerns the role of mass and small media in

the dynamics of the conflict and reconcilia-

tion processes in the Moluccas.

[email protected]

1 Http://bbs.beida-online.com/bbsWeb/list.php?board=Homo

2 e.g. www.boysky.net/wencai/jingxuan

Notes >

By Remy Cr i s t in i

In December of 2001, the Film Asso-ciation at Beijing University organ-

ized ‘China’s First Gay Film Festival’.Posters went up on campus, but mostof the advertising for the event wasdone on the university’s homepage.Chinese and foreign gay films were tobe shown at different locations on andaround the campus for ten days. Stu-dents sold tickets in their dormitories.The major attraction was Lanyu, byHong Kong film director Stanley Kwan,recently released in Hong Kong andTaiwan and boasting five Golden HorseAwards (the ‘Taiwanese Oscars’).Before long, all tickets for all screeningsof Lanyu were sold out.

The fact that PRC students wereallowed to organize an event like thisis remarkable in itself, as none of theother movies on the programme hadever had a public screening before. Ontop of that, a lot of discussion had beengoing on about Lanyu because the filmhad been shot in Beijing without firstconsulting Chinese authorities, whichwould normally make permission forits distribution or public screeningextremely unlikely. The fact that thisfestival has taken place, with per-mission of university officials, mightbe an indication that the official atti-tude towards homosexuality within

Chinese society is changing. In itself,the plot of Lanyu is not shocking. It isthe tragic love story of a poor student(Lanyu) and a wealthy businessman(Handong). Lanyu is a country boy whogoes to university in Beijing. When hebecomes short of money, his only wayout is to prostitute himself. Handong ishis first customer and also the first per-son with whom he has sex. Lanyu fallsin love with Handong who takes goodcare of the young student, but althoughHandong shows affection in a materi-al way, he does not allow himself to getemotionally involved. He hurts Lanyubadly by having sexual relationshipswith other boys as well, and nearlybreaks his heart when he announcesthat he is to marry a lady from theoffice. After a lot of dramatic twists andturns, Handong finally acknowledgesthat he is gay and truly in love withLanyu. Just when they seem to haveovercome all difficulties and can betogether at last, Lanyu dies in a car acci-dent.

The movie Lanyu is based on a Chi-nese gay novel, A Story From Beijing,which has circulated on the web since1996. For the film, the plot was notreally altered, but the original text is fullof explicit lovemaking scenes, porno-graphic rather than erotic. When thestory first appeared on the web, it wastruly shocking. Up until the early

1990s, gay men in Beijing had littlechoice but to hang around in parks tomeet other gay men, and when theymade love it was often in a public toilet.Though it may have been quite com-mon in pre-modern China, prostitu-tion, especially gay prostitution, hasbeen officially designated as a vice fromfeudal times by the Communist Party,and in the 1980s (when the story ofLanyu and Handong begins) policewould occasionally arrest gay men tomaintain ‘public order’. When in the1990s people gained access to theInternet, this immediately became analternative to the parks and toilets, andprovided the gay population with amore secure meeting place, mostlybeyond the control of law enforcement.A Story From Beijing was probably thefirst of its kind and is the best-knownand most influential gay novel to date.Its socially controversial theme aside,A Story From Beijing is provocative inother respects as well: it containspornography, prostitution, and a refer-ence to the violent ending of the stu-dent demonstrations around Tianan-men Square in 1989. Protected byrelative anonymity, made possible bythe Internet, the author of A Story FromBeijing – his or her identity remainsunknown – paved the way to a genreknown as ‘Tongzhi (Comrade) Litera-ture’. The word ‘Comrade’, widely usedin communist discourse, literallymeans ‘of the same intent’ and wasadopted in Chinese gay circles as aform of address. Though it was usedironically at first, it has now become acommon word for ‘gay’, without anycommunist connotation.

Voices of comradesOne characteristic of the early Com-

rade novels is that they all tend to berather unlikely love stories, very touch-ing (or sentimental) at times, butinvariably leading to catastrophic end-ings: the lovers are either separated bydeath or struck down by other cruel

they go out in bars and clubs that arecommonly known as gay places. It isnot unusual to see elderly people sitdown in front of a disco for a rest ontheir evening stroll, watching thecolourful transvestites as they emergefrom a taxi and make their way to theentrance. In this respect, the generationgap in China is huge and mutualunderstanding nearly impossible, butfor many young people the ‘live and letlive’ strategy is working well – for thetime being.

The main problem that remains forChinese homosexuals is traditionalthinking about marriage and posterity.Young gay people are often forced intoheterosexual marriage by their family.However, in recent years they have beengetting support from Chinese scholarsand scientists. More and more sociolo-gists and psychologists are educatingthe public by stressing that homosexu-ality is not a disorder but a natural phe-nomenon, that forced marriage isharmful to all parties involved, and thatdenying the existence of a gay popula-tion will be harmful to society as awhole at a time when the AIDS epi-demic is spreading in China. Theyadvocate greater tolerance for and bet-ter understanding of homosexuality, toenable a fruitful debate on publichealth.

A happy ending?Whether or not homosexuals will

become an acknowledged part of Chi-nese society in the near future remainsto be seen, and the prospects for today’syoung gay people are as open-ended astheir stories. Up until a few years ago,authors of Comrade novels saw nofuture for gay couples in China andthey let their heroes die an early deathto spare them a destiny that would per-haps be even more painful. Today, theirprospects seem less grim, both in thestories and in real life.

Needless to say, the film festival atBeijing University was a great success.Perhaps it was sheer chauvinism thatled to the university officials’ decisionto allow the festival to go ahead, asLanyu was, after all, shot in Beijing withPRC actors and was based on a Chinesenovel. Journalists present at the pre-miere of Lanyu praised the film and theinitiative of the students in local news-papers. Although the university offi-cials were also the ones who orderedthe students to terminate the festivalprematurely, because of this unfore-seen media attention, the event was asignal of change. One of the outcomesis that gay films are now for sale in theinnumerable VCD shops throughoutthe country and it is only a matter oftime before the first Comrade novel willappear in bookshops. <

Remy Cristini is a student of Sinology at Lei-

den University, writing an MA thesis on gay

literature from the PRC.

[email protected]

Zheping is one of the

author’s close

friends. Usually

wearing women’s

clothes, he runs a

small boutique in a

Beijing department

store.

Co

urt

esy

of

Zh

epin

g

> Research & Reports

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Human CargoHuman smuggling organizations are currently held responsible for the transport ofrefugees, bounty hunters, and other migrants to the West. The Dutch Public Prosecutor’sOffice works on the assumption that the movement of asylum seekers to the Netherlands isto a large extent ‘regulated’ by the activities of human smugglers. Although thenationalities of both the smugglers and the people transported vary greatly, as do themethods used, it is generally assumed by both the public and criminologists that thepursuit of profit is an important, and probably the most important, motive for humansmuggling organizations. A turnover of billions of euros worldwide is attributed to theseorganizations.

Report >China

Malay Contacts with Sri LankaThe Malays have always been intrepid sailors, travelling westwards as far as Madagascar. Sailing westward from a port in theMalay Peninsula or from Western Sumatra, one was likely to disembark on the eastern and southern coasts of Sri Lanka(Paranavitana, 1959): it is therefore not surprising that the Malays made contact with Sri Lankans. Evidence of early contactbetween Sri Lankans and Malays lies in Sinhala literary works from the Polonnaruwa Period (1098-1234) and the DambadeniyaPeriod (1220-1293).

By Melv in Soudi jn

W ithin the spectrum of humansmuggling, the smuggling of

Chinese nationals provokes a lot ofinterest, not only among the media, butalso in the world of international inves-tigation. There are various possible rea-sons for this. In the first place, a seriesof well-publicized incidents havecaused the commotion. There is virtu-ally no study, investigation or publica-tion concerning human smugglingfrom China which does not refer to theGolden Venture incident of 1993and/or the Dover tragedy of 2000, twoextremely dramatic events involvingChinese victims. Furthermore, humansmuggling from China, whether right-ly or wrongly, is generally believed topresent several unique characteristics.The sums of money involved are high-er than those paid by any other nation-ality, abuses, such as slavery, exploita-tion, and prostitution is rife, the levelof organization is extremely high andthere (presumably) is associated crimeinvolved (directed by Triads). Finally, inthe West there seems to be a fascinationfor, and simultaneously a fear of, theexotic. To this one could add the enor-mity of China’s population, presentinga huge potential market for smuggling,and the many references in publica-tions on Chinese communities to a ‘cul-ture of secrecy’. All this leads to theimpression that the authorities cannotseem to get a grip on the community.

Human smuggling from China is

By Shihan de S i lva Jayasur iya

H istorical evidence also confirmsthat there was a Malay presence

in Sri Lanka in the thirteenth century.In 1247, Chandrabhanu, the BuddhistMalay King in the Malay Peninsula,attempted to invade Sri Lanka. Sinhalaliterary works record that Chandrab-hanu’s mission was supported by Malay(Javaka or Malala) soldiers. He wasdetermined to possess the Buddha’stooth relics, which were sacrosanct tothe Sinhalese, and which were in thepossession of the Sinhalese monarch.

In contemporary Sri Lanka, there areabout 46,000 Sri Lankan Malays. Theyform 0.31 per cent of the population.Their ancestry can be traced back to theDutch Era (1656–1796) and the BritishEra (1796-1948). The Dutch referred tothe Sri Lankan Malays as ‘Javanese’because they were recruited in Batavia(the Dutch appellation for Jakarta). The

British referred to the Sri Lankan Malaysas ‘Malays’ as they spoke Batavian Malay,known today as Betawi or Jakarta Malay.The British also transported Indone-sians from the Malay Peninsula(Penang, Malacca, Singapore, Pahang,Trengganu, Kelantan), Java, Madura,and North Borneo to Sri Lanka. TheIndonesian soldiers in Sri Lanka wererecruited from Jakarta in Java and there-fore had a common ‘geographical iden-tity’. Though ethnic groups from vari-ous parts of the Indonesian Archipelagolived in distinct parts of Jakarta, theyspoke a common lingua franca, eitherBatavian Malay (Omong Jakarta, a cre-ole) or Low Malay/Trade Malay/BazaarMalay (a pidgin). The Sinhalese havegiven the appellation Jaminissu (peoplefrom Java) to all Sri Lankan Malays,regardless of whether they are fromIndonesian or Malay descent.

Some of the earliest Malay politicalexiles came to Sri Lanka from the

Moluccas and the Lesser Sunda Islands.From 1708 onwards, Javanese princeswere exiled to Sri Lanka. According toDutch documents, these Indonesianaristocrats were mainly from Java, butothers came from Bacan, Sumatra,Macassar, Tidore, and Timor. TheDutch also exiled the King of Java,Susana Mangkurat Mas, to Sri Lanka,together with his retinue: in 1723, hewas followed by 44 Javanese princesand noblemen who had surrendered atthe battle of Batavia. At the other end ofthe social spectrum, there was a steadyinflux of Indonesian convicts, whocame from all walks of life. However,no specific information is known abouttheir ethnic background. The Dutchalso brought Javanese men to beemployed in several capacities in SriLanka, but the largest group of Indone-sians were the soldiers who served inthe Dutch garrison in Sri Lanka. Theycame from the Ambon, Banda, Bali,

Java, Madura, Buginese, and Malayareas. Most Malay slaves sent to SriLanka originated from the Moluccasand the Lesser Sunda Islands.

During the Dutch period and in theearly British period, the Malays formedmost of the Sri Lankan army, enlisted inthe Ceylon Rifle regiments. The last reg-iment was disbanded in 1873 and theMalay soldiers joined the Police force.Malays were, thereafter, employed in theSri Lankan military, police, fire brigade,prisons, plantation sector, and insalterns. Sri Lankan Malays have blend-ed into multi-ethnic Sri Lanka but haveretained their ‘Malay’ ethnic conscious-ness, their mother tongue, Sri LankanMalay Creole, uniting, binding, anddefining them. Sri Lankan Malay Creoleis a contact language. When people whodo not speak a common language comeinto prolonged contact with one anoth-er, a verbal means of communicationbecomes necessary, and contact lan-

not a recent phenomenon. In his studyChineesche immigranten in Nederland(Chinese Immigrants in the Nether-lands), published in 1936, F. van Heeknotes that various countries have drawnup immigration laws to halt Chinesemigration. As a result, attempts weremade (and this is still the case today) tocircumvent these immigration laws,and human smuggling thrived. VanHeek would not state exactly how manypeople came into the Netherlands asstowaways, but he suspected that thenumbers were very large. Rotterdam,‘as an important shipping centre […],and with its hundreds of Chineseinhabitants [would constitute] an idealtemporary refuge from which the Chi-nese emigrant could try to reach theplace where he now wishes to live’ (p.82) (translation: MS).

Van Heek also discusses the ways inwhich these people enter the Nether-lands. They may enter with a valid pass-port, by ship’s discharge, as a stowaway,as a deserter from a ship, or clandes-tinely over a land border. The methodof stowing away was not, however,wholly without its dangers. For exam-ple, people hid in empty water-tanks orboilers, where the temperature couldsoar if the ship was sailing in the trop-ics. This sometimes led to fatalities (p. 82).

Furthermore, Van Heek notes that inthe past, staff from the Dutch con-sulates sometimes issued visas too eas-ily, without ascertaining whether thetraveller had sufficient means of sup-

port. Several pedlars from Zhejiang, forinstance, had indeed entered theNetherlands with valid passports, butones to which they were not actuallyentitled. ‘In Europe, too, the Chinesehappily make use of such consularbenevolence. They let one anotherknow where an “easy” consul is sta-tioned, and send their friends who livein the country in question to the con-sulate to apply for a visa. The consulatesometimes neglects carefully compar-ing the passport-photo with the appli-cant’s face, and the visa is issued. Theapplicant sends it back to his friendwho wishes to travel to the Netherlands,and soon afterwards our yellow broth-er enters our country in a completelylegal way’ (p. 90) (translation: MS).

In their research report Chinese oud-eren in Amsterdam: verslag van een onder-zoek naar de leefsituatie van Chinese oud-eren in Amsterdam (Elderly Chinesepeople in Amsterdam: research reporton the living conditions of elderly Chi-nese people in Amsterdam), Sciortinoet al. discuss the case of a Chinese man,83 years old in 1993, who recalls howhe was persuaded by a former neigh-bour to come to Europe in 1936 (p. 12).He had to pay what was then the enor-mous sum of 300 Chinese guilders forthe journey. He eventually set out withfour others from his village. His wifeand young son remained behind. Hetravelled to Marseilles on a Germancargo ship and secretly went ashore.From there he travelled overland to Ger-many and then to the Netherlands.

Today, would we view the above casesas the result of criminal human smug-gling organizations? The answer isprobably ‘yes’. My doctoral researchaims to clarify the structures underly-ing human smuggling. When shouldone view ‘a little bit of help from yourfriends’ as smuggling? That leads meto the question of what ‘smuggling’ or‘illegal migration’ really is, and whethereverything is as closely organized as isgenerally supposed. The inclusion of ahistorical perspective might provide uswith a better understanding. <

References

- Heek, F. van, Chineesche immigranten in

Nederland, Amsterdam: J. Emmering’s

Uitgevers (1936).

- Sciortino, R.M.E., A. Wessels and H.B.

Teng, Chinese ouderen in Amsterdam: ver-

slag van een onderzoek naar de leefsituatie

van Chinese ouderen in Amsterdam,

Amsterdam: Stichting voor Toegepaste

Gerontologie/Vrije Universiteit Amster-

dam (1993).

Melvin Soudijn, MA conducts his research

at the NSCR (Netherlands Institute for the

Study of Crime and Law Enforcement) in

Leiden.

[email protected]

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Research >South Asia

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> Research & Reports

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guages (pidgins and creoles) evolve tofill this need. A creole, unlike a pidgin,is the mother tongue of a speech com-munity. Most of the vocabulary of SriLankan Malay Creole originates in thebase language, Malay, as is typical ofcontact languages.

Many linguistic constructions (seeexamples in the sidebar) illustrate Sin-hala influence on Sri Lankan MalayCreole. With Sinhala as the languagefor inter-ethnic communication inmulti-ethnic Sri Lanka, bilingualismamong the Sri Lankan Malays musthave introduced Sinhala grammaticalfeatures into Sri Lankan Malay Creole.Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole, the Por-tuguese-based contact language, hasalso been influenced by Sinhala (DeSilva Jayasuriya, 1999). Malay, in all itsdiverse forms, is the most importantnative language of Southeast Asia.Malay in Sri Lanka is distinct from allthe other Malay languages. The part

played by Sinhala (the language of 74per cent of Sri Lankans today) in influ-encing Sri Lankan Malay Creole is afruitful avenue for further research. <

Bibliography

- De Silva Jayasuriya, S., ‘Portuguese in Sri

Lanka: Influence of Substratum Lan-

guages’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Soci-

ety of London of Great Britain & Ireland,

vol.9 Pt 2, July 1999. pp. 251–270.

- Paranavitana, S., ‘Ceylon and Malaysia in

Mediaeval Times’, Journal of the Royal Asi-

atic Society of the Ceylon Branch (Vol. VII,

Part I, 1959), pp. 1–42.

- Saldin, B.D.K., The Sri Lankan Malays and their

Language, Orang Melayu dan Bahasanya, Sri

Lanka: Sridevi Printers, (1996).

Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya is a research

associate at King’s College London, Univer-

sity of London, whose research interest lies

in social anthropology.

[email protected]

Sri Lankan Malay Creole ConstructionsSaldin (1996) states that some SLMC constructions are amusing to Indonesians and Malaysians. I have added in the Sinhala (SIN)

equivalents of these sentences:

SLMC Se buk baca baca kapan duduk seppe temanya datang

SIN Mama pothak bala bala inna-kote mage yahaluva av- a

I book read read when sit when my friend come TNS

Literally: While I was reading the book and sitting my friend came!

Meaning: While I was reading the book my friend came

In Standard Malay it would be:

Kawan saya datang se masa saya membaca buku

Friend I come while I read book

SLMC Se lari lari kapan duduk ujang su datang

SIN Mama duwa duwa inna-kote vessa av- a

I run run when sit when rain TNS come TNS

Literally: While I was running and sitting the rain came down!

Meaning: While I was running it rained.

In Standard Malay it would be:

Se masa saya berlari kujan turun

While I run rain come down

* China is a party to the ‘Convention concerning the Protection of the World

Cultural and Natural Heritage’, the ‘Convention on the Means of Prohibiting

and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural

Property’, ‘UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural

Objects’, and ‘Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of

Armed Conflict’. In addition, a total of 1,480 museums have been established

at national and provincial level. Furthermore, China is working on a bilateral

anti-smuggling agreement with the US, to halt the flow of antiquities to the US.

Note >

The Illicit Trade in Chinese AntiquitiesJudging by reports in the Chinese media and by remarks in general studies on the illicit antiquities trade, there is large-scale lootingof and trafficking in antiquities taking place in China. According to He Shuzhong, the director of Cultural Heritage Watch (CHW), anon-governmental Chinese organization for the protection of cultural heritage, the problems of illicit excavation and trade havereached dramatic proportions. Government sources suggest that, in the past, the bulk of illicit antiquities resurfaced in foreignmuseums, while these days much of it ends up in foreign markets. According to Chinese experts, there are at least one million itemsof Chinese art that should be returned from 200 foreign museums spanning 47 countries. Yet, most Western museums are unwillingto return their collections. A major reason being the idea that most acquisitions were legal at the time they were made, for exampleunder colonial rule. Nonetheless, China has experienced some success in reclaiming stolen artefacts.

Research >China

By Melv in Soudi jn & Edgar T i jhu i s

In March 2000, CHW raised the issue of a stolen statue ofa Bodhisattva in the collection of the Miho Museum in

Japan. The statue was stolen from a museum in Boxing coun-ty, Shandong Province, in July 1994. In 1996, the MihoMuseum bought the statue from a London dealer, whoclaimed to have bought the item from another dealer in goodfaith. After more than a year, an agreement on the return ofthe statue was signed between the Chinese National Admin-istration on Cultural Heritage and the Miho Museum. In2001 the National Gallery of Canada voluntarily returned toChina a stolen 1,300 year old Buddhist limestone carving,which had been surreptitiously chiselled from the wall of atemple cave some time during the last century. The objectwas only known in China from a picture of the temple takenat the beginning of the twentieth century.

As well as foreign museums, the international arts mar-ket is also implicated. Apparently, there is a large market forChinese antiquities, the most notable in Hong Kong, Lon-don, and New York. Some antiquities dealers purport to han-dle only ‘old’ items, that is, items that come from existing col-lections and are supposed to have been outside China sincepre-1970. However, these assertions seem to be at odds withthe continuous appearance of dubious items on the art mar-ket. In addition, there are plenty of smaller markets innumerous countries, Asian and Western. Nowadays, illicitexcavations meet most of this large-scale demand, resultingin the irreversible destruction of valuable archaeologicalinformation and pointless damage to sites.

Although the Chinese government formally takes a seri-ous stance on combating illegal excavation and export of Chi-nese antiquities, many questions can be asked about the sin-cerity and efficiency of their policies. Since 1978 numerouslegislative measures have been taken to tackle the problem.The Law on the Protection of Cultural Heritage was adoptedin 1982 and twice amended in 1988 and 1991. Nowadays,

looting and smuggling of antiquities is categorized as organ-ized crime and cross-border crime in the Chinese Penal Code.Furthermore, specific articles were drafted to cover thedestruction of antiquities and the theft of precious culturalrelics. Severe sentences can be given to those committingsuch crimes: reports of local excavators receiving the deathpenalty can be found in the media. National legislation aside,China is a signatory to several international treaties on theprotection of cultural heritage.* However, both national lawsand treaties are ineffective if they are not adequately enforced.

China does not seem to act against the liberal regulationsgoverning the Hong Kong art trade. Hong Kong plays a piv-otal role: almost all antiquities pass through the Hong Kongmarket and once antiquities reach Hong Kong, they can befreely exported (as long as they are not stolen).

Over and above Hong Kong’s highly significant role in thelicit and illicit trade in Chinese antiquities, auctioning with-in China must also be considered. During the 1990s morethan 150 auction houses were established in China. Althoughturnover is still modest compared to Hong Kong, this is like-ly to change in the future. The two largest auction houses areChina Guardian and Beijing Hanhai. China Guardian wasset up as a joint venture between the Ministry of InternalTrade and the Bureau of Cultural Relics, Beijing Hanhai isowned by the city’s municipal government. A wide range ofitems is sold at these and other auctions, including itemsmore than 200 years old, which may not, officially, be export-ed. Thus, according to this rule foreigners are not allowed tobuy older items, but it can hardly be expected that this alonewill be a serious barrier to their export.

There is also the problem of corruption. Though corrup-tion is a universal phenomenon, its sheer scale and perva-siveness in China is a matter of concern. Large-scale cam-paigns against corruption may have been initiated, yet itwould be rather optimistic to expect these to solve the prob-lem shortly. Furthermore, central government directives haveto be carried out by the provincial, down to the local govern-ments, thus easily leading to further corruption. At the locallevel, administrators often turn a blind eye if money can bemade through selling cultural objects. On the other hand,simple neglect of ancient sites and the destruction of sitesdue to large real estate projects, agricultural development,and infrastructure projects pose a threat. The Three GorgesDam project, for example, is likely to inundate a large num-ber of antiquities. Brave attempts to save material from indi-vidual sites concern only a small part of the total area. Mean-while smugglers have found it easy to negotiate with localofficials, and large amounts of material from the upperYangtze have found their way overseas.

Furthermore, the policies of the Chinese government areweakened by the ineffective registration of cultural heritage.The fact that the government lacks a database on stolen artand antiquities inhibits an effective policy against illicit tradeand can lead to awkward situations. In the Miho Case, Cul-tural Heritage Watch and the Chinese authorities argued thatthe Miho should return the statue and should have beeninformed of it being stolen because it belonged to a Chinesemuseum and was published as such. However, the fact thatthe theft was not properly registered seemed to escape boththeir attention. The lack of effective registration also hindersall fruitful cooperation with international agencies like Inter-pol and the International Council of Museums (ICOM), ren-dering the aforementioned treaties inapplicable (see note).

With ineffective registration, the real scale of the problemcan hardly be reliably represented by statistics on the num-ber of items intercepted by Chinese customs officials. Anyattempt to quantify the problem of illicit excavations and tradeby looking up statistics and figures from a number of differ-ent sources only reveals how incomplete they are: recordsonly exist for 1986, 1991–1995, 1997, the first five monthsof 1998, and the period from 1999 to September 2001. Addi-tionally, the numbers cannot be compared because theymeasure different things and usually only refer to tourists.For example, according to figures from Chinese customs,110,000 items were seized, from tourists, between 1991 and1995 alone.

Although much can be said about China’s shortcomingswith regard to its anti-trafficking of antiquities policy, thereare other factors to consider. Wherever people are preparedto sell (even if this means the Chinese government itself ),there are those prepared to buy. Many independent buyersare individual travellers interested in Asia and the like, incontrast to large retailers or auction houses, most likely topurchase small items. Of course, one also needs to considerthe quality of the items they acquire. All the experts we spoketo highlighted the fact that most material coming from Chinaseems to be of sub-masterpiece quality, apart from a hugenumber of fakes. Nevertheless, many among the IIASNewsletter readers will have some sort of Chinese artefact athome. Call it an argument from a Chinese perspective. Itdoes not make it any less valid.<

For more information, also see:

www.culturalheritagewatch.org/indexenglish.html

Melvin Soudijn, MA is a PhD student at the Netherlands Institute

for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement in Leiden, the Nether-

lands. His research topics include crime in the Chinese community,

human smuggling (see his article on page 28) and the illicit trade in

art and antiquities.

[email protected]

Edgar Tijhuis, MA is a PhD student at the same institute, research-

ing transnational crime, the illicit trade in art and antiquities, and

international relations. This summer Soudijn and Tijhuis will pub-

lish an account of their study of the illicit antiquities trade in Hong

Kong and China in ‘Art Antiquity and Law’.

[email protected]

> Research & Reports

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By Wei - sheng L in

In contrast, Danish historian Niels Steengaard suggeststhat the VOC significantly suppressed the traditional Asian

native merchants. According to Steengaard, the trade policyof the VOC included protection costs, which, in combinationwith monopolistic trading privileges, made it possible toestablish a transparent pricing policy. This allowed the Dutchto manipulate the sales price of commodities in Europe and,therefore, to create profits. As a result, the VOC was able tokeep the fluctuating price at the lowest possible level and,thus, beat the traditional Asian caravan trade.

Given the conflicting views held by scholars, the questionof whether the VOC and its trade network suppressed the tra-ditional native trade networks in Asia requires further expla-

nation. Taiwan serves as a unique research subject in answer-ing this question. Below, will be explained how the VOC func-tioned in Asia, and why Taiwan is so significant in under-standing the role of the VOC in traditional Asian trade.

The VOC set up a foothold in Taiwan to trade with China,in order to support its grand scheme of launching a Batavia-China-Japan trade route and to fend off Portuguese and Span-ish rivals with a privateering strategy. Yet, there were certainintrinsic drawbacks in making Taiwan a trans-shipment hubfor trade with China, Japan, and Batavia. Firstly, as the VOCoperated from Taiwan instead of from the coast of China, itstrade with China was curtailed by the Chinese prohibition oftrade with foreigners. This policy did not alter much overtime, despite some limited deregulation in the late Ming peri-od. Although it is true that Chinese merchants managed toengage in illegal overseas trade, foreigners were neverallowed to trade in Chinese ports. This meant that all Chi-nese goods had to pass through the hands of Chinese mid-dlemen: they were able to procure bulk goods at low whole-sale prices, but the Dutch had to rely solely on them to gettheir hands on the goods. This manner of trade had both pos-itive and negative aspects for the Dutch, while the middle-men thrived on the situation. Through regular contact withthem, the Dutch merchants were guaranteed ample supplyof goods as long as the Chinese delivered the goods in Tai-wan at the designated time, a system that allowed overall ship-ping information to be under VOC control. Yet, if the goodswere so profitable, why did the Chinese not take over theentire operation? In the late Ming period, when the power ofthe Chinese regime was weakening and its laws and regula-tions were increasingly being ignored, the Chinese did takeinitiative. By the 1650s, when the Ming government wascrumbling and the Manchu government could not prohibitChinese middlemen from prevailing on the open seas, theChinese did challenge the VOC head-on.

As a result, while making Taiwan a trans-shipment hub,the Dutch were forced to compete with Chinese seafaringmerchants and, as the Chinese government continued tostick to a seclusion policy, the Chinese middlemen began tomonopolize the sale of Chinese goods. Foreigners could notpossibly crack open this monopoly without using force andprior to the Industrial Revolution, European force hardly helda lead over that of the Chinese.

What came next in terms of cargo supply? The Europeantraders who came to Asia neither possessed an absolute supe-

The VOC Trade in TaiwanDid the VOC (De Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie) influence the traditional trading style of Asian merchants, or did the VOCsuppress traditional Asian native merchants? This question has received considerable scholarly attention. Following the Dutchhistorian Van Leur, some maintain that the roots of Asian merchants’ trade were so strong that Europeans hardly made any impacton it, argueing that the early seventeenth-century European trade system was not fundamentally different from that of Asia beforethe age of modern capitalism. Others, among whom M. A. P. Meilink-Roelofsz, believe that scholars such as Van Leur attribute toomany new elements to the Dutch as opposed to the Portuguese, yet claim that even Europeans as a whole did not change thetraditional Asian system.

riority in arms, nor imported any European merchandize,except bullion, that could compete with oriental goods. Euro-pean objects such as telescopes and chiming timepieces wereoften imported as gifts and playthings for the royal and impe-rial courts, and were hardly commodities to be traded on thegeneral market. As a result, an imbalance in supply anddemand emerged. The Dutch longed for Asian goods, whileAsians, excepting Japanese, had little interest in Dutch goods.It seemed that the Dutch would have to export precious met-als, such as gold and silver, from the Netherlands in order todo business with Asia. Nevertheless, as they did not want torely indefinitely on shipping precious metals to the East, theDutch had to find an alternative way to conduct business withthe Asians, and discovered they could achieve their aim bygetting involved in intra-Asian trade.

Dutch involvement in intra-Asian trade began in the 1610s,when Jan Pietersz Coen was appointed Governor-General ofthe East Indies. Coen developed trade objectives designed tointegrate entire Asian markets into the shipping network ofthe VOC fleet, believing that the competition and valuabletrade information provided by Dutch trade posts all over Asiawould enable the VOC to launch its own efficient trade net-work. The plan was to trade spices and silver for pepper andgold along the Sumatran coast. Chinese commodities andgold were traded for textiles from Coromandel, and thenexchanged for pepper from Bantam; sandalwood and silverwere traded for Chinese gold and silk. The same principalwas applied to Japanese silver, which was also traded for Chi-nese goods, this trading practice allowing the Dutch to estab-lish a self-sufficient Asian trade network. Coen hoped that‘the large volume of silver brought from Japan could be usedfor purchasing Chinese cargoes of silk and porcelain to shipback to Europe. If this plan would succeed, no capital fromthe Netherlands would be necessary’.

The Dutch trade network was built up over time, eventu-ally operating between more than 20 trade posts across Asia.Instead of benefiting from any one particular post, VOC prof-its were generated from the intricate operations of the net-work that linked the Indian Ocean to the China Sea, encom-passing Persia, India, and Ceylon to the west, and Japan andChina to the east.

While acquiring goods for trade and establishing a tradenetwork, the Dutch had to compete with the existing net-works of traditional local merchants. Conditioned by seasonalwinds and regional geographies, each area in the region hada distinctive trading circle controlled by a certain trade group:prior to the westerners’ arrival, Asia already had several suchindependently formed, yet interrelated, trade networks.

To map out their own large, all-embracing trade network,the VOC had to infiltrate existing networks of conventionalmerchants and to compete with them head-on. For example,in attaining their objective with regard to the trade with Japanand China, Chinese merchants, who once were thriving alongthe Chinese south-eastern navigation routes, were divertedby the VOC to Batavia: moreover, they were barred fromreaching production centres of spices and pepper, having topurchase these commodities in Batavia. Infiltration of Chi-nese sailing routes was also attempted by the location of trad-ing posts in coastal China, which was intended to block thetraditional sailing routes from Fujian to Manila. Another nav-igation route from Fujian to Japan was envisioned, with theintention of replacing that between Macao and Japan. Yet,the Dutch never succeeded in setting up an outpost on theChinese coast and had to install one on Taiwan.

Taiwan thus emerged as a Dutch trans-shipment point inEast Asia and as a supply station of silver, raw silk, and goldin the Dutch trade network, its position intended to affordthe smooth development of a profitable trading system: anydevelopment that might impair the trade balance in Taiwanwould compel the Dutch to readjust. Yet, the efficiency of theChinese merchants continued to prevent the Dutch frombuilding a truly effective trade network. Thus, an examina-tion of Dutch trade manoeuvres in Taiwan helps shed lighton the role the VOC played in the traditional native trade net-work in Asia. <

References

- Meilink-Roelofsz, M.A.P., Asian trade and influence: In the Indone-

sian archipelago between 1500 and about 1630, The Hague: Marti-

nus Nijhoff (1962).

- Steengaard, Niels, The Asian trade revolution of the seventeenth cen-

tury: the East India Companies and the decline of the caravan trade,

Chicago: Chicago University Press (1973).

Dr Wei-sheng Lin is an assistant professor at the National ChiNan

University of Taiwan, conducting research into overseas trade in East

Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

[email protected]

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

Research >East Asia

Not until the seven-

teenth century, when

the VOC takes it as

an Entrepot in East

Asia would Taiwan’s

strategic position

become well known

outside East Asia.

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ed f

rom

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enti

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F.,

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, 17

24.

> Research & Reports

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By L im Kim-Hui

Budi now carries many nuances ofmeanings in the Malay world view

and plays a pivotal role in every aspectof Malay life. It can mean intellect, asshown by the phrase akal budi, mean-ing ‘common sense’ or ‘healthy mind’.It can also carry the meaning of kind-ness or virtue, as shown in the last twolines of the famous pantun: Pisang emasbawa belayar/ masak sebiji di atas peti/hutang emas dapat dibayar/ hutang budidibawa mati (‘Sail away with a bunch ofbananas/ one ripe fruit remains on thebox/ Debts of money we can repay/Debts of kindness, we take to the grave’(Sim 1987:30)). Commonly, however, itcan be denoted as ‘moral behaviour’ or‘moral character/action’, like budi peker-ti. It can also be understood as ‘discre-tion’ or ‘good judgement with flexibili-ty’, when used in conjunction with akal(mind) and hati (feelings) and as reflect-ed in budi bicara. Budi should also con-tribute to the practical aspect, in theform of budi daya. Overall, when wedeal with the mind of the Malay, it is the‘budi and its networks’ that determinetheir thinking (judgement), their moralattitudes, their goodness, and how anargument should be presented. Purebudi can be led astray if not guided bythe ethical aspect of budi. It should benoted that budi can also mean akal(mind) (dl arti kecerdikan menipu atautipu daya) (Kamus Besar Bahasa Indone-sia 1991:150), as in bermain budi, ‘todeceive’ by using the intelligence ofmind, which is rather rhetorical interms of argumentation. Rhetorical, inthis context, refers to the common andpopular meaning of rhetoric, which isnormally considered as empty andabstract, flowery without content. TheMalay mind develops through a spec-trum of akal budi and hati-budi, whichencompass ‘mind-emotion-moral-goodness-practicality’ in their scales ofdecision-making. A wise person, budi-man, should be thoughtful, considerate(berhati perut, literally means ‘has liverand stomach’, normally means ‘notcruel in decision’), and of good conduct,and his decision should be an enlight-ened and practical one that helps soci-ety towards prosperity. In order tounderstand the Malays’ thinking andtheir argumentation, we should, there-fore, bear in mind that their purpose ofargumentation is to ultimately searchfor truth, goodness, and beauty.

The goodness of the goodIn order to resolve conflicts between

various civilizations and tolerate the dif-ferences that arise in this cultural andpolitical setting, the Malay-Indonesianworld has indeed tried to synthesizevarious positive values (akal budi, hatibudi, budi pekerti etc.), these values laterbeing crystalized into a greater molec-ular ideal of budi (fig. 1). At this stage,we can perhaps call the Malay philoso-phy eclecticism. Budi, to the Malaymind, is not an atomistic componentbut rather a molecule. It can be

observed but cannot be fully brokendown, as these components are alwaysinterconnected and intertwined, evenif we were to present them in a scien-tific laboratory under the study of logi-cal or emotional chemistry. This mole-cule of budi and the concept of budiman(wise person/sage) reminded me ofwhat we can see in the ConfucianAnalects as interpreted by Fung Yu-lan(1976:42-43), in which Confuciussometimes used the word jen (ren inPinyin, normally translated as ‘human-heartedness’) not only to denote a spe-cial kind of virtue, but also to denote allthe virtues in combination, so that theterm ‘man with jen’ becomes synony-mous with the man with all-roundvirtues. It is in this sense we can seethat budiman is the man with all-roundbudi (virtue) or, as I have coined it, ‘budiand its networks’. If jen can be trans-lated as ‘perfect virtue’ in such contexts,then the Malay budi can be constructedin the same manner as ‘perfect virtue’of the Malays.

Rationality should not be worshippedin all dimensions of life. There shouldbe time for rationality, expression ofemotion, and the combination of bothor more (budi). It is the demand of his-tory that these elements (reason, emo-tion, budi) become explicit in certaincommunities and hidden in others. Toconclude that there is only one ‘ration-al’ way of resolving disagreement is tototally deny the need for space and timethroughout history. The results that Ihave obtained prove that the strengthof the Malay mind lies in the applica-tion of budi, and as such, that the manof culture should be based on budi aswell. The highest stage of a man of cul-ture is for him or her to achieve the sta-tus of budiman or ‘the man of budi’,where the word budi should be treatedas a synthetic connotation between theacuity of reason and the gentleness offeeling, or what we feel through hati.

Dialectical thinking, which putsstress on who will be the champion inthe battle of the mind, is not important

Budi as the Malay MindThe word ‘budi’ originated from the Sanskrit word ‘buddhi’, which means wisdom,understanding, or intellect. A Sanskrit-English Dictionary defines the meaning of buddhi as‘the power of forming and retaining conceptions and general notions, intelligence, reason,intellect, mind, discernment, judgment…’ (Monier-Williams 1956:733). However, once thisword was accepted as part of the Malay vocabulary, its meaning was extended to coverethics as well as intellect and reason, in order to accommodate the culture and thinking ofthe Malays.

in the Malay world and, as such, is notfully developed. It is considered moreimportant to allow various dimensionsof the human mind (i.e. reason, emo-tion) to adjust to the diversification ofcultural values and religions. The factthat the dialectical mind is not devel-oped in this part of the world is under-standable. Biologically, if certain partsof our human body are not being used,it will be weakened in much the sameway our muscles will get smaller andweaker if we do not exercise them.

The non-dialectical aspect of budi

Despite the usefulness of positivebudi that we have already discussed, wemust not forget that budi also has itsnegative dimension. In Malay, bermainbudi (literally, ‘to play with budi’) meansto cheat or to deceive (menipu or tipu-daya), memperbudikan also meaning thesame thing (Kamus Besar BahasaIndonesia 1991:150). This negative con-notation reminds us that we should notbe too extreme in whatever stand wetake, as anything that is pushed to

extremity will engender the oppositeresult: rendah diri (humbleness) willbecome hina diri (self-denigration); toomuch berbudi will become what theMalays call mengada-ngada (over-act-ing). As early as 1891 Clifford, in hisarticle ‘A New Collection of MalayProverbs’, observed an interestingtrend in Malay rhetoric: ‘In discussionsamong Malays, too, it is the man whocan quote, and not he who can reasons,that bears away the palm’ (Clifford1891:88). Clifford had a point in termsof dialectical argumentation. TheMalays must have their reasons as towhy they choose not to reason. Asusual, reasons demand argumentationin return, which will perhaps bring thetwo parties (rhetor and opponent) intoa state of confrontation. Compared toreason, quotations bring the opponentsinto a state of agreement, in terms oftheir cultural memory and the budi oftheir ancestors and cultural wisdom.

Budi is an entity which is non-dialec-tical and, therefore, hinders the truespirit of dialectical argumentation. It isthe lack of dialectical argumentationthat distinguishes the Malays from theGreeks. No doubt the application ofbudi in human affairs and human rela-tionships is more humane, as we haveseen earlier, but budi is something sit-uational. Compared to rationality,which is more confrontational, com-petitive, forceful, aggressive, and hos-tile, where attaining ‘truth’ and ‘win-ning’ is the purpose, budi encouragesthe opposite, which is non-confronta-tional, non-competitive, gentle, friend-ly, and succumbing (in the sense of giv-ing in or giving way), because its finalgoal is consensus and compromise.Hence, I believe that it should be ourresponsibility to have a real under-standing of rationality, budi, or evenemotion, and their employment in oureverydays affairs.

The culture of budi, as I see it, shouldbe adjustable to two different spheres,viz. rational-public sphere versus emo-tional-personal sphere. Since the con-cept of budi has taken root as the mid-dle path of argumentation, it is ratherhard to fit it into the rational-publicsphere, where the purpose of argu-mentation is the achievement of truththrough rational persuasion and thesearch for knowledge is based on theconcept of truth or falsehood, white orblack. It cannot accommodate a syn-

thesistic nature of both truth and false-hood, both black and white at the sametime, or a positioning between thesetwo polarities, or something which wecould call a spectrum of truth. Budi,however, is something synthesistic anda-rational, which tends to compromisebetween both polarities as long as con-sensus and compromise can beachieved. Nonetheless, there are manyrealms of human communicationwhich are a-rational. A-rational is usedto differentiate it from irrational:whereas something which is non-rational may either be irrational orsomething that cannot be explainedfrom the perspective of rationality (i.e.a-rational).

In order to handle this irrationalsphere, we should not be carried awayby pure emotions. The champion oftruth through rationality might accusethe Malay budi of being two-faced, hyp-ocritical, deceitful, or insincere intelling the truth. This claim is valid inone sense, but in another sense, we per-haps need more philosophical scrutinyand argumentation. For example, in theheat of the moment of a conflict, dialec-tical forcefulness will bring harm (thatis, claim a life), and therefore oneshould ‘lie’ in order to preserve har-mony. But this ‘lie’ should be untangledwhen the heat is over. This is the truespirit of ‘budi and its networks’. <

Reference

- Clifford, Hugh. ‘A New Collection of Malay

Proverbs’, JSBRAS 24 (1891), pp. 87-120.

- Fung, Yu-lan, and Derk Bodde (ed.), A

Short History of Chinese Philosophy, New

York: The Free Press (1976).

- Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia, Jakarta:

Balai Pustaka (2nd ed., 1991).

- Monier-Williams, Monier, A Sanskrit-Eng-

lish Dictionary: Etymologically and Philo-

logically Arranged with Special Reference to

Cognate Indo-European Languages, Oxford:

Clarendon Press (1956).

- Sim, Katherine, More Than a Pantun:

Understanding Malay Verse, Singapore:

Times Books International (1987).

Dr Lim Kim-Hui is a lecturer at the School

of Media and Communication Studies at

National University of Malaysia. His

research interests include rhetoric, informal

logic, philosophy, argumentation studies,

and Malay paremiology.

[email protected]

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

Research >Southeast Asia

Molecularization of the Budi

Hati

Budi Daya

Akal

Bicara

Bahasa(Pekerti)

> Research & Reports

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Sex and Chanel:Young Female Writers in China

Contemporary female-authored literary discourse from the People’s Republic of China isfraught with confession, the portrayal of privacy, and writing about the female body.Conventionally subversive topics (e.g. nudity, menstruation, sexual intercourse, abortion, andmiscarriage) have gained new ground in Chinese texts by women since the mid-1980s, whenvarious social taboos and gender stereotypes were subjected to revision and subversion.These phenomena signalled the emergence of a new women’s poetics, celebrating femalesexuality and subjectivity, vis-à-vis the politically oriented writing of the early 1980s. Anti-political stances, manifest in the work of Shu Ting, Lin Zi, and the earlier Wang Anyi, switchedto radical critiques of superficial societal views of gender. This gendered mode of writing hasbeen characterized as ‘body poetics’ or ‘gender politics’. From my point of view, the rise ofbody poetics articulates a twofold meaning. Firstly, the female body offers a new avenue forprobing gender-specific experiences and literary alternatives. Secondly, it indicates an area ofresistance against accepted gender values in the pursuit of a new gender identity.

nese women’s writing is loaded withgendered perspectives and private pre-occupations. This inward orientation iscountered by an opening-up to litera-ture from distant cultures and to com-mercial trends, which this authorwould like to call ‘an outward orienta-tion’. This double orientation makeswomen’s writing a fascinating area toexplore such debatable hermeneuticissues as literary authenticity and orig-inality.

Literary authenticity has much to dowith the issue of originality. The notionof intertextuality originates from thecommon knowledge that originalitydoes not exist in the abstract. A text isalways related to other texts, intracul-turally or interculturally. The notion ofintertextuality calls into focus the dis-course, the writing process, and thelimited reservoir of literary and lin-guistic options. To apply intertextualreadings to women’s writing helps usto analyse its distinctive features: itstexts, intertexts, contexts, and meta-texts. In particular, intertextual phe-nomena can illustrate how the selectionof specific role models by womenauthors affects the typology of the dis-course.

The notion of intertextuality sug-gests that there is no fixed hierarchybetween texts. No text is intrinsicallybetter than other texts. A text is justone possible form of verbal expression,and is authentic or original only in thesense that it is created by individualbeings out of their own experiences,memories, and imagination, in rela-tion to those of other individuals doc-umented in earlier texts. The value atext is supposed to have is fully attrib-uted to external agents and conditions,and results from individual judgmentin a particular context and on the basisof particular criteria. Meanwhile, anindividual’s reading cannot bedetached from the prevailing literaryconvention to which he or she is relat-ed. Literary convention, together withindividualized readership, determineshow and why certain texts are success-ful among a certain reading commu-nity. The success of female-authoredChinese texts must be measuredagainst this background. Womenauthors’ portrayal of private experiencecaters to the common taste of a Chi-nese readership that is sick of revolu-tionary and historical allegories. <

References

- Plath, Sylvia, Ariel, London: Faber and

Faber (1965).

- Wei, Hui, Shanghai baobei (Shanghai

Baby), Shenyang: Chunfeng wenyi chuban

she (1999).

Zhang Xiaohong, MA is a research assistant

at the Research School CNWS of Leiden

University. She has published essays on cul-

tural studies and contemporary Chinese

literature in both English and Chinese and

is currently preparing a book on post-Mao

women’s poetry.

[email protected]

By Zhang X iaohong

Introspection sets the tone of con-temporary Chinese women’s litera-

ture produced between the mid-1980sand the mid-1990s. For womenauthors, writing is meant to address thecomplexity and ambiguity of their gen-dered selves, and most well-knowntexts are endowed with both social andpsychological significance. Women’sconsciousness is often explored from apsychosexual perspective, as in WangAnyi’s love trilogy, Chen Ran’s Toast tothe Past, Zhai Yongming’s poem-seriesWoman, and Tang Yaping’s poem-seriesBlack Desert.

Inward perspectives turn outward inthe work of newly emerging womennovelists like Wei Hui, Mian Mian, JiuDan, An Dun, and Chun Shu. Theselabelled, or self-labelled, ‘beauty’ or‘alternative’ writers strip off any deli-cate cover of privacy and expose privatedetails to the public with little concernfor major issues or the complication ofmundane matters. An alternativelifestyle is highly celebrated: casual sex,drugs, homosexual practice, and vio-lence. Fictional settings switch from barto café, from disco to mall, and frombedroom to bathroom. Through liter-ary metamorphosis day-to-day life feelslike a dazzling shopping mall, which istoo good to be true. The real becomeultra-real or surreal, when the aforesaidauthors exploit reality and play with it.The female body is turned into a trade-mark, a signpost, and a fashion label:gender politics transforms into com-mercialized exhibitionism.

Just like their male colleagues, con-temporary Chinese women authorsturned to the West for role models toimitate and emulate. This has led to thehuge popularity of women authorsfrom Western cultures. Sylvia Plath hasbeen a particularly empowering rolemodel for Chinese women poets. Herwork propelled the phenomenon of‘black hurricane’ after the official pub-lication of Zhai Yongming’s poem-series ‘Woman’ (Nüren) in 1986. Underthe speculative spell of Plath, denseblack imagery and representations ofdeath developed into a shared mode ofexpression in Chinese women’s poetry.In another instance, Wei Hui’s scan-dalous quotation of Plath’s ‘Daddy’ wasbelieved to be one of the triggers of theofficial ban on her novel Shanghai Baby(1999). The line ‘Every woman adoresa fascist’ is recycled from ‘Daddy’ todramatize the lovemaking scene.Shanghai Baby contains abundant ref-erences to Woolf’s A Room of One’s Ownand Duras’s The Lover. Each new chap-ter begins with one or more epigraphsby canonized foreign authors, such asHenry Miller, D. H. Lawrence, AllenGinsberg, and Milan Kundera. Yet, ref-erences to foreign literature and cultureadd no more significance to ShanghaiBaby than do fashion and exoticism. Allforeign literary and cultural elementsare dealt with on a superficial level andask for little interpretative effort. For-eign authors read no different than for-eign brands like IKEA, Esprit, CalvinKlein, Christian Dior, and Chanel.

The discourse of contemporary Chi-

Research >China

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By Jan Wuisman

Howard Dick’s study is an elabo-rate and detailed analysis of one

case, the city of Surabaya. Dick pres-ents a wide variety of contextual infor-mation within which to understandthe various processes that took placein twentieth-century Surabaya. Thestudy is, perhaps aptly, described as ahistorical ‘urbano-graphical’ casestudy. It clearly indicates its aim: anin-depth, systematic, and comprehen-sive analysis of the unit of analysis asa complex, dynamic, open system interms of a wide variety of constitutivedimensions such as: the relationshipsbetween the local and global (space);the temporal dimension of past, pres-ent, and future (time); the relationshipbetween nature reserves and ruralareas in the hinterland and overseascities and countries (ecology); and thesocial relationships between men andwomen (gender), young and old (gen-erations), ethnic affiliation (culturalidentity), employers and employees(social class), work, leisure, and con-sumption (status), inhabitants andbureaucrats (governance), citizens andpoliticians (polity), national and for-eigner (nationality), as well as thosebetween ethnic groups and peoples(hegemony). By covering most of thesedimensions this study not only revealsto the reader the complexity of urbanlife in the city of Surabaya, but alsoillustrates its pivotal role in the eco-nomic development and moderniza-tion of the eastern parts of Java andIndonesia.

What makes Surabaya’shistory?

Nevertheless, Dick’s study has itsown limitations. There is a rathersharp difference between his descrip-tive and analytic analysis. At thedescriptive level, Dick claims to pres-ent a ‘loosely structured and idiosyn-cratic twentieth-century economic his-tory of Surabaya’ by exploring a varietyof ‘key themes by taking several cross-

Surabaya, City of WorkHoward Dick has written a very interesting, easy to read, and scholarly book on Surabaya, the capital city of the province of EastJava. Introducing the reader to various viewpoints, he presents a wealth of information on a wide variety of topics, providing adetailed description of the historical changes in the city during the twentieth century. This serves to corroborate three generalconjectures, thus solving a historical puzzle. The conjectures are: (1) ‘the city is the frontier of modern Asian society’; (2)‘nowhere was urbanization more dramatic than in Indonesia under the New Order (1966–98)’; and (3) ‘the modern history ofIndonesia – especially of Java – can be read as a tale of two cities, Jakarta (colonial Batavia) and Surabaya’ (p. xvii). The ‘historicalpuzzle is not the sudden and sustained vitality of the period after the 1970s but the long hiatus between the 1930s and 1970s’ (p.xx), partly explained by the ‘[c]ollapse of the sugar exports during the 1930s depression, followed by the Japanese occupation,revolution, and independence, [which] brought on a long period of stagnation and retreat from the international economy’, asDick states on the back cover. Yet, what is presented in the book actually goes further than its limited purpose suggests.

Review >Southeast Asia

a dark grey or black background.Though one may then justly marvel atthe painter’s incredible attention fordetail and fabulous technical crafts-manship, it is utterly impossible tomake sense of what is actually beingrepresented. From a distance of threeor four metres, however, these tinystrokes of white paint on a dark back-ground appear to be shining sleevesmade of openwork silk lace, reflectingthe soft light falling through a window.The same applies to this study ofSurabaya. Dick’s approach to data,using a low-level of classification andanalysis, presents very detailed infor-mation on numerous interestingaspects and facets, but, unfortunately,the big picture escapes the attention ofthe reader.

The metaphor of the painting is alsouseful to draw attention to a funda-mental aspect of today’s social scientif-ic understanding of human social life.

Social life is no longer considered to bethe sum of a myriad of individual actsand relations among a collective of peo-ple that need all be represented inminute detail. Instead, social life in allits varied forms and patterns is increas-ingly seen as the outcome of processesof social construction and cultural cre-ation (Smith 1998). Unfortunately, theidea that Surabaya is such a construc-tion or creation, a distinct entity thatmay through time evolve and devolve,remains implicit and is nowhere sys-tematically elaborated.

‘Work’ as a label or ametaphor

A final consideration concerns thespecific role attributed to ‘work’. Theconcept of ‘work’ seems to have beenchosen primarily to indicate a suppos-edly typical characteristic of this city, incontrast to other cities, rather than as ametaphor expressing what is typical

about Surabaya and makes it what it isin the first place. The concept of ‘work’is too general to be of much use to dif-ferentiate between Surabaya and othercities in Indonesia that are also basedon a work culture.

Notwithstanding the above criticismthis book is an eye-opener, especiallyfor those who are not closely acquaint-ed with Indonesia’s culture and socie-ty: it reveals the existing historicaldiversity, richness of social experience,and the enormous cultural variationthat goes with this second largest cityof Indonesia. <

- Dick, Howard W., Surabaya, City of Work:

A socioeconomic history, 1900-2000,

Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press

(2002), pp. 541, ISBN 0-89680-221-3.

Reference

- Smith, Mark J., Social Science in Question:

Towards a non-disciplinary social science,

London: Open University Press (1998).

Dr J.J.J.M. Wuisman is Lecturer at the

Department of Public Administration, Lei-

den University. He has teaching assignments

in the fields of social science research

methodology, comparative and public

administration in non-Western societies, and

development administration.

[email protected]

sections of the historical experience’(p. xxiii). By contrast, the structure ofthe analytic analysis is much morerigid. The seven chapters of the bookare grouped into three rather tightlyrelated clusters or parts.

The first three chapters describeSurabaya as the unit of analysis, anddeal with the question: ‘What is it thatmakes Surabaya an entity in the firstplace?’ In chapter 1 the city is intro-duced to the reader: its geographicallocations, appearance to inhabitantsand visitors, and the daily cycle ofurban life. In the next chapter, a vari-ety of economic and political eventsthat have shaped the city’s economichistory are described. The implicitidea is that these common experienceshave contributed to an emergingawareness of common identity andhistorical relatedness. Chapter 3 pres-ents a statistical picture of Surabayaand explains how all sorts of externalfactors, processes, and influences havemoulded Surabaya and its identity.Employing these three perspectives,Dick suggests that Surabaya indeedrepresents a proper unit of historicalsociological analysis; that it is an enti-ty with a sufficiently distinct geo-graphical, demographic, economic,institutional, administrative, and cul-tural identity.

In the second part, Dick outlinesthree processes of change: the chang-ing structure and role of government inpublic health, education, and housing(chapter 4), industrialization (chapter5), and the spread of the city and con-flicts in the evolution of land use (chap-ter 6). The detailed and interestingtreatment of these topics is based on alarge variety of documentary sourcesand other sorts of information. What ismissing, however, is their systematictreatment within a broader perspective:that is, as examples of specific socialprocesses taking place within anddirectly contributing to the constitutionand transformation of a distinct entity,namely Surabaya. What is more, it isnot at all Dick’s purpose to reveal thecore of the city of Surabaya as a distinctsocial, cultural, and historical entity. Infact, he acknowledges having chosenSurabaya as a methodological means ofstudying various nationwide historicalprocesses of growth and decline duringthe twentieth century. This aspectbecomes blatantly clear in the conclu-sion in the third cluster, which is in thestyle of a moral discussion on the NewOrder, as reflected in the ups anddowns that Surabaya has experiencedduring that period, and expectations forthe post-Suharto period. The followinganalogy with a seventeenth-century por-trait by the Dutch painter Frans Halsprobably best illustrates my point.

From a distance of 50 centimetres,the sleeve of a painted jacket will appearto the observer as tiny strokes of whitepaint representing geometric figures on

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By Namrata Ganner i

The six essays and field notes (some of which have previ-ously been published) are not linked by any overarching

theme. This is already evident from the preface in which Patitraces no common thread. However, what runs through thiswork is the author’s sustained interest in exploring differentfacets of the social history of Orissa and the tribal world, soas to write a ‘history from below’. The opening essay exam-ines hitherto marginalized aspects of the health and medi-cine of indigenous tribes and demonstrates that colonialhealth practices and belief systems met with an oscillationbetween acceptance and opposition. Even the Oriya middleclasses, which were deeply influenced by Western scientificdiscourse, opted for a system based on compromise betweentheir own indigenous methods and those introduced fromthe West. Thus, colonial influence on health practice can beassessed in terms of close, constant interaction and affinitybetween the tribal, non-tribal, and Western systems.

The influence of the colonial period had far-reaching ram-ifications, from the alteration of the agrarian structure to thevery crystallization of an Oriya identity by means of publicdebates. In fact, as the author argues, any attempt to con-struct Oriya history begins after its conquest: the story of Oris-sa typically reads as that of the successive Hindu, Muslim,Maratha, and British conquests. The British did not want toupset the apple cart in terms of social structure, and there-fore continued to enforce upper-caste class domination.Hence, in this volume, the question of exploitation and dom-ination is investigated, particularly in relation to British nine-teenth-century colonialism.

One of the most fascinating essays, ‘The Murder of Bana-mali’, returns to themes that invariably crop up in all theessays: the nexus between feudal and colonial agrarian sys-tems, the social and cultural practices adopted by the people,peasant protests, the question of popular memory, and so on.Employing typical ‘people’s history’ methods, Pati’s in-depthmicro-level investigation takes us into the world of Balanga, adistrict in Orissa imaginatively employing court testimoniesgiven in relation to the gruesome murder of an exploitativetyrant Banamali. It reveals Banamali’s iron grip, and how thisnaib (estate manager) extended his ruthless control over theentire rural society through his entrenchment in practically

Situating Social History OrissaOrissa as a state remains on the periphery of popular discourse, though catastrophes, cyclones, and faminesensure that the region receives intermittent media coverage. While some regions like Bengal and Maharashtrahave occupied centre stage in writings on the social history of South Asia, regions like Orissa remain inobscurity. Situating Social History Orissa (1800–1997) is a much-needed collection of essays that may help tochange this. Drawing upon a variety of sources, ranging from archival records to tribal folklore and songs,literary works, popular memory, and interviews, Biswamoy Pati covers themes as diverse as the social historyof medicine, the creation of an Oriya identity, and peasant movements in Orissa, questioning the wholeprocess of colonial and post-colonial under-development through Kalahandi, a tract that ‘has virtually emergedas a metaphor for famine’ (p. ix).

With the volume Literary Cultures in History (edited by Sheldon Pollock), the study of Indian literature and South Asian cultureand history takes a leap forward. The book is the result of over a decade’s collaboration between scholars, most of whom arebased at the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. The basis of this leap forwardover previous works in this field is the book’s pervasive critical reflection on the conceptualizations underlying any history ofIndian literature, and the profound consequences of any theoretical preference for specific conceptualizations. This reflection isbest indicated in the form of questions: (1) What is literature? (2) What is India or what is South Asia? Or, asked in a more generalway: What is the (linguistic) community defined by a literature? From a different perspective this further implies: Which languagedoes an author, or a community, choose for the purpose of literature? (3) What is history?

Review >South Asia

Review >South Asia

ries like them, are associated in popular memory with howoppressors meet their doom. Encouraged by the British exam-ple, traditional syncretic elements in stories from Oriyan pop-ular memory were replaced with the stereotypical Muslimfanatic, enemy of Hinduism and destroyer of idols. In view ofsuch a development, and as hinted at above, the historical con-text in which such selective memories are created should itselfbe investigated by social historians, as it may well reveal theambivalences inherent in the process of creating popularmemory.

An area that could have been delved deeper into is the ‘Hin-duisation of tribals’. Arguably, the debate began with G. S.Ghurye’s classification of tribals as ‘backward Hindus’.* Ifanything, this issue became even more complicated and del-icate with the aggressive posturing of today’s government inIndia over conversions. To my mind, the theme ‘Hinduisa-tion’ itself requires some explanation. For instance, does‘Hinduisation’ always involve ‘high’ Hinduism? In addition,this term is also used in reference to the rise of the Bra-hamanical order in the fifth century AD and with regard tothe current curriculum in schools using Hindu prayers.Using this term sloppily for processes vastly separated bytime and context tends to obscure its real meaning. Pati him-self justly observes, ‘After all, it is impossible to locate theoriginal Hindu pantheon’ (p. 14).

The most impressive aspect of this work is Pati’s desire tounderstand, amongst other things, the ways in which peopleremember and relate to the past. There are many instancesin which the author narrates how popular memory hasretained or obliterated certain events. The historians’ task isnot only to create history, but also to document the process-es involved in its construction: Pati’s work is a valuable con-tribution to an understanding of this construction process.This is what makes history in general and this work in par-ticular important outside the ranks of historians and impartsan enduring value to the work. <

- Biswamoy Pati, Situating Social History Orissa (1800–1997), Hyder-

abad: Orient Longman (2001), pp. xiv + 182, ISBN 81 250 2007 1.

Namrata Ravichandra Ganneri, MA is presently engaged in Mod-

ern Indian History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Her research examines the politics of women’s organizations in west-

ern India espousing Hindu fundamentalist ideology.

[email protected]

all the village activities and his abuse of caste and class privi-leges. Interestingly, the testimonies only gradually shift focusfrom the hitherto much-maligned absentee Bengali landlordto his representative, Banamali, who was really the key figure.As is shown clearly and quite contrary to popular perception,which usually identifies evil with the outsider – for the tribein the coastal area of Orissa, this would be the Bengali land-lord – the real exploiter was a ‘local’. The murder itself is per-petuated in popular memory as it transgressed all codes ofpeasant protest: the enduring images are of the murderershacking Banamali into pieces, garlanding themselves with hisintestines, and thus celebrating an end to their exploitation.Though the perpetrators were all oppressed by Banamali, thenaib being a universally hated figure, the author’s teleologicalperception of the murder as an act of peasant protest appearsproblematic. Sometimes, testimonies tell us more about theact than the act itself: and maybe more can be understood ofthe dynamics of a time through a more rigorous reading ofthe sources. The fate of Banamali is echoed in the story of thefeudal lord Mangaraj.

Perhaps it is not a mere coincidence that they, and other sto-

By Jan Houben

In earlier works on the history of Indian literature, thesequestions have either been perfunctory dealt with, or they

were not even asked. In his History of Indian Literature, forinstance, S.K. Das simply states that literature comprises ‘allmajor texts’: in part ‘fairy tales and tales of adventures, songsof various types and nursery rhymes’ – in short, ‘all memo-rable utterances’ (cited after Pollock, p. 7). In the Literary Cul-tures in History project the literary is seen as ‘a functionalrather than an ontological category’; hence it refers to what‘people do with a text rather than something a text truly andeverlastingly is’ (Pollock, p. 9). However, what people do witha text varies according to the historical context. Hence, thefocus came to be on the history of (‘indigenous’ or ‘emic’)definitions and views of literature. Delineating a communi-ty or area whose literature and language one wants to studyposes specific problems: ‘Boundaries of languages, cultures,societies, and polities that were created after the fact and insome cases very recently – boundaries that literary and lin-guistic processes in large part helped to create – have beentaken as the condition of emergence and understanding of

these processes themselves’ (p. 12). It became clear to thecontributors that in South Asia ‘[b]orders of place and bor-ders of language were as messy as they were elsewhere, untilliterature began its work of purification’ (p. 17). The arrange-ment of the volume in five parts illustrates the pragmatic sideof the response to this problem of delineation:

Part one, Globalizing Literary Cultures, consists of threechapters respectively on Sanskrit (Sheldon Pollock), Persian(Muzaffar Alam), and Indian-English literature (Vinay Dhar-wadker).

Part two, Literature in Southern Locales, consists of fourchapters on Tamil (Norman Cutler), Kannada (D.R. Nagaraj),Telugu (Velcheru Narayana Rao), and Malayala literary culture(Rich Freeman).

Part three, The Centrality of Borderlands, consists of threechapters on the two histories (pre-colonial and colonial) ofliterary culture in Bengal (Sudipta Kaviraj), and on Gujarati(Sitamshu Yashaschandra) and Sindhi (Ali S. Asani) literarycultures.

Part four, Buddhist Cultures and South Asian Literatures,consists of three chapters on ‘What is literature in Pali?’(Steven Collins), on Sinhala literary culture (Charles

Literary Cultures in History

* Ghurye, G.S., Vedic India, Bombay: Popular Prakashan (1979).

Note >

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By Margaret S leeboom

Drawing on diaries, unpublished inEnglish, Ohnuki-Tierney provides

a lucid discussion of the views andmotives of the kamikaze pilots (tokkotai,or ‘special attack corps’). She presentsthem as idealist romantics who sacri-ficed their confused lives for the countrythey held dear. Ohnuki-Tierney describestheir patriotism convincingly as a prod-uct of a complex interpenetrationbetween global intellectual tides, politi-cal and military threats from the West,and their own Japanese intellectual tra-ditions, which were themselves also theproducts of interactions between thelocal and the global (p. 240).

The book is divided into four parts.Part one focuses on the meaning andsymbolism of the cherry blossom, parttwo on the militarization of the massessince the nineteenth century up toWorld War Two, and part three on theway in which young men ‘volunteered’to ‘defend their country against Ameri-can invasion’. Part four examines howthe state managed to change the con-ceptions of emperor and cherry blos-som, the latter being a Japanese mastertrope of imperial nationalism at thebeginning of the Meiji period. Ohnuki-Tierney locates the power of (national)symbols and rituals in méconnaissance,a term borrowed from Jacques Lacan,referring to the communication absenceoccurring when people do not share ameaning but derive different meaningsfrom the same symbols and rituals.

Hallisey), and on the Indian literary identity in Tibet(Matthew T. Kapstein).

The final part is devoted to the twinned histories of Urduand Hindi, with Shamsur Rahman Faruqi and Frances W.Pritchett writing on Urdu, and Stuart McGregor and HarishTrivedi writing on Hindi.

As can be seen, the volume clearly breaks away from ear-lier histories in not starting from a monolithic dominant San-skrit literature but from the plurality of literatures in global-izing and vernacularizing languages.

In order to deal with the historical dimension, the authorsdecided to explore ‘how people have done things with thepast’ and to take ‘seriously how different modes of tempo-rality may have worked to structure South Asian literary cul-tures for the participants themselves’ (pp. 18–19).

The authors’ basic attitude consists of ‘listening to thequestions the texts themselves raise ... rather than, likeinquisitors, placing the texts in the dock and demanding thatthey answer the questions we bring to them.’ Adopting thisfundamental openness made them enter a ‘zone of freedom’when they ‘escaped literary history for the history of literaryculture, committing [them]selves to taking South Asian peo-ple and their ideas seriously, and allowing for (potentially rad-ical) South Asian difference’ (p. 13).

Pollock’s argument in his chapter ‘Sanskrit Literary CultureFrom The Inside Out’ (p. 55) that the dividing line betweenclassical literature and ancient Vedic texts is ‘untranscend-able’ is not entirely convincing. Apart from the continuitiesthat can be perceived, the boundaries between the two havethrough the ages been frequently crossed by South Asian San-skrit poets as well as by Vedic exegetes and grammarians.

While the authors are to be lauded for their effort to avoid‘naturalizing categories – of time, place, language and com-munity’ (p. 34), the volume fortunately contains a numberof maps of South and Central Asia that are very helpful. Whatis missing is a synoptic table of authors and approximatedates. It would have increased the accessibility of the com-plex material for students, for whom this volume will other-wise be an excellent textbook it. After all, there must havebeen some historical time when the paths of the authors andmain actors in the various ‘literary cultures’ of the SouthAsian subcontinent occasionally crossed.

This volume is the result of individual contributors’ effortsand throughout shows their ‘fascination with the quest forlearning how to listen’ (p. xix).

The novel presentation of information on literatures –which, like Sanskrit, Hindi, and Urdu, have been extensive-ly explored, or, like Malayalam, have scarcely been researchedto date – is surely laudable in itself. Nonetheless, the real plusvalue lies in the opening up of critical literary, social, and his-torical research questions, and in the stimulation of new,unexpectedly rich perceptions of South Asia through its lit-erary cultures. <

- Pollock, Sheldon (ed.), Literary Cultures in History, Berkeley, CA: Uni-

versity of California Press (2003), pp. 1108, ISBN 0-5202-2821-9

Professor Jan E.M. Houben is affiliated to the Ecole Pratique des

Hautes Etudes, Paris Sorbonne. His topics of interest are Sanskrit

tradition of grammar and literature as well as Vedic ritual.

[email protected]

The author explores how statenationalism is developed and how itsucceeds and/or fails to be accepted by‘ordinary’ individuals, who, ratheroften, embrace as ‘natural’ basicchanges in culture and society initiatedby political, military, and intellectualleaders. The student pilots all had theirown ideas and ideals. Among themwere members of Japan’s RomanticMovement and of Cogito, a platformthat became closely tied with ultra-nationalism, Marxists, utopian human-itarians, and Christians. Distinguish-ing between the patriotism of pro patriamori, which was espoused by individ-ual pilots, and state nationalism, whichwas fostered from above, promoting prorege et patria mori (to die for emperorand country) (p.7), Ohnuki-Tierneyargues that, though each of the five dis-cussed pilots reproduced the latter ide-ology in action, none of them repro-duced it in toto in thought.

Japanese cherry blossom andthe West

One aim of the book is to examinethe power of aesthetics for politicalpurposes, using the state’s manipula-tion of cherry blossom symbolism as acase. According to Ohnuki-Tierneynotions of the state and various ideolo-gies, which motivated tokkotai to fly fortheir country, were both imported fromthe West. Thus, the pilots were trickedby the state into sacrificing their lives:‘When the “general will”, transformedby the Nazi and Japanese states, was

seen as the general will of Rousseauand Kant, they were disarmed and didnot suspect the wicked hand of manip-ulation’ (p.17). The soldiers also bor-rowed Christianity from Europe to pro-vide them with a model of sacrifice forothers and the notion of life after death.The only model of sacrifice in Japandrew on the Confucian notion of loyal-ty to one’s parents and lord (p.18–19).State manipulation of the young intel-lectual tokkotai imposed Western con-cepts of the nation and modernity onJapanese culture: thus, Westernphilosophies and ideologies explainand carry the main responsibility fortheir behaviour.

The sharp distinctions between stateand country, nationalism and patriot-ism, and official kill and romantic self-sacrifice, make Japanese patriotic tokko-tai victims of the West. Indeed theWestern state, Western concepts ofnationalism, Western ideologies andphilosophies during, and Western cen-sorship and prejudices after, the Pacif-ic War, seem to have rather too much toanswer for. It seems the book lacks dataon tokkotai attitudes toward Asia, on theviews of non-intellectual tokkotai about‘sacrificing’ their lives, on the condi-tions under which the diaries were writ-ten, and on the intellectuals responsi-ble for state policies. Thus, indescribing the minds of the student-pilots, Ohnuki-Tierney argues that theJapanese philosopher Tanabe Hajime(a devout Christian) was influential,and most extensively read. But she does

not refer to his Logic of Species, which isstill cursed today by Chinese intellec-tuals as a racist basis for Japanese impe-rialism (Bian Chongdao 1989:8). Nei-ther does she refer to the role of theextreme right, which, in the 1980s and1990s, converted former tokkotai baseson the southern island of Kyuushu(Chiran and Bansei) into populartourist spots. Furthermore, the Yasuku-ni Shrine is presented as the resting-place of the souls of the tokkotai, sepa-rate from the neighbouring souls of

class-A war criminals, still celebrat-ed by the far right. Moreover, no men-tion is made of the post-war role of ‘vic-tim consciousness’ of pacifist nationalidentity in Japan (Orr 2001).

Ulterior motivesThe tokkotai diaries have been much

discussed in Japan of the 1990s, butonly sporadically in English (cf. Sasaki1997). Though it aims to alter the cur-rent image of kamikaze, it does so byfocusing on the intellectual elite whorepresent only one-sixth of all Okinawatokkotai (Sasaki 1997:15). Furthermore,Ohnuki-Tierney ascribes the trulyamazing number of lengthy diaries leftby tokkotai pilots to the importance of‘writing’ as a mode of communicationin Japanese culture (p.189), not to theiracademic background. More seriously,the behaviour of the romantic pilotsremains mysterious due to a lack ofcontextual analysis. The meaning of‘voluntary’ recruitment, the influenceof state and self-censorship, social pres-sure, state propaganda, and educationare insufficiently linked to the readingof the diaries. Finally, I doubt whetherOhnuki-Tierney has done the image ofthe kamikaze any favours. Whereas wemay sympathize with soldiers follow-ing state orders to fight a war theybelieve to be unjust, the soldiers here

Kamikaze, Cherry Blossom, and Nationalism

Human self-sacrifice, such as that of Allied soldiers in Iraq and Palestinian suicidebombers, obtains a new dimension in Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney’s theme of patriotic suicide asan aesthetic ideal. Her study of the role of symbolism and aesthetics in totalitarian ideologyshows how the state manipulated the symbol of the cherry blossom, a Japanese ideal ofevanescent beauty. To persuade people that it was their honour to ‘die like beautiful fallingcherry petals’ for the emperor, soldiers were promised that their souls would be honouredin eternity in the, now, politically controversial Yasukuni Shrine.

Review >Japan

described, who believe their war to bejustified for reasons (rooted in reli-gious, philosophical, and utopian ide-ologies) at variance with those of thestate, are not likely to receive anysympathy. <

- Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko, Kamikaze, Cherry

Blossoms, and Nationalisms. The Milita-

rization of Aesthetics in Japanese History,

Chicago and London: The University of

Chicago Press (2002), pp. xvii + 411, ISBN

0-226-62091-3

References

- Bian Chongdao and Suzuki Tadashi

(eds.), Riben jindai shi da zhexuejia,

Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe

(1989).

- Orr, James J., The Victim as Hero. Ideolo-

gies of Peace and National Identity in Post-

war Japan, Honolulu: University of Hawaii

Press (2001).

- Sasaki, Mako, ‘Who Became Kamikaze

Pilots, And How Did They Feel Towards

Their Suicide Mission?’, The Concord

Review, Concord (Mass.), vol.7/1 (1996),

pp.175-209.

Dr Margaret Sleeboom is a research fellow

and Director of the Socio-Genetic Margin-

alization in Asia Programme (SMAP) at the

International Institute for Asian Studies.

[email protected]

Poem picture in the

form of a coiled

snake in a seven-

teenth-century work

on Telugu poetics,

discussed by V.

Narayana Rao in his

chapter in Literary

Cultures in History.

The poem is a prayer

to Krishna and con-

tains a large number

of his names.

Umezawa Kazuyo, tokkotai pilot, with branches

of cherry blossoms on his uniform. Courtesy of

his brother, Dr Umezawa Shmzm.

Kak

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> Publications

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By Nandana Chut iwongs

For Thailand today, Wat Buddha-padipa in London represents an

officially sanctioned version of Thaiidentity, conforming to the NationalCultural Policy to maintain ‘the goodimage, fame and dignity of Thai culturein the world community’. For well-to-do Thais, it is almost a place of pil-grimage, a legitimate goal for fund-rais-ing, travelling, and merit-making. Forothers, it has become a highly recom-mended stop on tourist itineraries. Themost celebrated feature of Wimbledon’stemple is its Thai-style bot orubosot/uposatha (ordination hall), whichholds mural paintings depicting the lifeof the Buddha in an unusual style thatmay be classified as ‘neo-traditional’,one of the many trends of contempo-rary art in Thailand.

From the records of various inter-views Cate has conducted with found-ing members, supporters, and patronsof the temple, we can glean an idea ofits actual functions. These tally, in gen-

eral outline, with what has been knownin Thailand since ancient times. As arule, Cate wisely refrains from judge-ment, thus letting interviews and inter-viewees speak for themselves. Thetemple’s murals, in particular, generatemuch animated discussion and con-troversy as to their suitability as mediato disseminate the true message of the

Buddha, their legitimacy as represen-tations of Thai cultural identity, andtheir debatable aesthetic values.

The paintings still follow establishedconventions in theme and basic design,reflecting styles of the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries. But the intensityof the new palette and the ‘radical’mode of representation unsettle theaverage audience. The incorporation ofcontemporary elements, such as por-traits or caricatures of living persons,generates disapproval, not because oftheir presence, but more on account ofthe hybrid Western styles employed todepict them.

For many long years 27 Thaipainters, trained in both Thai and West-ern art history and history, workedtogether on these murals. As volunteersthey only received free board and sim-ple lodging from the temple, yet sub-sequently gained substantial renownfrom working on this prestigious proj-ect. This process may be viewed in con-formity with the Thai ingrained beliefin karma. Merit-making, besides bene-

fiting others and the world in general,also enhances one’s own current andfuture prospects. Success, generallymeasured in terms of fame andfinance, indeed elevated the painters’own career, and consequently had a far-reaching effect on the trends and devel-opment of the country’s contemporaryart on the whole.

Cate explores the characteristics andsignificance of these paintings fromanthropological and art historical pointsof view, addressing the complex rela-tionships between art and religion, andsociety and power. The motivations ofthe artists and their sponsors, publicresponse, and the diverse views of thecritics, are all presented against the live-ly and changing backdrop of contem-porary Thailand. The author’s summa-ry of first-hand information on the Thaisystem of art education and training ishighly relevant to understanding thebackground, ideologies, and workprocesses of artists in Thailand today.Debates on the multiple roles of art, asan act of selfless devotion, a medium ofmoral instruction, an expression ofideas and convictions, and/or as a pure-ly aesthetic revelation, are still going onin full force in contemporary Thailand.Fortunately, the author’s analyticalremarks, often short and to the point,usually bear marks of sincerity that takemost of the sting out of many of thesesensitive issues.

The book gives a short but adequateoverview of the nature and function ofmural painting in Thailand, assigningits shift of place from religious space tosecular environments to the agenciesof modernity and commercialization.Although this is not a new theory, themany examples provided in the bookemphasize the author’s point. In spiteof a slight weakness in her knowledgeof the early history of art in Thailand,the unique nature of the Buddhapadi-pa murals and their highlights are ade-quately underlined. As she explains,they form part of two large designs con-ceived by two leaders of the workinggroup. The conventional compositionand distribution of scenes relating thelife of the Buddha are substantiallyretained, as well as the two-dimension-al and multi-perspective style of thenineteenth century. Nevertheless, themurals also incorporate details thatbelong to the modern world, presentedin strikingly non-conventional styles.

The delicate, elegant lines, enrichedby profuse and detailed ornamentation,originally found in traditional art andgenerally considered representative of

Making Merit, Making Art:A Thai Temple in Wimbledon

Wat Buddhapadipa in Wimbledon is the most prestigious Thai Buddhist temple outside ofThailand. The initiative to build a temple in England came from a group of Thai nationals in1964 and received sanction and substantial supports from the Thai government, elites,influential patrons, and even royalty. The temple’s prestige is also enhanced by the long-standing cordial relations between the royal houses of Thailand and England, and by thepersistent Thai view of London as the main centre of Western civilization. Sandra Cate’sMaking Merit, Making Art is based on the story and ideas behind this temple.

‘Thainess’, predominate in the murals.On the contrary, the intensity of thenew palette, of cool but clear and ethe-real translucent greens, blues, andpinks, evokes a striking contrast to thefamiliar dark but warm red and goldpalette of the old murals.

‘Modern’ elements, bearing stylisticqualities of Western surrealism, real-ism, fantastic realism, and even pop art,appear in the detailed Buddha scenes.These include portraits and caricaturesof important and notorious political fig-ures and popular TV phenomena, suchas the action heroes Superman andNinja Turtles, all shown in their char-acteristic poses and dispositions. Inthese trivial details, the neo-traditionalartists make use of the traditional poet-ic/artistic licence that permits events ofeveryday life, including those of unre-fined humour and of human faults andfailings, to appear in the periphery ofreligious scenes.

The author also notes the signifi-cance of the Buddhapadipa templepaintings as a mode of ‘social portrai-ture’ in multiple dimensions. Sheargues that they transport a contempo-rary vision of Thai society beyond theboundaries of Thailand, and carry themessage of Thai Buddhism into thecontemporary world. The paintersunfold the story of the Buddha’s life astold in their own culture and in hybridstyles reflective of the various concep-tions and art phenomena as known incontemporary Thailand. Depictions ofpersons and places representative ofcontemporary political powers and thediversity of global cultures are inter-woven into the imaginary and fantasticsetting of the Buddha story. Hybrid instyle, evocative and controversial inexpression and artistic valuation, Cateis convincing in her argument that themurals at the Wat Buddhapadipa Tem-ple undeniably embody a spirit of uni-versality, portraying the world as onelarge community that shares the samefate, confusion, disharmony, and trou-bles. There is a sense that wholesalesufferings can be eliminated by a clearunderstanding and by the subtle butbrilliant spectrum of light emanatingfrom the revered figure of the Buddha,the teacher of peace and tolerance. <

- Sandra Cate, Making Merit, Making Art, a

Thai Temple in Wimbledon, Honolulu: Uni-

versity of Hawaii Press, (2003), pp. 218,

48 colour plates, ISBN 0-8248-23575

Dr Nandana Chutiwongs is Curator of the

Department of South and Mainland South-

east Asia at the National Museum of Eth-

nology, Leiden.

[email protected]

Review >England

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

The defeat of Mara and the Enlightenment.

The ubosot at Wat

Buddhapadipa,

Wimbledon,

England.

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> Publications

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By Wi l lem Vis ser ‘ t Hooft

This highly readable collection of 14different papers is the result of an

IIAS workshop held in January 1998. Inexamining prospects for legal reform inAsia, the book addresses diverse fieldsof commercial law: intellectual propertylaw, competition law, and financial mar-ket regulation, among others. The bookis divided into five parts. In the first the-oretical section, the authors focus on per-ceptions of the role of law in economicdevelopment. Of particular note are thearticles by Bernard Bishop and JohnOhnesorge. Bishop points to economicderegulation in many East Asian coun-tries and the resulting separation of busi-ness from government. Governmentsincreasingly focus on policies promot-ing competition, such as increasedenforcement of laws on cartel formation;this will inevitably lead to a strongeremphasis on the rule of law. Ohnesorge,however, questions the necessity for astrong rule of law in all areas of the econ-omy. It is important to develop an under-standing of the rule of law, he argues,that can effectively be distinguishedfrom the simple legalization of societyor the suppression of government

By Richard Boyd

The root of the problem was the cult, the culture, the mys-tique of the Treasury itself. These were mandarins

among mandarins, an intellectual elite, the pick of the civilservice, the cream of recruits, members of a chosen race, arace apart. A musical race at that! There was always a Trea-sury choir and even, at one time, a quartet of madrigal-singing Treasury knights (the UK’s equivalent to Japan’sadministrative vice-ministers). In the Treasury, as Sampsonfamously observed, the literary, Oxbridge character of White-hall had its quintessence. This was all a bit too much for theunchosen, the poor cousins of the mandarinate, cloisteredin their university departments, and so the Treasuryremained substantially off limits until about 1970. At whichtime two American academics presented themselves,unabashed and unashamed, made appointments, preparedtheir questions, switched on their tape recorders, and askedtheir questions as the tapes rolled. The academics were HughHeclo and Aaron Wildavsky, their questions were answeredin full, and the result was the classic 1974 study, The PrivateGovernment of Public Money.

The parallels with Japan and its Ministry of Finance (MOF)and, no less, between Maurice Wright and these distin-guished Americans, are irresistible. The MOF is the centreof Japan’s government (say what you will about the impor-tance of the ministry formerly known as the Ministry of Inter-national Trade and Industry or (MITI), its initiatives, if andwhen they have financial repercussions, intrude the MOF’sbailiwick and trigger its prerogatives), and its officials are no

less the crème de la crème, the pick of the bureaucratic crop,than their Treasury counterparts. The response of the poorcousins has not been so different either: Japanese scholar-ship has been at arm’s length, to put it mildly. Budgeting istreated not so much as a substantial political process (withthe exception of Campbell’s pioneering study, ContemporaryJapanese Budgeting, 1977) but rather in formal, constitution-al, legal, and institutional terms. Journalists in Japan, as inEngland, are made of sterner stuff and are left to deal withthe facts of the matter. Wright himself has co-authored a high-ly regarded study of the UK Treasury. His work on the MOFdraws upon techniques and insights derived from that study,and consciously echoes a broad theoretical stance that refersback to Wildavsky. His ‘tape recorder’ was no less active thanthat of Heclo and Wildavsky – the book is fed on a rich dietof more than 150 interviews with senior officials and politi-cians.

There is another parallel at once intriguing and provoca-tive. Heclo and Wildavsky were ‘outsiders’, removed at theoutset from the inhibition and self-censorship that markedlocal observers. That distance facilitated enquiry, while expert-ise and experience derived elsewhere enabled research. Thisis troubling stuff for at least one group of professional stu-dents of Japan, for whom (to play on the colonial idiom)‘learning to dance like the natives’ is a virtue not a vice, andis even an indispensable means to knowledge. The dancedemands (Japanese) linguistic competence and a depth ofcultural knowledge. We students of the dance see no disad-vantage in this. Wright, perhaps, does, and he might be right– in this case at least. Certainly there has been no adequateaccount of budgeting in Japan in Japanese or English fordecades. The pussyfooting around the MOF rivals thataround the Treasury. Wright’s interviews were conducted inEnglish and he is unapologetic: ‘most senior officials haveacquired proficiency in the language from time abroad in aca-demic study as part of their earlier formal training, andthrough career postings to Japanese embassies or interna-tional organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank’.Was this a disadvantage? No. Not a bit of it. In fact, ‘inter-viewing in English had the advantage that it was normallyunconstrained by those social conventions and contexts cus-

tomarily observed in Japanese discourse’. Is this music to theears of a Japan scholar? About as much as fingernails scrap-ing on a blackboard are. As for the literature used, Wrightknows and draws upon the major literatures in both lan-guages. This is conventional enough: indeed, careers havebeen made out of synthesizing the best of published Japan-ese sources. This is emphatically not the case here. Wrightdepends little on Japanese literature, the limitations of whichhe understands. As for the results, Wright has written theonly major text on the MOF and the Japanese budgetaryprocess to have appeared in the last 25 years; it is a substan-tial, comprehensive, theoretically informed, analytically acute,and empirically rich, culturally sensitive, historico-institu-tional account of one of the key agencies in Japanese gov-ernment and of one of the key processes in Japanese politics.Its importance is considerable. Not least for area studies.Read it. <

- Wright, Maurice, Japan’s Fiscal Crisis, The Ministry of Finance and

the Politics of Public Spending, 1975-2000, Oxford: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, (2002), pp.631, ISBN 0-1992-5053-7.

Bibliography

- Heclo, H. and A. Wildavsky, The Private Government of Public

Money, London: Macmillan (1974).

- Sampson, A., Anatomy of Britain, London: Hodder and Stoughton

(1962).

- Thain, C. and M. Wright, The Treasury and Whitehall: The Planning

and Control of Public Expenditure, 1976–1993, Oxford: Oxford Uni-

versity Press (1995).

Dr Richard Boyd is Reader in Japanese Politics at the Department

of Japanese and Korean Studies, Leiden University. His recent work

and publication have been on the politics of rents and on the poli-

tics of economic development in Latin America and East Asia. He is

currently joint responsible for an international research project on

the state in Asia

[email protected]

[email protected]

Rule of Law in East and Southeast Asia?In the wake of the Asian financial meltdown, numerous analysts focused on the lack of regulation and transparency as factorsprecipitating the 1997 crisis. Partly as a result of pressure from international financial institutions, countries have started to improvethe legal frameworks in which businesses operate. Christoph Antons’ Rule of Law in East and Southeast Asia brings together avariety of perspectives from legal scholars on the reforms now underway. Traditional Asian understandings of law as an instrumentof state power notwithstanding, do we see signs of a greater regional importance attached to the rule of law?

Review >General

Madrigals, Mandarins, and Budgetary PoliticsFor a long time in the United Kingdom the Treasury was ‘off limits’ toscholars. Strange, because there was little doubt that this was the hardcore of government, the central citadel of Whitehall where the Treasurymen not only taxed the public, but defended the national purse ‘likeinverted Micawbers, waiting for something to turn down’ (WinstonChurchill). Since few acts of government have no financialrepercussions, and since public finance is the purlieu of the Treasury,how could it escape the attention of political and other social scientists?There was no ban, but serious study of the Treasury seemed or wasdeemed impossible and best left to journalists. How could this be?

Review >Japan

discretion in economic governance.Part two focuses on Japan as a model

for law and development in East Asiaand specifically treats the influence ofadministrative decision-making onJapanese commercial law. HaraldBaum, critical of the simple ‘West vs.Asia’ mental framework, exploresimportant forces of change at work inJapan. In particular, strong bureaucrat-ic interference is regarded as an imped-iment to economic growth. He cites theexample of the Japanese financialindustry and the challenges of global-ization, and concludes that courts andlawyers will become more important inex post monitoring instead of the tra-ditional ex ante monitoring manifest-ed through administrative guidance.

Richard Boyd stresses that, whenlooking at the significance of law in themanagement of economic change inJapan, the rule of law and safeguardingof competition appear less significantthan legal instrumentality and infor-mality. He points, however, to theincreasing influence of the Fair TradeCommission (FTC) which implementsthe Anti-Monopoly Law, an importantinstitution anticipated by rule of lawrhetoric. Boyd is right to focus on

strong bureaucratic sectionalism inJapan, such as the continuous rivalrybetween the FTC and the Ministry ofEconomy, Trade and Industry (METI)in issuing laws and guidelines relatingto competition policy. ChristopherHeath likewise focuses on the rivalrybetween the FTC and METI in his chap-ter on industrial property legislation.

Christoph Antons points to a funda-mental characteristic which Japanshares with other countries in EastAsia. This is the primacy of public overprivate law. Many countries instru-mentalized their imported commerciallaws for development purposes, yetnever encouraged litigation for indi-vidual goals. The classical distinctionbetween private and public law has usu-ally been blurred. The relative shortageof attorneys and judges and a lack ofspecialized courts in East Asian coun-tries may therefore be no coincidence.

The book could have been improvedby placing more emphasis on the ques-tion whether the current (commercial)legal reforms will lead to a moreautonomous private realm where pri-vate citizens can more easily go tocourt. To what extent will the inevitableincrease in private trade disputes lead

to a greater emphasis on the rule oflaw? The book leaves the questionunanswered. The article by Robert Lutzon resolving trade disputes and onAsian dispute resolution fora, however,is interesting. He retains an optimisticoutlook on the emerging internationaldispute resolution culture, although hedraws attention to remaining enforce-ment problems in some countries.

Part three of the book deals with therole of law in China. Chen Jianfu con-cludes that although in China ‘rule bylaw’ is still strong, the strengthening oflegal discourse and the involvement oflegal experts in lawmaking are impor-tant steps in the right direction towardsa greater emphasis on the rule of law.Part four deals with Southeast Asia anddiscusses industrial relations and tech-nology transfer, two issues that havebeen central to the debate on econom-ic development in Southeast Asia. Con-cluding the volume, Roman Tomasicdiscusses some recent examples ofsocio-legal scholarship on Asian com-mercial law, and encourages furtherempirical research in the field.

To sum up, this book is a useful guidefor understanding law and developmentin East Asia and the place of the rule of

law in various East Asian countries. Dif-ferences and similarities between coun-tries are examined, as are practices andunderstandings that can be expected toresist pressures to reform. For example,government bureaucracies responsiblefor implementing new commercial lawswill be hesitant to give up their power tocourts and lawyers.

The book’s main merit lies in itsdiversity and its emphasis on factorsother than cultural ones. Although cul-tural factors are not to be neglected,recent socio-legal research points to thefact that institutional and proceduralaspects of national legal systems mat-ter and may be resistant to transna-tional harmonization. <

- Antons, Christoph (ed.), Law and Devel-

opment in East and Southeast Asia (IIAS

Asian Studies Series), London: Rout-

ledgeCurzon (2003), pp. 387, ISBN 0-

7007-1321-2

Dr Willem Visser ‘t Hooft is an attorney at

Law at Raadgever Advocaten in Vleuten, the

Netherlands. He completed a PhD thesis on

Japanese Contract and Anti-Trust Law. He

also lectures at Dutch universities on Japan-

ese Law.

[email protected]

> Publications

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By Antonio Terrone

S ince the annexation of Tibet in1951, the PRC has faced a continu-

ous series of challenges in its attemptto convince the world of its claim onTibet. Human rights organizations andTibet support groups often portray theChinese Communist Party’s (CCP) pol-icy towards Tibet, and also towardsother ethnic groups, as one of crack-downs, intimidation and questionable

modernization, involving a continuousinflux of Han Chinese workers. The pri-mary fear of the international commu-nity is that the increasing commercial-ization of Tibet that has accompaniedthe extensive programme of Chineseinvestment in the region will simulta-neously weaken the attraction of tradi-tional Tibetan culture for Tibetans,while strengthening their loyalty to theeconomic opportunities that China canincreasingly offer. The religious and

ethnic cause of Tibetans has been themain reason for anti-CCP dissentamong Tibetans, and has receivedmuch international attention in recentdecades. In the late 1980s, a booklet invarious languages was available at Chi-nese embassies around the world: LeTibet, cent questions et réponses (A Hun-dred Questions and Answers about Tibet,henceforth Cent Questions) summa-rized the official Chinese stance on thestatus of Tibet.1 Now, 14 years on, a

Is Tibet (really) Chinese?Already for some time, Tibet appears to be of substantial interest and concern both to the West and to the Chinese government.Their concern may be substantially different, yet, as many questions are the same, Le Tibet est-il Chinois? Réponses à centquestions chinoises, in which Blondeau and Buffetrille and other Tibet specialists take on one hundred existing Chinese questionsregarding Tibet would appear a fascinating undertaking.

Review >Central Asia

team of 15 leading Tibetologists providetheir own answers to those questionsin Le Tibet est-il Chinois? Réponses à centquestions chinoises (Is Tibet Chinese?Answers to A Hundred Chinese Ques-tions, henceforth Réponses).

Edited by Anne-Marie Blondeau andKatia Buffetrille, Réponses provides thereader with the necessary backgroundto understand PRC claims and the cur-rent comments of Western academicson sensitive issues that span centuriesof Sino-Tibetan history, Tibet’s econo-my, religion, culture, human rights sit-uation, demography, and living condi-tions. The authors of Réponses succeedin refuting China’s standard historicaljustification for Tibet’s inclusion with-in the PRC. This is based on the beliefthat Tibet’s theocratic rule and imperi-al exploitation over the centuries causedgreat harm and suffering to Tibetansuntil the People’s Liberation Army(PLA) finally ‘peacefully liberated’ themin 1950. The Chinese argument alsosuggests that the annexation preventedthe total collapse of ‘backward’ Tibetand set it on the road to modernization,transforming it for the better underCCP rule. Réponses is valuable, there-fore, in its attempt to clarify the currentsituation concerning Tibet and Tibetansin the PRC, particularly as a reaction toan overt propagandistic publicationsuch as Cent Questions. The book clear-ly demonstrates how Beijing quicklyloses ground with its various historicalclaims over Tibet. An oversight ofRéponses, however, paradoxically mir-rors a failure of Cent Questions.

As government propaganda, CentQuestions, not surprisingly, avoids high-lighting any weakness in CCP policy inTibet. Yet Réponses not only fails to pointthis out, but the authors also avoid dis-cussing some of the CCP’s shocking pol-icy failures. For example, the harmwrought on Tibet during the CulturalRevolution (1966-1976), could havebeen mentioned more than just occa-sionally in the book and is somewhatoverlooked. This point is paramount,because it strikes at the heart of thePRC’s position that Beijing’s rule hasbeen nothing but beneficial for Tibetans.

Investigating the economic situation,Réponses provides a lengthy analysis ofthe shortcomings of the PRC’s policyconcerning the development of China’swestern regions, denouncing the neg-lect of infrastructure and the massiveexploitation of Tibet’s natural resources(pp. 300-337). However, little mentionis made of the current Golmud-Lhasarailroad project (2001-2007) and itsimpact on Tibet’s environment andeconomy.2 Such improvements in infra-structure and development strategies

are mainly intended to reinforce nation-al unity under the CCP flag. As Répons-es clearly emphasizes, the fundamentalpreoccupation of the Chinese govern-ment (widely stressed in Cent Ques-tions) is the protection of the territorialintegrity of the country and the unity ofthe many ethnic communities of thePRC (pp.171-191).

Indeed, over the past four decades,the official position of the Chinese gov-ernment on Tibet-related issues has notsubstantially changed. For the govern-ment, the integration of Tibet was ful-filled in 1965 following the creation ofthe Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).Tibetan nationalist dissent is thus con-sidered to be a threat to the PRC’s ter-ritorial integrity, rather than a directthreat to CCP leadership over China. Itshould be remembered, however, thatany attempt to reshape China’s borderswould seriously undermine the legiti-macy of the ruling party.

Religion, together with language andculture, are nationalistic elements thatthe Chinese government is trying hardto keep under tight control. The returnof capital punishment for Tibetan polit-ical prisoners this January, reminds usthat as the Tibetan movement for reli-gious freedom and self-determinationgains impetus, the Chinese authoritiesdo not hesitate to apply harsh measuresto suppress the Tibetan resistancemovement. However, the questionremains to what extent the Westernpowers will be prepared to confront Bei-jing as Tibet moves up the internation-al agenda. <

- Blondeau, Anne-Marie and Katia Buf-

fetrille (eds.), Le Tibet est-il Chinois?

Réponse à cent questions chinoises, Paris:

Albin Michel (2002), pp.468, ISBN

9-782226-134264

Antonio Terrone, MA is a PhD candidate at

Leiden University’s Research School CNWS

where he is completing his doctoral thesis on

the gter ma tradition of Buddhist teaching

transmission in present-day Tibet.

[email protected]

1 The authors refer to the French edition.

For an online version see www.tibetinfor.com.cn/tibetzt-en/question_e/index.htm

Official Chinese information on Tibet, ethnic groups, religious affairs, and Tibet-related issues can

be obtained at the authorized government portal site to China www.china.org.cn/english and at the

China Tibet Information Centre website www.tibetinfor.com.cn/english

2 Office of the Leading Group for Western Region Development of the State Council:

www.chinawest.gov.cn/english

The State Development and Planning Commission: www.sdpc.gov.cn

Notes >

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

> Publications

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By Roald H. Mal iangkay

What sets this work apart fromother books on Korean film that

have recently come out in Western lan-guages is the fact that it explores thework of Korea’s foremost director, ImKwon-Taek, head-on, without first try-ing to explain every single detail aboutKorean culture. It looks into the ideasbehind Im’s films and sheds light onthe director’s unique position in Kore-an cinema. The book consists of ninearticles, an interview with the director,a filmography, a handy list of importantpolitical and cultural events, a usefulthree-page bibliography of relatedsources in English, and an index. Twen-ty-odd black-and-white photographsthat allow us to envisage the scenes arealso discussed.

The first chapter recounts Im’s rolein the history of Korean cinema. KyungHyun Kim talks of the significance ofIm’s family background, the grimworking environments under the mili-tary dictatorships, and the internation-al film festivals. The working condi-tions are again described in the analysisof two of Im’s films on Buddhism,

Mandala (1981) and Come, Come, ComeUpward (1989) respectively. Here,David James argues that Im’s partialitytowards Snn Buddhism may explainwhy he dichotomizes a sacred yetsocially indifferent landscape and a dis-graced but socially involving city. Hefinds his use of landscapes and femalebodies to allegorize the Korean nationor the working classes contradictory, asit risks exploiting the women visually.Eunsu Cho further explores Im’s use ofwomen as metaphors, this time inAdada (1988) and Surrogate Mother(1986). In both films, the protagonistsare mute; their inner suffering, han, isimplied, but not articulated. When theydenounce the ineffective patriarchalauthority, they do so in a language oftheir own. Both James and Cho findthat although the women allegorize theKorean nation, the focus on their beau-ty risks their visual debasement.Chungmoo Choi examines the roleplayed by colonialism, cultural imperi-alism and nationalism, and nostalgia inSopyonje (1993) and The Genealogy(1978). Her analysis of how Im’s use of,for example, a particular gendering orlandscape often supports a counter-

Im Kwon-TaekThe Making of a Korean National Cinema

For over a decade the success of Korean films on the domestic and international scene hasgenerated an increasing readership of Korean film studies and reviews. There are, however,still only a handful of related works available in English. David E. James and Kyung HyunKim’s Im Kwon-Taek: The Making of a Korean National Cinema should help to fill the gap.

Review >Korea

not argue the importance of Im Kwon-taek’s oeuvre. Another is that, althoughthe writing is meticulously edited, ifarguably a little turgid, the romaniza-tion is very inconsistent, leaving manyKorean names and references unreli-able. Those primarily interested in whathas been going on in Korean cinemasince the mid-1990s will find anothercause for frustration in the fact that,due to a six-year delay between the ini-tial submission of the papers and pub-lication, it contains many outdatedcomments regarding the current statusof films in Korea. This collection does,nevertheless, offer many novel insightsand fascinating observations regardingthe work of Im Kwon-Taek. It shows Imto be a modest, hard-working individ-ual, as well as a Korean and a talenteddirector. Although some of the con-tributors have a tendency to interpretscenes without sufficient back-up, theyall provide excellent material for furtherdiscussion. I am convinced, therefore,that it will prove to be a great resourceto those involved in world cinema orKorean cultural studies. <

- James, David E., and Kyung Hyun Kim

(eds.), Im Kwon-Taek: The Making of a

Korean National Cinema, Detroit: Wayne

State University Press (2002), pp.294,

ISBN 0-8143-2868-7

Dr Roald H. Maliangkay is a lecturer at the

University of Amsterdam. He specializes in

Korean folk and pop music, popular culture,

and cultural policy.

[email protected]

hegemonic imagery is fascinating.Unfortunately, interpretations of whatmay or may not have been consciousdecisions on Im’s part are too oftengiven as fact, without any supportingcomments from the director. As aresult, the studies tell us more aboutthe authors than the director.

In chapter five, Cho Hae Joang oncemore recounts the success of Sopyonje,this time focusing on its reception inKorea. She relates how people from allgenerations explained the success interms of its nationalist importance,implying that not every one enjoyed thefilm as much as the attention it receivedsuggests, and points out the danger ofexcessive traditionalism. Julian Stringerlooks at the reasons behind the film’sfailure to attract foreign audiences.Contrary to Cho Hae Joang, he favoursthe depiction of traditions when theycan be used to counter the hegemonyof Western cinema, even if their effectwill rely upon exoticism and oriental-ism. He argues that Im’s film, para-doxically, invents traditions for the pur-pose of increasing their appeal tomodern society. In addition to thesestudies of Im’s arguably apolitical

nationalism and traditionalism, YiHyoin looks into the director’s politicalviews. He contends that, like otherfilms, Fly High, Run Far: KaebyNk (1991)shows that Im has not been the socio-political conscience he could have been.The fact that in this film, again, a vio-lent antithesis is eschewed may, Yiargues, be related to the difficultiesfaced by Im’s family during the KoreanWar and the many international politi-cal crises around the time he made it.

Im’s belief in humanism, tradition,and liberal democracy as a means forprogress is the subject of the last twostudies of this collection. Kyung HyunKim’s second article on the sexual vic-timization of male protagonists in Im’s1994 The Taebaek Mountains forms awelcome contrast with the studies ofIm’s feminine allegories. Kim analyseswhy and how this victimization signalsthe need for patriarchal authority. Heexplains why in this epic of the KoreanWar, Im once again leaves out simplis-tic depictions of war violence, focusinginstead on social tensions and politicalviolence among locals. Han Ju Kwak’sstudy looks into how Im’s 1996 Festivalargues the possibility of a synthesisbetween 1990s modernity and tradi-tion. He demonstrates that, while thefilm underscores Im’s belief in thereunifying power of traditions, it alsowarns against their ruthless execution.

Im Kwon-Taek: The Making of aKorean National Cinema is a very wel-come addition to the volume of studieson Korean film in general. I should,however, caution novices to Koreanfilm. One reason is that this work does

[ a d v e r t i s e m e n t ]

> Publications

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Corcuff ’s Memories of the Future links a variety of perspectives characteristic of the newdirection Taiwan Studies has taken in recent years. Based on papers presented in the mid-1990s annual conferences organized under the auspices of the North American TaiwanStudies Association (NATSA), this collection of essays is aimed at Taiwan researchers inparticular, and scholars working on East Asia interested in the complexity of nationalism,identity, and ethnicity in general.

It is common belief in contemporary Taiwan that an aborted fetus may come back to hauntits family, and the ritual practices to appease it. According to this belief, the aborted fetusappears in the world of the living as a fetus-ghost (yingling) or as a fetus-demon (xiaogui).Fetus-ghosts provoke disorder affecting the family concerned, such as disease, injury, ordeath, while fetus-demons seek vengeance through evil acts: to appease the fetus-ghost,the family performs a ritual. While fetus-ghosts are associated with guilt and redemption,fetus-demons are concerned with evil: fetus-demons’ sorcery means sorcery performed by asorcerer master with the help of a fetus-demon. Haunting fetus-ghosts generate disordersin the same way as most Chinese and Taiwanese spirits.

Review >East Asia

Review >East Asia

The Haunting Fetus: Abortion,Sexuality, and the Spirit World in Taiwan

By Ann Hey len

Inspired by theories of collective andnational identity, the editor and con-

tributors demonstrate the pluralisticnature of identities in Taiwan. The workis divided in three parts: ‘HistoricalRoots’, ‘The Transition of NationalIdentity’, and ‘Perspectives on Ethnici-ty and Taiwanese Nationalism’. Partic-ularly innovative is the manner inwhich the linear unfolding of the bookallows the reader to discern variousaspects of state-society relations in Tai-wanese identity politics hitherto neg-lected or obscured.

Andrew Morris portrays the forma-tion of the 1895 Taiwan Republicagainst the background of Westernpresence and economic role in north-ern Taiwan. Morris shows that latenineteenth-century Taiwanese gentrywere predisposed to Western assis-tance, and draws attention to the com-plexity of anti-imperialist policies ofthe Qing dynasty in the internationalpolitical arena. Robert Edmondsondoes not give us a new narrative of the2.28 Incident, but concentrates on thepolitically charged process of its his-torical interpretation in the post-Japan-ese colonial socio-historical context.1

Stéphane Corcuff further underscoresthe fact that identity is not static but adynamic process that remains highlyvolatile in the never-ending process ofnation building. In analyzing changesin four national-identity-related sym-bols under former president Lee Teng-hui, i.e. state doctrine, officialcommemorations, textbooks, and ban-knotes, Corcuff convincingly demon-strates that these were not the result ofradical reform, but illustrate a negoti-ated process between the defunct state-party state ensemble and social move-ments, opposition politicians, thepress, and scholars (p. 97).

Shu Wei-der, Lin Tsong-jyi, andRobert Marsh deal with the identityissue seen from the perspective ofsocial movements. Shu investigates themembership and activities of the clan-destine political overseas Taiwan Inde-pendence Movement (TIM).2 In hisdata analysis of 14 North American-based TIM members, Shu takes issuewith two competing sociological theses

on political activism; the marginalityand privilege theses (p. 50). Lin andMarsh complement our understandingon the interaction between elite manip-ulations and mass opinions in the1990s. Whereas Lin concentrates onpolitical party identification (Kuo Min-Tang (KMT), Democratic ProgressiveParty (DPP), New Party (NP), and non-partisan), Marsh’s survey researchfocuses on ethnic self-identification,using the bensheng and waisheng jar-gon.3 Both articles reach the same con-clusion, that is, that there is an increas-ing sense of Taiwanese identity and adecreasing Chinese identity. In so con-cluding, Marsh also confirms Lin’s the-sis that the mass-elite interaction was areciprocal one, whereby the changingstances of political parties were mainlyinfluenced by public opinion, whichhad responded to shifting environ-ments (p.134). This latter issue is quitewell explained in Marsh’s section on thegeopolitical constraints on Taiwan’sindependence (pp. 154–158).

It is clear that the major strength ofthis book is its attention to the Main-landers, a rather ignored research topicin Taiwan Studies. Both Li Kuang-chünand Stéphane Corcuff find this socialgroup an important player in the dis-course on identity and politics. Corcuffdoes a fine job in explaining what Main-landers (waishengren) are about and con-ceptualizes them as a new ethnic cate-gory (pp. 164-171). His contribution isdefinitely worth reading and solidifiesLi’s conclusion that the political and cul-tural ascendancy of the Taiwanese (ben-shengren) has not only perplexed the firstgeneration Mainlanders’ collectivememory, but has also brought second-generation Mainlanders an identitydilemma which carries profound socio-economic consequences (p. 121).

In the closing chapters, two progres-sive Taiwanese intellectuals, Wu Rwei-Ren and Lin Chia-lung, defend a newperception of nationalism followingTaiwan’s political democratization(1988-2000). Wu’s leading argumentcoalesces around the concept of a prag-matic nationalism. Inspired by Gram-sci, Wu develops the thesis of a passiverevolution and argues that the strugglefor democracy in Taiwan took thestance of an anti-colonial national

By Eve lyne Mico l l i e r

In The Haunting Fetus, Moskowitz endeavours to explorethe ghosts’ (yingling) distinctiveness, particularly their

nature as children. A cultural continuum links the abortioncult, child spirits, and Daoism, providing a framework of localideas and practices in which this newly imported cult canthrive. In traditional Chinese culture, age is calculated fromthe date of conception, while representations of early or‘unborn’ childhood involve ambiguity, incompleteness, anda liminal state that gives access to secrets of the cosmic world.All of this is significant in Daoism. Moreover, the ultimategoal of the Daoist practice ‘Guarding the One’ was to returnto such a liminal state through concentrative meditation, inwhich the technique of ‘embryo breathing’ was used toregress to the ‘enfançon’ state (Schipper 1982:206).

The treatment of the subject is fascinating, as the moral,psychological, and symbolic aspects of abortion are addressedin the context of a modernizing Taiwan. Against this back-ground Moskowitz discusses gender-related power strugglesand the emotional manipulation of women. Moreover, thetopic is original in the way it addresses religion in the con-text of Chinese and Taiwanese culture: the author conceptu-alizes the subject as being at the crossroads of religion andgender studies in a context of societies in social, political, andeconomic transition.

His analysis is based on ethnographic material such as casestudies, urban mythology, people’s own accounts giventhrough interviews, newspaper articles, morality tracts, andvisual media and literature about the ghosts. Moskowitz col-lected written documents and conducted interviews in Man-darin Chinese, primarily amongst urban Taibei residents,during the mid-1990s.

Fetus-ghost appeasement practice seems to be rooted inJapanese culture from where it spread out across Taiwan dur-ing the 1970s. The influence of Japanese belief and practiceis noticeable in Taiwan in the development of new religionsin general and in fetus belief and practice as a new religiouscomponent in particular (chapter 3). The legalization of abor-tion in 1985 may partly explain the development of such acontroversial ritual practice in Taiwanese society. For the firsttime, abortion was discussed in the public sphere along witha range of highly emotionally charged related issues such asteenage pregnancy, sexuality, and family planning. Theseissues provoke tensions between the person as a whole andher inner self, the individual and society, and within societyas a whole. Fetus-ghost appeasement helps to reduce thosetensions, while fetus-demon sorcery reinforces them.

Though the study focuses on specific religious belief andpractice, the scope of the research is so broad that it also con-tributes to understanding new concerns in the context of an

Asian society in the process of modernization, includingmoral values, control of sexuality, and the family as a tradi-tional social structure in transition. In his analysis,Moskowitz takes into account the historical and political back-ground. His research is innovative as no systematic ethno-graphic study of fetus-ghosts (yingling) and little ghosts(xiaogui) (called ‘fetus-demons’ in the book) had previouslybeen conducted. Indeed, a better knowledge of Chinese andTaiwanese perceptions and conceptions of the spirit worldcontributes to our anthropological knowledge of daily actsand ideas, actions pragmatically connected to people’s worldviews and systems of representations.

Moskowitz concludes: ‘…fetus-ghost appeasement is partof a larger body of religious practice and belief that might becalled a commodification of sin, in which one can atone forone’s wrongs through financial sacrifice in one form oranother’ (p. 168). But he also notes that ‘religious masterscould not market this belief if there were not a demand’ (p. 169).

The book offers an insight into the process of reshapingthe religious sphere through a pragmatic adaptation to thesocial issues raised in a society in transition, such as abor-tion and its meaning, women’s changing roles, and othergender issues: all these issues are analysed in connectionwith economic transition. It opens up a number of avenuesfor further research related to gender, religion, and global-ization related issues. Although the author does not suffi-ciently clarify his theoretical stands or his epistemologicalchoices, the book is definitely a valuable work for any spe-cialist and inquisitive reader as well as those interested in ancontemporary anthropology. Moskowitz empathically coversa whole range of issues from the most intimate aspects of thehuman condition to the most external aspects of life in soci-ety. He also shows that a ‘globalized’ process of commodifi-cation is subtly pervading each of these aspects, even throughthe manipulation of emotions generated by distressingevents. The book is a welcome addition to a body of anthro-pological works about women and contemporary religiousculture in Taiwan. <

- Moskowitz, Marc. L., The Haunting Fetus. Abortion, Sexuality, and

the Spirit World in Taiwan, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,

(2001), pp.206, ISBN 0-8248-2428-8

Reference

- Schipper, K., Le corps taoiste, Paris: Fayard (1982).

Dr Evelyne Micollier is an associate lecturer at the University of

Provence and an associate research fellow at IRSEA, the ‘Institute

for Research on Southeast Asia’, Marseilles, France.

[email protected]

movement (p. 200). Lin’s pointedanalysis of the term ‘Taiwanese’ drawsour attention to the distinction betweenethnic and national identity. He con-vincingly shows that identity politics inthe last decade of political transitionindicate a shift away from an ethnicterm for ‘native Taiwanese’ to a civicterm for ‘citizens of Taiwan’ (pp. 224-227). His thesis supports a suddengrowth of civic national identity that

does not necessarily negate or object toits Chinese roots.

The relevance of this book is that itreflects anew on Lee Teng-hui’s 1994expression ‘the misery of being aTaiwanese’ (p. 233). By acknowledgingTaiwan’s sense of national belonging tocombine a Taiwanese political identitywith a Chinese cultural identity it per-petuates the challenge to China’s irre-dentist stance on nationalism and high-lights the thorny issues of nationhoodand a dated belief in nationalismdemanding one nation, one state. Per-haps a suitable follow-up would be a studythat focuses on the perspective of the abo-riginals and the several Taiwan diasporacommunities worldwide. A small draw-

back may lie in the fact that many refer-ences in the texts are not included in thebibliography, yet this book is definitely aworthwhile purchase. <

- Corcuff, Stéphane (ed.), Memories of the

Future, New York: M.E. Sharpe (2002), pp.

ix + 285, ISBN 0-7656-0791-3

Dr Ann Heylen is a researcher affiliated to

the Department of Sinology, KU Leuven,

and an associate member of the Taipei Ricci

Institute. She specializes in Taiwanese his-

tory and has published on Japanese colonial

rule and seventeenth-century Dutch rule of

Taiwan.

[email protected]

1 On the evening of 27 February 1947, six agents of the Taiwan Tobacco and

Wine Monopoly Bureau assaulted a female street peddler selling contraband

cigarettes and killed a man running out of his house to flee the scene. The

incident led to weeks of violence throughout the island and implacable

repression by the KMT nationalist forces. In the decades to come, public dis-

cussion of the incident was outlawed and became an ethnically divisive

memory on the part of the Han-Taiwanese islanders.

2 TIM includes several pro-independence organizations active in North Ameri-

ca, Canada, Europe, and Japan. Its membership comprises of Han-Taiwanese

islanders who have been blacklisted or exiled by KMT policies from the late

1940s onwards.

3 Bensheng refers to the Han-Taiwanese islanders while waisheng refers to the

Mainlander population that came to Taiwan following the retrocession

(between 1945 and 1949). The usage of the two terms shows the distinction

between those born in Taiwan province (bensheng, lit. this province) and

those born in other Chinese provinces (waisheng, lit. outer province) and is

politically loaded.

Notes >

Memories of the Future> Publications

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Page 42: Mega- Urbanization in Asia - International Institute for Asian ...

I I A S N e w s l e t t e r | # 3 1 | J u l y 2 0 0 34 2

By Rebecca M. Brown

S truggling with the questions of the ‘Indian essence’ inart versus an international modernism, as did many of

his contemporaries, in his Tantric-inspired work Reddy pres-ents his location for modernism. Art historian and critic JayaAppasamy aptly termed him, a ‘transitional modern’, work-ing across the 1947 politico-temporal marker (Appasamy1972:6-9). If modernism in India is a struggle with andagainst the norms of a hegemonic Western pattern of moder-nity, then it is not surprising that artists of this period ‘haveseemed to be stuck at the crossing-over’, for ‘they are livingout the actual material transition’ (Kapur 2000:302). Reddy’swork allows us to see that transition clearly and to put somedetail to the broad narrative of Indian modernist struggles.

After training at the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay dur-ing the late 1930s and early 1940s, Reddy stopped paintingto join the Quit India movement, only to return to art in themid-1950s. This hiatus separates him from his famous con-temporaries of the Bombay Progressive group such as M.F.Husain and F.N. Souza. Soon after Reddy returned to art,artists such as Biren De (b. 1926) and G. R. Santosh (1929-1997), began working in tantric modes. The so-called ‘neo-tantric’ art movement looked to Buddhist and Hindu tantrismfor its esoteric, abstract symbols and re-made this tantric lan-guage into a contemporary Indian modernism. Neo-tantrismappealed not only to Indian contemporaries but also to West-ern audiences, as it represented an ‘authentic’ art form thatescaped purely formalistic aspects of 1960s Western art.

In tantric art artists conceived a space for somethingdeemed impossible: a truly Indian modernism. The ques-tion that arises is: how do a group of cultures that have ‘notyet’ arrived at a modern stage achieve modernity?(Chakrabarty 2000:49-50) In the case of art history, the gapbetween the modern and the ‘not yet’ is reinforced by theromanticization and valorization of the native, primitive,indigenous Other as a source for artistic inspiration. Indi-an modern artists saw in tantra the possibility of an Otherthat was seen as authentic, spiritual, and universal, just asPicasso saw that authenticity in Malian culture. While anIndian modern was not achievable if pursued along thesame lines as Western modernism, Reddy found that thehidden nature of tantric imagery fit perfectly with the elu-sive modernism he sought.

Two of Reddy’s yantra-inspired images may serve as anintroduction to his works. Rather than drawing on full-blownTibetan mandala imagery, it is simpler yantra forms that pro-vide Reddy with the framework for his symbolic language.

In Srec Chekre (1971, fig. 1), Reddy sets out from the tradi-tional Sri Yantra form: an architectonic square frame hous-ing a series of circular lotus forms, culminating in the cen-tre with the overlapping triangles of the yantra itself. He addsto this foundation a Devanagari ‘sri’ in the centre, re-empha-sizing both his title and the form of the yantra. Finally, twofigures overlay the Sri Yantra, their heads opposite one anoth-er at top and bottom, their bodies joined in sexual union inthe centre. Reddy arranged their arms in a circular fashionreinforcing the lotus form, but their legs are not symmetri-cal: the legs of the bottom figure form a ‘V’ with the feet flank-ing the head of the top figure while the legs of the upper fig-ure bend at the knees and splay outward, echoing the twodirections of the triangle of the Sri Yantra.

In tantric symbolism, a female triangle points downwardand a male one points up. Their overlap indicates the sexualand spiritual union articulated more directly in Reddy’s piece.Likewise, the ‘sri’ spelled out in the centre of the image wouldbe unnecessary in a tantric context, where the iconographyof the Sri Yantra is known. Reddy articulates the geometricforms and architectonic elements of the Sri Yantra more fullyfor a wider audience, clarifying the abstract symbolism ofunion for the uninitiated viewer. At the same time, he under-mines the neat geometry of the Sri Yantra, for the humanform cannot conform precisely to the circle of the lotus orthe symmetry of the triangle. Reddy’s work acknowledgesmessiness in the translation of tantric form to contemporarycontexts.

While these types of images within Reddy’s oeuvre aredirectly related to existing yantra forms, Reddy also movesaway from given iconographies to create his own. Interest-ingly, it is when Reddy experiments with some of the con-ceptual aspects of tantric philosophy that his work movestoward a freer combination of symbols.

In Beginning Sound (n.d., fig. 2). Reddy works with the rela-tionship between sound, particularly the mantra, and form.(This concept is discussed in: Mookerjee 1966:15-20). Theoverarching form eludes the shape of the yantra, instead fill-ing an organic yet symmetrical shape reminiscent of micro-

scopic cell imagery. A central, reflected devanagari ‘om’anchors the composition, and supports an eye or lotus form.Penetrating this eye is a vertical, blue phallic swath, re-mak-ing that central ‘eye’ into a vaginal yoni form. The phallus-lingam with the yoni echoes Reddy’s focus on ultimate unionof Purusha (male) and Prakriti (female) energies. Two eyesflank this symbolic representation of the lingam-yoni, so thatthe phallic form bisects a face, illustrating both union andthe deep connection to the human body. Reddy demonstratesthe centrality of the body for tantrism, both in its gross formand in its subtle form.

This image thus attempts to capture the way sound worksin the context of tantra through both its symbolic languageand its shape. Eschewing both the yantra and lotus framing,Reddy offers a fluid mapping of the edges, giving an impres-sion of an acoustic wave. The symmetry of the image echoessound vibrations, and the curvatures generate both an organ-ic quality and an all-encompassing element of growth. Reddytakes tantric thought as his guide, thus using symbols in anew way and remaking the yantra form.

For both neo-tantric artists and Western modernists, thetension between the spiritual and the material found expres-sion through symbols that defied particular iconographic orculturally-grounded systems and instead evoked broader uni-versal expressions of spirituality, patterns in the universe, andsense perception. Reddy’s use of symbols, connection to a spir-itual system in tantra, and interpretation of sound all play intosimilar ideas. Articulating the relationship between spiritual-ism and materialism forms one major part of the moderniststruggle; this relationship is in many ways resolved by tantricthought, one reason that it held such appeal for both Westernand Indian culture of the 1960s and 1970s.

Reddy still treads the problematic knife-edge of the mod-ern, teetering between the pattern of looking to a native tra-dition (tantra) while creating an abstracted, personal sym-bolic vision. He does not escape the problematic position ofmimicking the moves of Western modernity – he looks tothe ‘primitive’ or in this case a ‘hidden’ culture in order tobuild the modern. Reddy was not afraid to delve into the prob-lematic modern despite his difficult position as an Indianartist on the margins, or his position as an artist of transi-tion, following Appasamy. Reddy bases his modernism on athoughtful appropriation of tantrism in order to bridge exist-ing dualities: the abstract and the figurative, the microcosmand the macrocosm, the secular and the sacred, the other-worldly and the mundane, and not least, the Indian and themodern. Thus, it is a modernity situated within rather thanoutside the mainstream. Producing art within this paradoxof circularity, Reddy’s tantric works succeed in developingone Indian modernist aesthetic, revealing an Indian mod-ernism out of something formerly ‘hidden’. <

References

- Appasamy, Jaya, ‘The Painters of the Transition’, in Jaya Appasamy,

ed., 25 Years of Indian Art: Painting Sculpture & Graphics in the Post-

Independence Era, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, (1972), pp. 6-9.

- Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Provincializing Europe, Princeton: Princeton

University Press, (2000).

- Kapur, Geeta, ‘When Was Modernism in Indian Art?’ in: When Was

Modernism? New Delhi: Tulika, (2000), pp. 297-323.

- Mookerjee, Ajit, Tantra Art: Its Philosophy and Physics, New Delhi:

Ravi Kumar, (1966).

Rebecca M. Brown, PhD is Assistant Professor of Art History at the

University of Redlands in California. Her research interests lie in the

areas of colonial and modern South Asian art, architecture, and

urban form.

[email protected]

The recent narrative of twentieth-century art in India, resting upon a new interpretation of the mid-century, post-Independence growth of Indian modern art, traces a large arc from the nationalists at Santiniketan in Bengal tothe diasporic concerns of the 1990s. This article presents a case study of a particular artist, P. T. Reddy (1915-1996), whose role within that story of modernism is explored so as to understand Indian art of the mid- and latetwentieth century as India grappled with Independence, Partition, and the defining of a new ‘India’.

Asian Art >South Asia

Articulating the ModernNeo-Tantrism and the Art of P.T. Reddy

P. T. Reddy,

Srec Chekre, 1971.

P. T. Reddy,

Beginning Sound,

n.d.

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> Asian Art & Cultures

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By Yasser Tabbaa

The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has justfinalized a Red List of Iraqi Antiquities at Risk to be dis-

tributed to all relevant border crossings. While almost every-one agrees that the US – the authority legally responsible formaintaining law and order in Iraq – was woefully negligentin protecting Iraqi national treasures, very few have attempt-ed to understand why some Iraqis looted their own culturalinstitutions. This is a difficult and still quite unpopular lineof questioning. Over three days of meetings in Lyon, Francewith INTERPOL and ICOM officers, the question was hard-ly discussed, only muttered in passing with total incompre-hension and a measure of disdain.

As an Arab-American, a frequent visitor to Iraq and an arthistorian, I am especially troubled by this question: why didsome Iraqis take advantage of the breakdown of order to lootand even sack their own museums, libraries, and universi-ties? Rather than fixing blame, in this essay I would like touse my knowledge of Iraqi history, museums, and institu-

tions of culture to address a question that may haunt us fora long time, in Iraq and in other countries that may face sim-ilar upheavals in the future. Silence on this matter, I think,is dangerous.

While some might attribute Iraq’s current state of law-lessness and disregard for historical patrimony to underde-velopment, my long-term association with the country tellsme otherwise. Until quite recently, when wars and sanctionstook their inevitable toll, Iraq was ahead of most of the Arabworld in cultural matters, including archaeology, museolo-gy, art, architecture, and music.

So what may have led to this tragic situation? First, we nowknow that the recent looting of Iraqi museums was in somerespects the sad culmination of a process that had alreadygained considerable momentum in the aftermath of the firstGulf War. There are confirmed reports, in the most recentissue of Smithsonian, for example, of extensive illegal exca-vations in such Sumerian and Babyonian sites as Uruk, Ur,Isin, and Larsa, digs often conducted by underworld groupsunder the protection of armed men. The current efforts of

ICOM, the British Museum, and the College Art Associationto control the trade in Iraqi antiquities are equally directedat the looting of Iraqi museums and the more intractableproblems of illicit excavations and the illegal art trade.

Second, whereas cultural heritage has often been co-optedfor nationalist purposes, Baathist Iraq turned it into an instru-ment for the aggrandizement of the party and especially ofSaddam himself. By appropriating the antiquity of the land,

Since Edward Said published his seminal book Orientalism in 1978, many scholars of arthistory have been challenging time-honoured maxims, examining foundations, and re-framing their gaze. While particular strides have been made in the study of non-Western art,parallels in the museum world are less readily apparent. Strictures from acquisition policiesto museum collections, decades in the making, have limited the speed of institutionalchange. How does, for example, a contemporary art museum in Europe or the United Statesbegin to collect and display work that falls outside its conventional purview? Where does acurator begin to look for new talent in countries (s)he has never visited? And, once talent isfound, will there be an audience for the museum’s venture? These are just some of thequestions that confronted Walker Art Center director, Kathy Halbreich, curator, PhilippeVergne, and a team of advisors as they sought to challenge paradigms and transformcuratorial practice through an exhibition of global proportions.

Early trepidation at the potential destruction of Iraqi archaeological sites has long given way to anger and profound sadness about the looting andsacking of Iraqi museums and libraries. The unexpected scale and intensity of the looting has produced various reactions, initially dominated byblame and recrimination of the United States’ mishandling of the post-war situation but now focused on ameliorating the damage by tracking downstolen antiquities and controlling their traffic across international borders.

Asian Art >General

Asian Art >Central Asia

Art, Globalism, and New Modes of Curatorial Practice

How Do Latitudes Become Forms?

Lessons from Looting:The Place of Museums in Iraq

By Al i sa E imen

Following three years of planning,the exhibition How latitudes become

forms: Art in a global age began its inter-national tour this past February at theWalker Art Center in Minneapolis, Min-nesota. Featuring artists from seven dif-ferent countries, Brazil, China, India,Japan, South Africa, Turkey, and theWalker’s home, the United States, thecurators of this exhibition were cau-tious to avoid the well-trodden paths oftheir forebears. Exhibition modelsestablished by nineteenth-century inter-national expositions have engendered,in part, the more recent regional exhi-bitions that bring ‘African,’ ‘Asian,’ or‘Chinese’ art to the Euro-Americanworld. Although many curators of theseexhibitions intend to challenge thedominant paradigm rooted in the colo-nial order, the effect is often that they

rary world, as this exhibition reveals.How latitudes become forms features

more than forty artists, many of whom– like the curators – transgress a rangeof boundaries. Through her SuitcaseSeries (2002), Chinese sculptor YinXiuzhen examines constructs from thesocio-political to the environmental, tothose we put on ourselves. Usingunconventional materials, Yin createsmodels of various cities in old suitcas-es from second-hand clothing of resi-dents of those cities. For the artist, thesetransportable cities evoke the humanbody that is often overlooked in rapidurban development and a growingglobal economy, or, in her own words,‘people in our contemporary settinghave moved from residing in a staticenvironment to becoming souls in aconstantly shifting transience ... thesuitcase becomes the life support con-tainer of modern living.’ Her work, likethe work of many other artists in theexhibition, invites active participationfrom the viewer. Japanese artistTsuyoshi Ozawa invites the exhibition-

reify the very constructs they hope toobliterate. Rather than challenge cate-gories based on difference, ethnicity,religion, or location, an exhibition of‘Chinese’ art, for example, maintainsits distinction, yet only nominally sub-verts the larger hegemonic structuresinforming categorization, collecting,display, and interpretation. The work inthese regionally organized exhibitionsremains on the periphery of contem-porary art and only slowly makes itsway into European and American gal-leries, auction houses, and museumcollections. How latitudes become formsconfronts these structures through aseries of case studies that focus ontransforming contemporary curatorialpractice through a very intentional blur-ring of boundaries.

From the beginning, this exhibitionwas conceived to challenge curatorialconventions. Not only did the curators

intend to broaden their notions of thecontemporary arts. They also wereinterested in restructuring curatorialpractices within their home institution.Indeed, diversity and multidisciplinar-ity have been important buzzwords forover a decade, often being tacked on togrant proposals, mission statements,and acquisition policies. The curatori-al team, comprised of curators from allprogramming departments at the Walk-er, was interested in pursuing thesegoals in more substantial ways. Wary ofbecoming global art predators, theydeveloped a multidisciplinary ‘globaladvisory committee’ comprised ofseven international scholars and cura-tors who could guide them through theart scenes in various countries. Work-ing with local specialists proved a use-ful strategy not only to engage the com-munity of artists directly, but also tohave access to histories and culturalspecificities that otherwise would havebeen lost in translation. Thus, the cura-tors of this exhibition offer a workingmethod that dispels these obstacles ofaccess and interpretation. By makingtheir curatorial practice transparent,this exhibition demystifies the processof selection, opens up a discursivespace within museums, and perhaps,most importantly, admits incompleteknowledge, thereby creating room forless familiar stories and imagery.Crossing boundaries is synonymouswith the operations of the contempo-

goer to enter a museum within themuseum. His Museum of Soy Sauce Art(1998-2000) recreates masterworksfrom Japanese art history in soy sauceand, with accompanying texts, traces afictitious history of soy sauce art. As thevisitor wanders through Ozawa’s muse-um, (s)he participates in a light-heart-ed yet poignant transgression of theauthority of both the canon of art his-tory and the museum. Numerous otherartists in the exhibition, variously work-ing with film, animation, performance,tinfoil, and chalk, challenge conven-tions, boundaries, and even object-hoodin a myriad of ways. Interested in dis-rupting hegemonic authority and itscounterpart, the global economy, artistsand curators alike transform displayinto activation, objects into events, andcontemplation into direct experience. <

Alisa Eimen, MA is a PhD candidate in art

history at the University of Minnesota, Twin

Cities. Currently, she also is working as a

curatorial intern at the Walker Art Center.

[email protected]

Warrior from Hatra,

200 BC, Iraq

Museum Baghdad

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How latitudes become forms

Opens 5 June 2003 at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy

Travels to Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Internacional Rufino Tamayo, Mexico

City, Mexico, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico, Contempo-

rary Arts Museum Houston, and other venues to be announced.

www.cnca.gob.mx/cnca/buena/inba/subbellas/museos/mtamayo

Agenda >

Installation view

with Hüseyin Bahri

Alptekin, Heimat/

Toprak (2001), on the

wall.

Installation view

with Yin Xiuzhen’s

Suitcase Series

(centre).

c o n t i n u e d o n p a g e 4 4 >

> Asian Art & Cultures

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Saddam linked himself with Assyrian, Babylonian, andAbbasid rulers, substituting his humble origins with falsegenealogies. Bricks used in his megalomaniacal restorationof Babylon are stamped with his name, and a large inscrip-tion states that the city was begun by Nebuchanezzar andcompleted by Saddam. Close identification with a single rulercan easily backfire once the ruler is removed.

The third factor that seems to have contributed to the loot-ing of museums has to do with their origins under colonialrule and their persisting state of alienation in Iraq and otherArab countries. Most Arab museums still operate within anoutmoded orientalist framework, displaying artifacts with lit-tle regard for local general audience or even specialists. MyDanish colleague, Ingolf Thuesen, who conducted a surveyof visitors to a regional museum in Hama, Syria, noted thatthe museum was primarily visited by foreign tourists andgovernment officials and rarely by the adult Syrian popula-tion. Interestingly, precisely this museum suffered severedamage from looting in the aftermath of the 1982 bombard-ment of the city. By and large seen as symbols of the govern-ment, signs of privilege, and as ‘foreign’ institutions, one canunderstand why some Iraqis were willing to loot their muse-ums and cultural institutions.

The Laws of Antiquities governing the excavation, pos-session, and transaction of antiquities in Iraq and other Arabcountries seem to foster this rupture between society andartistic culture, in two main ways. First, the overly stringentpolicies in these laws virtually ignore the existence of an artmarket or the age-old desire of some people, Iraqis includ-ed, to collect ancient objects. Whereas such policies prescribean ideal situation, in reality they have contributed to the pro-liferation of an illegal art market. Second, by defining a pro-tected cultural artifact as 200 years or older, these laws val-orize the ancient over the more recent and cheapen the stillpalpable memory of the population.

Finally, I agree that a few well-placed tanks in front of Iraqimuseums and libraries would have prevented or at least min-imized their looting. But in the end such security measures,whether by US or Iraqi forces, only serve to deepen the rup-ture and further disengage culture from the population.Rather, I would like us to look a little more proactively towardsa future when cultural institutions are not only better pro-tected but also better integrated within their own societies.It is time, I think, to turn alienation into outreach, to devel-op the public and educational components of these muse-ums, following the example of European and especiallyAmerican museums. Once Iraqis feel included in their owncultural patrimony, I suspect they will have second thoughtsbefore looting it. <

Professor Yasser Tabbaa specializes in the art, architecture, and

institutions of the Islamic world, with special emphasis on the Arab

world before the Ottomans. He has taught at MIT, University of

Michigan, and Oberlin College. His most recent book is The Trans-

formation of Islamic Art during the Sunni Revival, Seattle and

London: University of Washington Press (2001, 2002).

[email protected]

As a follow-up to this issue, the newsletter would like to publish your com-

ments and experiences regarding the recent looting of cultural institutions in

Iraq. Please send your comments of 100 words or less to the art & cultures edi-

tor, Kristy Phillips [email protected]

Editor’s note >

View of the Ziggurat

at Ur, ca. 2100 BCE

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By Anna Beerens

Kazari is also the title of the cata-logue accompanying an exhibition

of the same name organized by theBritish Museum and the Japan Societyof New York in association with theSuntory Museum of Art in Tokyo. Sometwo hundred exquisitely beautifulobjects were on display at the JapanSociety in New York (autumn 2002)and at the British Museum (spring2003). Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere,director of the Sainsbury Institute forthe Study of Japanese Arts and Cul-tures, and Tsuji Nobuo, ProfessorEmeritus of Tokyo University and cur-rently president of Tama Art Universi-ty, were co-curators. Both contributedintroductory articles to the catalogue:Tsuji’s article centres on the role ofkazari within the history of Japaneseart, whilst Rousmaniere’s concentrateson conceptual aspects.

In stressing the conceptual com-plexity of kazari, both exhibition andcatalogue make an attempt to challengethe conventions of current art-histori-cal discourse which, as Rousmanieresays, ‘has tended to categorise the artsarbitrarily’, as is evident from terms like‘visual arts’ or ‘applied arts’. This exhi-bition seeks to break down such con-ventional boundaries between artisticforms, even between arts as apparent-ly different as painting and music, withthe aim of presenting the ‘social life’ ofartefacts, and to show them in the con-text of what Rousmaniere calls ‘a larg-er artistic programme’ (p. 21). Forexample, the exhibition not only includ-ed high-quality hanging scrolls andpainted screens, which would tradi-tionally be classified as high art, butalso spectacularly shaped parade hel-mets and skilfully decorated musicalinstruments, objects that would usual-ly be considered applied art.

The exhibition is arranged in six the-matic sections, each centring on whatare considered to be the six highpointsof kazari. The first section deals withdisplay in the reception rooms of the fif-

teenth- and sixteenth-century elite; thesecond with the exuberant style of theearly seventeenth-century samurai; thethird introduces the taste for finery andsplendour of late seventeenth- and eigh-teenth-century merchants; the fourthpresents the fashions of high-rankingwomen of the eighteenth and nine-teenth centuries; the fifth takes us tothe pleasure quarters of the late eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries; andthe last section explores festivals of thepre-modern period, with their colour-ful floats and costumes.

The question to be answered iswhether the exhibition is successful inchanging the way we look at Japaneseart, as its organizers claim it will be. Itgoes without saying that the exhibits areimmensely engaging, but are theyshown in such a way that we do indeedsee the objects as part of ‘a larger artis-tic programme’, and get a notion oftheir usage in every sense – what Rous-maniere claims the exhibition is allabout?

In fact, it is only in the first sectionthat the visitor can experience some-thing of ‘kazari in action’. In largeshowcases, reconstructions are madeof the decorative arrangements inMuromachi period reception rooms.Hanging scrolls, screens, and smalldecorative objects are put together asthey might have been in a sixteenth-century interior. The result is striking.However, hardly any other attempts aremade to present an ensemble in thismanner. Contemporary etiquette man-uals, pattern books, and illustrationsare called upon to provide a context, butkimonos, sashes, accessories, screens,small articles of furniture, and ceram-ics are still mostly displayed in separatecases, and are treated individually in thecatalogue. There are no clashes of tex-tures and materials, no three-dimen-sional confrontations. There may wellhave been practical reasons (such asconflicting conservation requirements)for not putting objects together, butafter the promise of the first section onedoes expect more of an attempt to showitems in ensembles.

The catalogue follows the layout ofthe exhibition. Articles accompanyingthe first five sections were written byKawai Masatomo, John Carpenter,Yasumura Toshinobu, Nagasaki Iwao,and Timothy Clark respectively. Thesection on festivals has no accompany-ing essay: there is instead an article onthe vocabulary of ‘decoration’ in earlymodern Japan by Tamamushi Satoko.Each contribution shows fine scholar-ship, and the descriptions of the indi-vidual exhibits, provided by a range ofcontributors, are highly informative.Much information is brought togetherhere that cannot be found in any otherEnglish-language publication. It is thecatalogue, more than the exhibitionitself, which draws our attention notonly to the beauty of the design and thequality of the workmanship, but also toan object’s use, its place within the dis-course of ornament and good taste, and

the many allusions to the canon of artand literature, which brings in the ele-ment of play and parody. Despite thecareful labelling of exhibits, the unini-tiated visitor who does not read the cat-alogue will have little appreciation ofthe supposedly revolutionary nature(‘entirely fresh interpretation’ or ‘newthinking’) of the exhibition, and willonly be aware of having seen a series ofshowcases displaying very appealingobjects. This is an exhibition that needsthe catalogue to make its point.

In spite of these misgivings this exhi-bition is of innovative value: both exhi-bition and catalogue are representativeof a perceptible trend in the study of arthistory (and also in other areas) thatencourages scholars to move away fromexclusive thinking, break down bound-aries, and be more aware of interrelat-edness, multifariousness, ambiguity,and ambivalence. Objects really are pre-sented in context, even if one has toread the catalogue to fully appreciatethis point, and traditional boundariesare negated. Even a few ‘ephemeralobjects’, as Rousmaniere calls them,such as a wrapping cloth, a decoratedlantern, or an incense wrapper areincluded. This integrative impulsecomes from application of the conceptof kazari. When ideas are representedon such an impressive scale and at sucha high level of scholarship, as is the casewith the Kazari exhibition, they are sureto have an impact, even if it takes timefor partition walls to fall and long-stand-ing art-historical considerations to bechallenged. Perhaps in a few years’ timewe will be able to see all the finery offashionable eighteenth-century ladiespresented in one showcase, togetherwith elements of the interiors in whichthey lived their lives. <

- Rousmaniere, Nicole Coolidge (ed.),

Kazari, decoration and display in Japan,

15th–19th centuries, London: The British

Museum Press/The Japan Society (2002),

pp. 304, ill., ISBN 0-7141-2636-5

Anna Beerens, MA is a PhD candidate at

the Research School of Asian, African, and

Amerindian Studies (CNWS), Leiden Uni-

versity. Her research concerns eighteenth-

century Japanese literati.

[email protected]

Tsuji Nobuo introduced kazari as a central concept in the study of Japanese art aboutfifteen years ago and has been developing the idea ever since. The basic meaning of theverb kazaru is ‘to decorate, to adorn’. It can also be used in the sense of ‘to exhibit’, ‘to puton show’. Finally, kazaru involves the idea of ‘being affected’, as in kazarike, ‘affectation orshowiness’. Thus, kazari stands for decor, decoration, the decorated and the decorative,and for the proper way of handling and appreciating it all. In pre-modern Japan, kazari hasled to objects and ensembles of objects being used for purposes of play and display.

Asian Art >Japan

Kazari

Helmet in the shape of a peach with attached

bison horns. Early seventeenth century.

Campaign coat (jinbaori) with saw-tooth pat-

tern at hem and nine-circle crest. Early seven-

teenth century. Private Collection, Japan.

Yasukuni Jinja, Yushukan Museum, Tokyo.

c o n t i n u e d f r o m p a g e 4 3 >

> Asian Art & Cultures

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brua

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00

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tnam

: Art

and

cul

ture

s fr

om p

rehi

stor

ic

tim

es t

o th

e pr

esen

t da

y

For

the

firs

t ti

me

ever

, m

ore

th

an 3

00

wo

rks

of

art

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eth

no

grap

hic

obj

ects

will

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leav

ing

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for

an e

xhib

itio

n

offe

rin

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com

pre

hen

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uded

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e ex

hibi

tion

will

be

bron

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Don

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xth

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ury

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culp

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ever

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China

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Chi

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Yu

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21 S

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03

Subl

ime:

New

wor

ks b

y Li

ng Ji

an

Firs

t o

ne-

man

exh

ibit

ion

in

Ch

ina

of

Ber

lin-b

ased

mix

ed-m

edia

art

ist L

ing

Jian

Czec

h Rep

ublic

Náp

rste

k M

useu

m o

f Asi

an, A

fric

an a

nd

Am

eric

an C

ultu

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lém

ské

nám

. 1,

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16 A

pril

200

3 –

10

Aug

ust 2

00

3

Anc

ient

bro

nzes

of

the

Asi

an g

rass

land

s

from

the

Art

hur

M. S

ackl

er F

ound

atio

n

Th

e ex

hib

itio

n p

rese

nts

a m

ajo

r sa

m-

plin

g o

f st

epp

e ar

t fr

om

th

e re

no

wn

ed

colle

ctio

ns o

f the

late

Art

hur

M. S

ackl

er,

MD

. Eig

hty-

five

obje

cts

illus

trat

e th

e pe

r-

son

al d

ecor

atio

ns a

nd e

quip

men

t of t

he

hors

e-ri

din

g st

epp

e d

wel

lers

of

the

late

seco

nd

an

d

firs

t m

illen

nia

B

C.

Th

e

bro

nze

be

lt-b

uck

les,

p

laqu

es

and

wea

pons

of t

hese

an

cien

t ho

rsem

en a

re

orn

ate,

tec

hn

ical

ly s

op

his

tica

ted

, an

d

rich

ly p

atte

rned

. Ani

mal

mot

ifs in

clud

ing

antl

ered

sta

gs, w

ild b

oars

, an

d b

ird

s of

pre

y ar

e sy

mbo

lic a

rtis

tic

them

es.

Th

e

exh

ibit

ion

rev

eals

ho

w s

tep

pe

cult

ure

s

use

d t

he

anim

al w

orl

d a

s a

sou

rce

of

sym

bols

to in

dica

te tr

ibe,

soc

ial r

ank

and

con

nect

ion

to th

e sp

irit

wor

ld.

Acc

. no.

V-3

135

(Exh

ibit

no.

43)

. Fin

ial f

or

fun

eral

can

opy.

Sou

thw

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nn

er M

ongo

lia

(fif

th–

fou

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cen

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BC

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Franc

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met

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lace

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Min

g: T

he C

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se G

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ge

This

exh

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feat

ures

abo

ut a

hun

dred

extr

emel

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re a

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acts

fro

m t

he

Lu

Min

gh S

hi C

olle

ctio

n o

f M

ing

furn

itu

re

colle

ctio

n w

hic

h o

ffer

s an

ela

bora

te

visi

on o

f the

gol

den

age

of C

hine

se c

ab-

inet

-wor

k (i

.e. s

ixte

enth

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sev

ente

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rnit

ure

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how

case

d in

thre

e se

para

te g

alle

ries

illu

stra

tin

g ca

b-

inet

wor

k te

chni

que

and

craf

tsm

ansh

ip;

typo

logy

; and

the

role

of n

atur

e in

insp

ir-

ing

the

furn

itur

e’s

aest

heti

c fo

rms.

Cen

tre

nat

ion

al

d’a

rt

et

de

cult

ure

Geo

rges

Pom

pido

u

Pla

ce G

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ompi

dou

750

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-gp

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Po

mp

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e.n

sf/

docs

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me

25 Ju

ne –

13

Oct

ober

20

03

Alo

rs, l

a C

hine

?

To c

eleb

rate

th

e o

pen

ing

of

the

Ch

ina-

Fran

ce y

ear,

the

Cen

tre

Pom

pido

u pr

es-

ents

an

exhi

biti

on o

f Chi

nese

mod

ern

art

feat

urin

g m

ixed

-med

ia a

rtis

t Gen

g Jia

nyi,

scul

ptor

Liu

Jia

nhu

a, p

hoto

art

ists

Yan

g

Fud

on

g an

d Z

ho

u T

ieh

ai,

and

pai

nte

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u C

huny

a

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any

Kun

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usst

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unde

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er 2

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The

grea

t co

llect

ions

: The

Nat

iona

l Mus

e-

um T

okyo

– A

rt fr

om t

he fo

urte

enth

to

the

nine

teen

th c

entu

ry

Dra

win

g on

imp

orta

nt

obje

cts

from

the

colle

ctio

n o

f th

e To

kyo

Nat

ion

al M

use

-

um, t

his

exhi

biti

on p

rese

nts

the

‘gol

den

age’

of J

apan

ese

art f

rom

the

fifte

enth

to

the

earl

y se

ven

teen

th c

entu

ries

. H

igh

-

light

ing

arti

stic

dev

elop

men

ts d

urin

g th

e

Mur

omac

hi a

nd M

omoy

ama

peri

ods,

the

exh

ibit

ion

fea

ture

s re

con

stru

ctio

ns

of

inti

mat

e tr

adit

iona

l tea

room

s an

d a

shoi

n

stu

dy

roo

m,

toge

ther

wit

h t

he

acco

u-

trem

ents

of p

ublic

spl

endo

ur a

nd n

oble

sym

bols

of s

tatu

s an

d po

wer

.

21 N

ovem

ber

200

3 –

15

Febr

uary

20

04

Trea

sure

s of

the

Son

s of

Hea

ven

Obj

ects

in

th

is e

xhib

itio

n r

ange

fro

m

fam

ous

pain

tin

gs t

o co

llect

ion

cab

inet

s

mad

e fr

om v

ario

us

pre

ciou

s m

ater

ials

.

They

do

not o

nly

refle

ct th

e di

vers

ity

and

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tivi

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hin

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art,

bu

t al

so t

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inte

llect

ual

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d p

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dev

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men

ts

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hine

se h

isto

ry. T

he e

xhib

itio

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cus-

es o

n h

um

an b

ein

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the

ir r

elat

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-

ship

to

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atu

re

and

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ciet

y th

rou

gh

obje

cts.

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docu

men

ts t

he m

agni

fice

nce

of

art

fro

m t

he

Ch

ines

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per

ial c

ou

rt

and

brin

gs to

vie

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aste

rwor

ks fr

om th

e

sym

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ally

ric

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rad

itio

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scho

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18 Ju

ly 2

00

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12

Oct

ober

20

03

Alt

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useu

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dia

This

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me

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roun

ds

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Indi

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ill ta

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sual

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e

cont

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art

sce

ne o

f Ind

ian

meg

a-

citi

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um

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Del

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nnai

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Sept

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Min

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e

This

pho

to e

xhib

itio

n f

eatu

rin

g In

don

e-

sian

and

UK

art

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orga

nize

d as

par

t

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the

JakA

rt F

esti

val

and

will

su

bse-

quen

tly

trav

el

to

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rt H

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per

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ovem

ber

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50th

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Ven

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: D

ream

s an

d

conf

licts

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dic

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the

vie

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The

prev

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Vis

ual A

rts

Exhi

biti

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Bien

nale

di V

enez

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atur

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nd o

f the

Twen

tiet

h C

entu

ry’ b

y Jo

seph

Beu

ys. T

his

wor

k si

gnal

led

the

end

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e cy

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rge-

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xhib

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hich

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agm

ente

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tem

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ecam

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ear

that

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not

ion

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the

‘glo

bal,’

cou

ld n

o lo

nger

be

fram

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y

the

sole

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e cu

rato

r.

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Vis

ual A

rts

Exhi

biti

on o

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Bie

n-

nale

di V

enez

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onsi

ders

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star

ting

po

int

fro

m w

hic

h t

o r

efle

ct o

n t

he

very

idea

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he ‘l

arge

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is

form

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cur

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ltip

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ngu

ages

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the

inev

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aphi

c,

polit

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cul

tura

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text

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on

g m

any

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ency

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ha

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ng

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ang

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en-

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heng

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iu Ji

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Chi

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25 Ju

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of

Japa

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exh

ibit

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he w

ork

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he J

apan

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rint

des

igne

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atsu

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disp

lays

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own

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rin

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auti

ful

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land

scap

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low

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and

ani

mal

s, a

s w

ell

as il

lust

rate

d bo

oks

and

arti

sts’

man

uals

.

He

was

the

first

Japa

nese

art

ist t

o be

com

e

popu

lar i

n th

e W

est i

n th

e la

te n

inet

eent

h

cen

tury

whe

re i

mag

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‘The

Gre

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fluen

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Euro

pean

art

ists

suc

h as

Man

et, V

an G

ogh,

and

Tou

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exhi

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eatu

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f H

oku

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Nat

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eum

13-9

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yo

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3 Ju

ly 2

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July

20

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Kam

akur

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Art

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Náprstek Museum

Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland GmbH

cont

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pag

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>

> Asian Art & Cultures

Page 46: Mega- Urbanization in Asia - International Institute for Asian ...

I I A S N e w s l e t t e r | # 3 1 | J u l y 2 0 0 34 6

Art A

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> Art

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> Asian Art & Cultures

Page 47: Mega- Urbanization in Asia - International Institute for Asian ...

I I A S N e w s l e t t e r | # 3 1 | J u l y 2 0 0 3 4 7

> IIAS news

Report >China

One of the research topics in the ‘Syntax’ project is concerned with thequestion of the expression of tense and finiteness in Chinese languagesand the role played by sentence final particles.

By Rint Sybesma

Formulating an assumption that is widely held, Li andThompson (1981:13) write: ‘Mandarin has no markers

for tense’. However, there exist minimal pairs like thefollowing (cf. Li and Thompson 1981:589 (46a,b)):(1) a. tamen ba-dian-zhong kai-men

they eight-o’clock open-doorthey (will) open at eight o’clock

b. tamen ba-dian-zhong kai-men dethey eight-o’clock open-door prtthey opened at eight o’clock

The linguistic terms used in the example above and the onesto follow are all explained in the note below.* The only formaldifference between the above sentences lies in the presenceof the element de in (1b). In terms of meaning, the differenceis that the variant with de definitely has a past tense interpre-tation, while (1a) does not. We must, however, for several rea-sons, not jump to the conclusion that de is a past tense mark-er. One of these reasons is that the following minimal pair(based on Li and Thompson 1981:592 (55), (56)) does not showthe same interpretational difference as we saw in (1):(2) a. women bu hui qifu nimen

we not will bully you (plural)we are not going to bully you

b. women bu hui qifu nimen dewe not will bully you (plural) prtwe are not going to bully you (believe us)

Here, the difference has nothing to do with tense. Where-as (2a) is a neutral statement of fact, (2b) is used in a situation

The Egyptian Islamist Experience in Asia Report >General

The IIAS seminar ‘Religion, Transnationalism and Radicalism’ is built upon three basicassumptions: (1) Due to international migration and the accumulation of money and power,new diasporic religious communities have arisen. Increasingly creative, these communitiesare freer to express their ideas than in their places of origin. (2) This process has enhanceda tendency towards radicalization. The alien cultural and religious environment thediasporic communities live in has produced greater self-awareness and self-consciousness,which in turn has led to the simplification and radicalization of doctrine and religiouspractice. (3) As a result of modern means of transportation and new technologies ofcommunication and mass media diasporic communities and their communities of originhave developed continuous relations with each other. The radicalization of diasporiccommunities has therefore also spilled over into the communities of origin.

By Roe l Mei je r

The transnationalization of the Egypt-ian Islamist movement confirms

some of the above points. Al-Qa’ida andthe foundation of the International Frontfor the Jihad against Jews and Crusadersin 1998 seems to form another, moreextreme stage in the radicalization of theEgyptian Islamist movement and fits theidea that radical diasporic communitiesare more radical than radical groups inthe home countries.

To be sure, radicalization within theEgyptian Islamist movements hadalready taken place before transnation-alization of the more radical group inthe 1960s. Even at this stage, however,the notion of migration – ProphetMuhammad’s migration being a centraltheme for all Muslims – has alwaysbeen a trope within the imagination ofthe radical Islamist movement.

Radical Egyptian Islamists came todemand mental or physical migrationfrom a society that they do not consid-er Muslim, such as Egyptian society,

because it does not apply the sharia. Inthe 1970s the notion of migration wasapplied by some groups by retreatingpartially from an impure and infidelsociety by forming religious commu-nities in hired (expensive) furnishedapartments in Cairo, or by ‘migrating’to the desert in Upper Egypt to estab-lish an ideal society of Muslims. Peace-ful ‘migration’, however, proved diffi-cult and the leaders of the movementwere caught and imprisoned. The otheroption of direct violent confrontationwith the state, without migration, waseven less successful. Groups that advo-cated an overthrow of the state wererounded up after the assassination ofpresident Sadat in 1981, and its leader-ship was hanged.

By the time most members of the rad-ical groups were released from prisonin the second half of the 1980s, theopportunities for internal migrationwere blocked, and many looked formeans to escape from Egypt in order tobuild an ideal Muslim society else-where. The accelerated process of glob-

alization allowed them to find a newexternal abode and build a new idealsociety. Not only did the Soviet invasionof Afghanistan in 1979 and the ensuingchaos in the Central Asian republics andChechnya following the Soviet collapsein 1989 provide ideal circumstances toestablish a new society, new means ofcommunication allowed them to mobi-lize the human, financial, and ideolog-ical resources throughout the Islamicworld. For a while Peshawar became thehub of the Islamist movement, wherein true transnational fashion ‘flows ofpeople, money, images, ideas andobjects circulate with growing speed,intensity and volume’. Informaltransnational networks extended fromthe centres of struggle to the smallesttowns in the outreaches of the Islamicworld to support this migration.

Typical of this new, more extremiststage of the Islamist movement is theclose connection between migrationand the application of violence. Undercover of the jihad against the Sovietsthousands of Egyptians, other Arabs,

Pakistanis, Philippinos, and Indone-sians were flown in to take part in theconstruction of a new pure Muslimsociety that was created and purified byforce of arms. When the local waragainst the Soviets in Afghanistanended in 1989, the mujahidin, inter-nationalized their struggle by gradual-ly turning against the United States. Inaddition, they promoted jihad in theircountries of origin. As in the outlinesof the seminar, the diasporic commu-nity had become the leading force inthe radicalization of the Muslim world.

Ayman al-Zawahiri’s memoirs‘Knights under the Prophet’s Banner’,smuggled out of the Afghan caves beforethe American invasion in 2002, providesa unique insight into the transnational,almost postmodern, ideology of theEgyptian radical Islamist movement inthis transnational phase. Calling himself‘an emigrant fugitive, who gives hisbacking to other emigrants andmujahidin’, he regards Afghanistan atthis ‘stage of global battle’ the ideal placeto ‘fight the new crusade’, because as hesays, ‘it is a pure battle between Muslimson the one hand and infidels on theother’. Conscious of the role media playin this war and the postmodern era, heexpresses his fear of penetration by ‘theArab and Western media [who] areresponsible for distorting the image ofthe Arab Afghans’. ‘The external enemy’aside, al-Zawahiri played a major role inpromoting violent confrontation with the‘internal enemy’, the Egyptian authorities.

In other respects, however, the Egypt-

ian movement does not fit the outlinesof the seminar. Although al-Zawahiriand other members of the radicalEgyptian Islamist movement were ableto promote jihad from a safe transna-tional haven, were free to develop theirideas and communicate them to therest of the world as well as plan theassault on the World Trade Center inNew York, they did not succeed in fur-ther radicalizing the movement inEgypt itself. Indeed, the majority of themovement condemned violence andrejected the Front of Osama Bin Ladenand al-Zawahiri, even before 11 Sep-tember. Since January 2002 the leadersof the Gama’at al-Islamiyya publiclyrescinded many of their previous ideasregarding jihad, takfir (the condemna-tion of society as infidel), and hisba. Inthat sense the influence of the diasporicradical community of Egyptians is wan-ing. What has changed, however, is thatthe debate on violence and the meansof establishing an ideal Muslim Societyhave become transnational. Since 11September the Egyptian debate onestablishing an ideal Muslim societyand the role of migration and violencehas become a worldwide Muslimdebate. The Asian experience of theEgyptian movement has played a keyrole in this process. <

Dr Roel Meijer is affiliated TCMO to the

University of Nijmegen and is currently

working on the debate on violence within

the Islamist movement.

[email protected]

in which ‘you’ may have reasons to fear that ‘we’ are going tobully ‘you’, or to explain other aspects of ‘our’ behaviour (cf.Li and Thompson 1981: 592). In Cantonese, another varietyof Chinese, we have an element lei4, which, judging from thefollowing minimal pair, also indicates past tense:(3) a. A3-Chan4 hai4 keoi5-lou5gung1

Ah Chan be 3s-husbandAh Chan is her husband

b. A3-Chan4 hai4 keoi5-lou5gung1lei4

Ah Chan be (s)he-husband prtAh Chan was her husband (for a while in the past; no longer is)

Like Mandarin de, lei4 can also not be a pure tense-mark-er as we know it, since it only co-occurs with certain types ofpredicates; generally, past tense markers do not discriminatein that way. Despite these reasons for doubting the wisdomof calling de and lei4 tense-markers, we must acknowledgethe fact that Chinese languages do have (morphological)means to explicitly mark a sentence as [+past], as we just saw.

Li and Thompson’s opening quotation is correct in thesense that one and the same sentence can be used to describea past and a present or future event. The following Mandarinexamples show this:(4)a. wo zuotian mai shu de-shihou,peng-shang Li Si

I yesterday buy book when bump-into Li Siwhen I was buying books yesterday, I bumped into Li Si

b. women xian chi-fan, hou mai shuwe first eat later buy bookwe’ll first eat, then we’ll buy books

The same verb phrase mai shu ‘buy book’ is used todescribe a past event in (4a) and a future event in (4b). Thereis no marking of anything. Indeed, overt marking with de in(4a) would lead to ungrammaticality.

It must be noted, however, that in isolation predicates tendto have a strongly preferred temporal reading, which can hard-ly be overridden by pragmatic interference (cf. Matthewson2002: see also Lin 2002). In (linguistic) isolation, the follow-ing Mandarin example is necessarily interpreted as presenttense. If Zhang San refers to someone who is dead, the sen-tence is not felicitous (even if both hearer and speaker know):

(5) Zhang San zhu zai zherZhang San live at hereZhang San lives here

We can add an adverbial like yiqian, ‘formerly’, and get apast tense interpretation, as (6) shows. The same effect canbe reached by embedding it in a linguistic context such thatit will get a past tense interpretation:(6) Zhang San yiqian zhu zai zher

Zhang San formerly live at hereZhang San lived/used to live here

The point is that (5), without such linguistic manipulations,only has a present tense interpretation; as noted, a deceasedperson as the subject is not enough to enforce a past tenseinterpretation. In other words, pragmatics alone is notenough. This can be taken as an indication that the Chinesesentence contains some tense element, the interpretation ofwhich is fixed structurally.

In short, Chinese languages may have means to explicitlymark a sentence as [+past], that this marking is not alwaysobligatory, and may in certain contexts even be ungrammat-ical. We also found reasons to assume that Chinese sentencesmay contain a temporal referential element; the reference ofthis element is determined by the structural context. We seekto interpret these findings, also in the light of general theo-ries of tense, finiteness, and subject licensing. In the mean-time, comments are welcome. <

References

- Li, C. N. and S. A. Thompson, Mandarin Chinese. A functional

reference grammar, Berkeley: University of California Press (1981).

- Lin, J.W., ‘Selectional restrictions of tenses and temporal

reference of Chinese bare sentences’, Lingua 113/3 (2002),

pp. 271–302.

- Matthewson, L., An underspecified tense in St’át’imcets, (paper

presented at WECOL, 2002).

Dr Rint Sybesma is programme director of the IIAS/Leiden

University/NWO research programme ‘The Syntax of the Languages

of Southern China’ (1 January 2001 – 31 December 2005).

[email protected]

20-21 June 2003Leiden, the Netherlands

* In all examples ‘prt’ signifies ‘particle’. In example 3 the numbers used in the

expression ‘A3-Chan4 hai4 keoi5-lou5gung1’ refer to tones in Cantonese.

For example: ‘A3’ signifies ‘A’ in the third tone.

Note >

The Expression of Tense in Chinese Languages

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I I A S N e w s l e t t e r | # 3 1 | J u l y 2 0 0 34 8

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ral

Mir

iyam

Aou

ragh

, MA

(Mor

occo

)

Stat

ion

ed a

t the

ASS

R

PhD

stu

dent

with

in th

e W

OTR

O/A

SSR/

IIAS

prog

ram

me

‘Tra

nsna

tiona

l Soc

iety

, Med

ia

and

Citi

zens

hip’

The

mak

ing

of a

col

lect

ive

Pale

stin

ian

iden

tity

1 M

ay 2

00

1 –

1 M

ay 2

00

5

Dr

CH

EN H

siu-

Li(T

aiw

an)

Stat

ione

d at

the

Bra

nch

Offi

ce A

mst

erda

m

Vis

itin

g ex

chan

ge f

ello

w, s

po

nso

red

by

the

NSC

Inte

rnat

iona

l pro

duct

pen

etra

tion

14 Ja

nua

ry 2

00

3 –

14

July

20

03

Dr

Roe

l Mei

jer

(the

Net

herl

ands

)

Res

earc

h fe

llow

Rel

igio

n, t

rans

nati

onal

ism

and

rad

ical

ism

3 M

arch

20

03

– 3

July

20

03

Dr

Ber

t Rem

ijsen

(Bel

gium

)

Aff

iliat

ed fe

llow

Hyb

rid

wor

d pr

osod

ic s

yste

ms

1 Ju

ly 2

00

2 –

1 Ju

ly 2

00

5

Dr M

arga

ret S

leeb

oom

(the

Net

herl

ands

)

Res

earc

h f

ello

w w

ith

in t

he

pro

gram

me

‘Gen

omic

s in

Asi

a’

Hum

an g

enet

ics

and

its

polit

ical

, so

cial

,

cult

ural

, and

eth

ical

impl

icat

ions

17 S

epte

mbe

r 20

01

– 1

5 D

ecem

ber

200

5

Dr

Dav

id N

. Soo

(Uni

ted

Kin

gdom

)

Aff

iliat

ed fe

llow

Glo

balis

atio

n: a

n in

vest

igat

ion

into

the

emer

ging

Asi

an sp

ace

indu

stry

. A n

ew fo

rce

in s

pace

?

4 O

ctob

er 2

00

2 –

4 O

ctob

er 2

00

3

Cent

ral A

siaD

r Meh

di P

arvi

zi A

min

eh(t

he N

ethe

rland

s)

Sta

tio

ned

in

Lei

den

an

d a

t th

e B

ran

ch

Off

ice

Am

ster

dam

Res

earc

h fe

llow

Con

flict

, sec

urit

y an

d de

velo

pmen

t in

the

post

-Sov

iet

era:

tow

ard

regi

onal

eco

nom

ic

coop

erat

ion

in t

he C

entr

al A

sian

reg

ion

1 Ju

ly 2

00

2 –

31

Dec

embe

r 20

03

Dr

Ale

x M

cKay

(Aus

tral

ia)

Aff

iliat

ed fe

llow

The

hi

stor

y of

T

ibet

an

d th

e In

dian

Him

alay

as

1 O

ctob

er 2

00

0 –

1 O

ctob

er 2

00

5

Dr

Irin

a M

oroz

ova

(Rus

sia)

Aff

iliat

ed fe

llow

, spo

nsor

ed b

y N

WO

Con

flict

, sec

urit

y an

d de

velo

pmen

t in

the

post

-Sov

iet

era:

tow

ard

regi

onal

eco

nom

ic

coop

erat

ion

in t

he C

entr

al A

sian

reg

ion

24 A

pril

200

3 –

24

Oct

ober

20

03

Dr

Cec

ilia

Odé

(the

Net

herl

ands

)

Res

earc

h fe

llow

Voic

es fr

om t

he t

undr

a an

d ta

iga

1 Ju

ly 2

00

2 –

1 Ju

ly 2

00

3

Sout

h Asia

Dr

Aud

rius

Bei

nori

us(L

ithu

ania

)

Gon

da fe

llow

The

ear

ly s

ourc

es a

nd h

isto

rica

l dev

elop

-

men

t of

med

ieva

l Ind

ian

astr

olog

y

1 Se

ptem

ber

200

3 –

31

Jan

uary

20

04

Dr

Han

ne d

e B

ruin

(the

Net

herl

ands

)

Stat

ione

d at

the

Bra

nch

Offi

ce A

mst

erda

m

Aff

iliat

ed fe

llow

Kat

taik

kutt

u an

d N

atak

am: S

outh

Indi

an

Thea

tre

Trad

itio

ns in

Reg

iona

l Per

spec

tive

17 A

pril

200

3 –

10

Jun

e 20

03

Dr

Ale

xand

ra v

an d

er G

eer

(the

Net

her-

land

s)

Res

earc

h fe

llow

, spo

nsor

ed b

y th

e G

onda

Foun

dati

on

Ani

mal

s in

sto

ne, I

ndia

n fa

una

scul

ptur

ed

thro

ugh

tim

e

1 Ja

nuar

y 20

03

– 1

Janu

ary

200

5

Pro

f. T

ri R

atna

Man

andh

ar(N

epal

)

Seni

or v

isit

ing

fello

w

Cap

ital

pun

ishm

ent

in N

epal

: a h

isto

rica

l

pers

pect

ive

7 M

ay 2

00

3 –

30

June

20

03

Ilon

a M

anev

skai

a, M

A(R

ussi

a)

Gon

da fe

llow

Cha

ract

eris

tics

of t

he c

omm

enta

rial

gen

re

in t

he M

ahay

ana

Bud

dhis

m

1 A

pril

200

3 –

30

Aug

ust 2

00

3

Sout

heas

t Asia

Dr

And

i Fai

sal B

akti

(Can

ada)

Res

earc

h fe

llow

wit

hin

the

proj

ect ‘

Isla

m

in In

done

sia’

Maj

lis t

aklim

, pen

gajia

n an

d ci

vil s

ocie

ty:

how

do

Indo

nesi

an m

ajlis

tak

lim a

nd p

en-

gajia

n co

ntri

bute

to c

ivil

soci

ety

in In

done

-

sia?

15 M

ay 2

00

2 –

15

Nov

embe

r 20

03

Jaja

t Bur

hanu

din,

MA

(Ind

ones

ia)

PhD

stu

dent

wit

hin

the

proj

ect ‘

Isla

m in

Indo

nesi

a’

The

mak

ing

of I

slam

ic m

oder

nism

. T

he

tran

smis

sion

of I

slam

ic re

form

ism

from

the

Mid

dle

East

to th

e M

alay

-Ind

ones

ian

arch

i-

pela

go i

n th

e la

te n

inet

eent

h an

d ea

rly

twen

tiet

h ce

ntur

y

18 S

epte

mbe

r 20

01

– 18

Sep

tem

ber 2

00

5

Muh

amm

ad D

ahla

n, M

A(I

ndon

esia

)

PhD

stu

dent

wit

hin

the

proj

ect ‘

Isla

m in

Indo

nesi

a’

The

role

of t

he In

done

sian

stat

e in

stitu

te fo

r

Isla

mic

stud

ies i

n th

e re

dist

ribut

ion

of M

us-

lim a

utho

rity

15 Ju

ne 2

00

1 –

15

June

20

05

Dr

Pet

er v

an E

euw

ijk (

Swit

zerl

and)

Aff

iliat

ed fe

llow

Gro

win

g ol

d in

the

cit

y: h

ealt

h tr

ansi

tion

amon

g el

derly

in N

orth

Sul

awes

i, In

done

sia

15 Ju

ly 2

00

3 –

30

Oct

ober

20

03

Myr

na E

indh

oven

, MA

(th

e N

ethe

rlan

ds)

Stat

ione

d at

the

ASS

R

Ph

D

stu

den

t w

ith

in

the

AS

SR

/IIA

S/

WO

TR

O

pro

gram

me

‘Tra

nsn

atio

nal

Soci

ety,

Med

ia a

nd C

itiz

ensh

ip’

Ray

s of

new

imag

es: I

CT’

s, s

tate

eth

nopo

-

licie

s an

d id

enti

ty f

orm

atio

n am

ong

the

Men

taw

aian

s (W

est

Sum

atra

)

1 N

ovem

ber

200

0 –

1 N

ovem

ber

200

4

Dr

Arn

dt G

raf(

Ger

man

y)

Aff

iliat

ed fe

llow

Pol

itic

al m

arke

ting

20 A

ugus

t 20

03

– 7

Oct

ober

20

03

Dr

Bre

tt W

arre

n H

ough

(Aus

tral

ia)

Aff

iliat

ed fe

llow

Per

form

ing

arts

in B

ali

Vio

lenc

e in

Bal

i

8 M

arch

20

03

– 2

8 Ju

ne 2

00

3

Pro

f. Z

ohra

Ibra

him

(Mal

aysi

a)

Aff

iliat

ed fe

llow

Info

rmat

ion

brok

erag

e an

d kn

owle

dge

shar

-

ing

in S

outh

east

Asi

a

6 Ja

nuar

y 20

03

– 6

Janu

ary

200

4

Moc

h N

ur Ic

hwan

, MA

(Ind

ones

ia)

PhD

stu

dent

wit

hin

the

proj

ect ‘

Isla

m in

Indo

nesi

a’

The

mak

ing

and

unm

akin

g of

sta

tism

.

Isla

m: s

tate

pro

duct

ion

of Is

lam

ic d

isco

urse

in N

ew O

rder

Indo

nesi

a an

d af

terw

ards

6 A

pril

200

1 –

6 A

pril

200

5

Jasp

er v

an d

e K

erkh

of, M

A(t

he N

ethe

r-

land

s)

Jun

ior

rese

arch

fel

low

, sp

on

sore

d b

y

NIO

D

Indo

nesi

anis

asi

and

nati

onal

ism

. T

he

eman

cipa

tion

and

reo

rien

tati

on o

f th

e

econ

omy

and

the

wor

ld o

f in

dust

ry a

nd

com

mer

ce

15 O

ctob

er 2

00

2 –

15

Oct

ober

20

03

Dr

Mic

hael

Laf

fan

(Aus

tral

ia)

Res

earc

h fe

llow

wit

hin

the

rese

arch

pro

j-

ect ‘

Isla

m in

Indo

nesi

a’

Sufis

and

sal

afis

: a c

entu

ry o

f con

flict

and

com

prom

ise

in In

done

sia

1 Ja

nuar

y 20

02

– 3

1 D

ecem

ber

200

4

Dr

Thom

as L

indb

lad

(the

Net

herl

ands

)

Res

earc

h fe

llow

, spo

nsor

ed b

y N

IOD

Indo

nesi

anis

asi

and

nati

onal

ism

. T

he

eman

cipa

tion

and

reo

rien

tati

on o

f th

e

econ

omy

and

the

wor

ld o

f in

dust

ry a

nd

com

mer

ce

1 O

ctob

er 2

00

2 –

1 O

ctob

er 2

00

6

Dr

Hot

ze L

ont(

the

Net

herl

ands

)

Stat

ion

ed a

t th

e B

ran

ch O

ffic

e A

mst

er-

dam

Aff

iliat

ed f

ello

w w

ith

in t

he

KN

AW

pro

-

gram

me:

‘In

don

esia

n S

ocie

ty in

Tra

nsi

-

tion

’

Cop

ing

wit

h cr

ises

in In

done

sia

5 N

ovem

ber

200

1 –

Dec

embe

r 20

04

Dr

Joha

n M

eule

man

(the

Net

herl

ands

)

Res

earc

h f

ello

w w

ith

in t

he

pro

gram

me

‘Isl

am in

Indo

nesi

a’

Dak

wah

in u

rban

soc

iety

in tw

enti

eth-

cen-

tury

Indo

nesi

a

1 Ja

nuar

y 20

01

– 3

1 D

ecem

ber

200

4

Ahm

ad S

yafi

’i M

ufid

, MA

(Ind

ones

ia)

PhD

stu

dent

wit

hin

the

fram

ewor

k of

the

proj

ect ‘

Isla

m in

Indo

nesi

a’

The

plac

e of

suf

i ord

ers

in t

he r

elig

ious

life

of c

onte

mpo

rary

Jaka

rtan

s

18 S

epte

mbe

r 20

01

– 18

Sep

tem

ber 2

00

5

Pro

f. N

AK

AM

UR

A K

iyos

hi(J

apan

)

Aff

iliat

ed f

ello

w, s

pon

sore

d b

y th

e JS

PS

and

NW

O

Ethn

ogra

phy

of B

alin

ese

adat

in th

e co

ntex

t

of

post

-col

onia

l an

d po

st

New

-Ord

er

Indo

nesi

a

15 Ja

nuar

y 20

03

- 31

Aug

ust 2

00

3

Noo

rhai

di, M

A(I

ndon

esia

)

PhD

stu

dent

wit

hin

the

proj

ect ‘

Isla

m in

Indo

nesi

a’

The

jih

ad p

aram

ilita

ry f

orce

: Is

lam

and

iden

tity

in th

e er

a of

tran

siti

on in

Indo

nesi

a

1 A

pril

200

1 –

1 A

pril

200

5

Dr

Kea

t Gin

Ooi

(Mal

aysi

a)

Stat

ione

d at

the

Bra

nch

Offi

ce A

mst

erda

m

Aff

iliat

ed fe

llow

, spo

nsor

ed b

y th

e N

WO

The

Japa

nese

occ

upat

ion

of D

utch

Bor

neo

1942

-194

5

25 M

arch

20

04

– 2

6 M

ay 2

00

4

Dr

Tila

k R

aj S

aree

n(I

ndia

)

Aff

iliat

ed fe

llow

The

Japa

nese

pri

sone

rs o

f war

, 194

2-19

46

22 Ju

ly 2

00

3 –

21

Aug

ust 2

00

3

Dr

Geo

rge

Bry

an S

ouza

(U

SA)

Aff

iliat

ed fe

llow

The

col

onia

l po

rt c

ity

and

the

mar

itim

e

trad

e of

Asi

a: B

atav

ia a

nd c

inna

mon

, silv

er

and

opiu

m, 1

684

-179

2

1 A

pril

200

3 –

30

June

20

03

Ari

ef S

ubha

n, M

A (

Indo

nesi

a)

PhD

stu

dent

wit

hin

the

proj

ect ‘

Isla

m in

Indo

nesi

a’

The

ch

angi

ng

role

of

th

e In

done

sian

Mad

rasa

h an

d th

e di

ssem

inat

ion

of M

us-

lim a

utho

rity

15 Ju

ne 2

00

1 –

15

June

20

05

Pro

f. S

uhar

tono

(Ind

ones

ia)

Seni

or v

isit

ing

fello

w

Sulta

n H

amne

gku

Buw

ono

IX:

his

role

in

secu

ring

the

Repu

blic

of I

ndon

esia

, 194

5 – 19

49

19 M

ay 2

00

3 –

18

June

20

03

Julië

tte

Van

Was

senh

ove,

MA

(Fr

ance

)

Aff

iliat

ed fe

llow

Dis

curs

ive

gene

alog

ies

of c

ivil

soci

ety

in

Sout

heas

t A

sia:

the

Mal

aysi

an c

ase

16 M

ay 2

00

3 - 1

5 Ju

ne 2

00

3

Pro

f. B

en W

hite

(th

e N

ethe

rlan

ds, U

K)

Stat

ione

d at

the

Bra

nch

Offi

ce A

mst

erda

m

Aff

iliat

ed

fello

w,

KN

AW

p

rogr

amm

e:

‘Ind

ones

ian

Soci

ety

in T

rans

itio

n’

Cop

ing

wit

h cr

ises

in In

done

sia

25 S

epte

mbe

r 20

01

– D

ecem

ber

200

4

Pro

f. M

d Sa

lleh

Yaap

ar(M

alay

sia)

Pro

fess

ori

al f

ello

w, h

old

er o

f th

e E

uro

-

pean

Cha

ir o

f Mal

ay S

tudi

es

Pan

tun

and

Pan

toum

: a s

tudy

in M

alay

-

Euro

pean

lite

rary

rel

atio

ns

5 Fe

brua

ry 2

00

3 –

5 F

ebru

ary

200

5

East

Asia

Prof

. CH

AN

G M

au-k

uei M

icha

el(T

aiw

an)

Vis

itin

g ex

chan

ge f

ello

w, s

po

nso

red

by

the

NSC

The

Pol

itic

s of

Pri

vile

ge in

Tai

wan

1 Se

ptem

ber

200

3 –

31

Janu

ary

200

4

Pro

f. K

enne

th J.

Ham

mon

d (U

SA)

Aff

iliat

ed fe

llow

The

life,

dea

th, a

nd p

osth

umou

s ca

reer

of

Yang

Jish

eng,

151

6 –

155

5

1 Ju

ly 2

00

2 –

1 Ju

ly 2

00

3

Dr

HO

Min

g-Yu

(Ta

iwan

)

Vis

itin

g ex

chan

ge f

ello

w, s

po

nso

red

by

the

NSC

Law

, fo

reig

n di

rect

inv

estm

ent

and

eco-

nom

ic d

evel

opm

ent

in T

aiw

an 1

992-

2002

18 D

ecem

ber

200

2 –

18

June

20

03

Dr

HO

U Y

u(C

hina

)

Aff

iliat

ed fe

llow

, spo

nsor

ed b

y N

UFF

IC

Chi

na’s

indu

stria

l str

uctu

re a

nd su

stai

nabl

e

deve

lopm

ent

afte

r en

teri

ng W

TO

1 Se

ptem

ber

200

2 –

30

June

20

03

LI B

oya,

BA

(C

hina

)

PhD

stu

dent

wit

hin

the

join

t N

WO

/ Le

i-

den

Uni

vers

ity /

IIA

S re

sear

ch p

rogr

amm

e

‘The

Syn

tax

of t

he L

angu

ages

of S

outh

ern

Chi

na’

1 Ja

nuar

y 20

01

– 3

1 D

ecem

ber

200

5

Dr

SAD

OI Y

uri(

Japa

n)

Aff

iliat

ed f

ello

w, s

po

nso

red

by

the

Mit

-

subi

shi M

otor

s C

orpo

rati

on

The

prob

lem

s of

the

Jap

anes

e au

tom

obile

prod

ucti

on s

yste

m in

the

diff

eren

t cu

ltur

al

sett

ing:

the

cas

e of

the

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> IIAS news

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I I A S N e w s l e t t e r | # 3 1 | J u l y 2 0 0 3 4 9

Encouraged by the second call for workshop proposals forthe 2003/2004 Asia-Europe Workshop Series, which is

sponsored by the Asia-Europe Foundation and the EuropeanAlliance for Asian Studies, academic researchers submittedworkshop proposals on a variety of issues affecting bothregions. The proposals were to have an inter-regional andmultilateral importance and focus on a contemporary topicconcerning both Asia and Europe in a comparative per-spective. Importantly, the workshops had to be jointly organ-ized by an Asian and European partner, so as to stimulateinter-regional dialogue.

Thirty-one proposals had been received by 1 March 2003,covering a wide range of topics. The Selection Committee,consisting of Amb. Delfin Colomé (ASEF), Prof. Jean-LucDomenach (Tsinghua University), Prof. Chaibong Hahm(Yonsei University), Prof. Lily Kong (National University ofSingapore), Prof. Hanns Maull (University of Trier), Prof.Shamsul A.B. (University Kebangsaan Malaysia), and Prof.Wim Stokhof (European Alliance for Asian Studies), met inLeiden, the Netherlands on 9 April.

Not only the overall quality of the proposals, but also thefact that the majority of the proposed workshops were to beheld in Asia were pleasing to the committee. The six select-ed proposals excelled due to their clear-cut relevance to bothAsia and Europe, stimulating dialogue between the tworegions and creating a node between the scientific and ‘prac-tical’ domains. <

Asia-Europe WorkshopSeries 2003/2004Report >

General

The Alliance has just welcomed as anew partner the Centro de Estu-

dios de Asia Oriental (CEAO) andexpects the partnership to expand fur-ther in the near future. With this inmind, at a recent meeting the Alliancesigned a Memorandum of Under-standing to ensure a strong and lucidstructure for an even larger Alliance in

the future. One of its features is thechange of name from StrategicAlliance for Asian Studies to EuropeanAlliance for Asian Studies. This doesnot mean that cooperation with ourAsian partners is not still deemed vital.On the contrary, the Alliance feels that,apart from cooperation based on indi-vidual projects, it would like to work

towards a strong cooperation with ayet-to-be-formed alliance of Asian insti-tutes, a so-called Asian Alliance forAsian Studies. Asian institutes forAsian Studies who are interested infounding such an Asian Alliance aremost welcome to contact us or visit ourstand at the International Conventionof Asian Studies 3 in Singapore. <

European Alliance for Asian StudiesReport >General

NIASThe Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) is an inde-

pendent research institute funded by the governments of

Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden through

the Nordic Council of Ministers. The NIAS, founded in 1967,

serves as a focal point for research on contemporary Asia

and for promoting Asian Studies in the Nordic academic

community.

Director: Dr Jørgen Delman

Leifsgade 33 DK 2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark

T +45-35-32 9500 / F +45-35-32 9549 / [email protected]

www.nias.ku.dk

IFAThe Institute of Asian Affairs (Institut für Asienkunde, IFA)

was founded in 1956 on the initiative of the German Parlia-

ment and the German Foreign Ministry. The Institute stud-

ies contemporary political, economic, and social develop-

ments in Asian countries, at the same time aiming to procure

and broaden scientifically based knowledge of the region and

its countries.

Director: Dr Werner Draguhn

Rothenbaumchaussee 32, D-20148 Hamburg, Germany

T +49-40-428 8740 / F +49-40-410 7945

[email protected] / www.duei.de/ifa

EIASThe European Institute for Asian Studies (EIAS) is a Brus-

sels-based policy and research think tank supported by Euro-

pean Union (EU) institutions, which aims to promote under-

standing and cooperation between the EU and Asia. EIAS

seeks to offer information and expertise to European Union

institutions, the academic world, and business by dissemi-

nating concise, thoroughly researched, and up-to-date mate-

rial on EU-Asia relations and important developments in Asia.

Director: Dr Willem van der Geest

35 Rue des Deux Eglises, 1000 Brussels, Belgium

T +32-2-230 8122 / F +32-2-230 5402 / [email protected]

www.eias.org

AECTogether with the American Centre and the European Cen-

tre, the Asia-Europe Centre forms a resource framework at

the service of the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Poli-

tiques (Sciences-Po), acting as an interface between Sci-

ences-Po components and Asian counterparts. It provides

information and expertise to both public and European insti-

tutions, to Sciences-Po’s academic network, and to the busi-

ness community.

Director: Dr David Camroux

Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques

56 rue Jacob, 75006 Paris, France

T +33-58-71 7124 / F +33-58-71 7125

[email protected] / www.sciences-po.fr

CEAOThe Centro de Estudios de Asia Oriental (Centre for East

Asian Studies, CEAO) was established in 1992 at the

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). The centre’s main

aim is to train young researchers who originate from different

areas of the humanities and the social sciences and

specialize in East Asian Studies.

Director: Prof. Taciana Badell

Centro de Estudios de Asia Oriental,

Autonomous University of Madrid

Edificio Rectorado, 5ª planta Campus de Cantoblanco,

28049 Madrid, Spain

T +34-9-1397 4695 / F +34-9-1397 5278 / [email protected]

www.uam.es/ceao

IIAS (secretariat Asia Alliance)

www.asia-alliance.org

Alliance Partners

SCIENCES PO

From its beginning in 1992, the Centro de Estudios de Asia Oriental (CEAO, Centre for EastAsian Studies) concentrated on two main goals. First, to train young researchers withdifferent backgrounds within the humanities and social sciences, who specialize in EastAsian Studies. Second, to obtain the official approval of an official degree in East AsianStudies. Considering that there was no significant academic tradition on Asian Studies inSpain, the task was a truly pioneer one and was certainly not very easy. Recently, the CEAOjoined the Asia Alliance as its sixth European partner.

Centro de Estudios de Asia Oriental, Spain

Report >General

By Tac iana F i sac

Offering sustained support toCEAO activities, the Universidad

Autonoma de Madrid (UAM) was thefirst university in Spain to create per-manent faculty positions in the area ofEast Asian languages and cultures.This university will also offer an inter-disciplinary official degree on EastAsian Studies in 2003/2004. Addi-tionally, the CEAO strongly benefitedfrom governmental and non-govern-mental research grants and teachingfunds and has been endowed with edi-torial responsibility for the UNESCOEast Asian literature series in Spanish.

Aiming to reinforce its research andteaching capabilities, the Centre forEast Asian Studies has paid specialattention to establishing internationalrelations. At present, there are perma-

nent links and collaborative exchangeprojects with institutions devoted toAsian Studies all over the world. TheCEAO was one of the seven institutionmembers of the European Union-China Academic Network (ECAN),which aimed to promote the collabo-ration between European institutionsspecialized in Contemporary China. Ithas become a prominent researchinstitution in Spain, functioning as acentre of reference for Asian Studies.In addition to regular teaching andresearch work, CEAO organizes semi-nars and public lectures. It also pro-vides documentation and consultingservices to both public and private enti-ties.

Our interdisciplinary and interna-tional research programme rangesfrom contemporary Chinese cultureand gender studies; to Japanese lin-

guistics; to labour studies and eco-nomics in both these countries andwill soon participate in projects withVietnam, Malaysia, and other Asiancountries. The UAM faculty is cur-rently developing research on scienceand technology in East Asia.

Every year the CEAO welcomes vis-iting lecturers and scholars. Apart fromthe areas of humanities and social sci-ences, the CEAO collaborates withother departments at the UniversidadAutónoma de Madrid, providing sup-port to joint research agreementsbetween the Departments of Physics,Biology, Environmental Studies, andMedicine with equivalent Asianresearch groups. On a parallel basis,the CEAO is also engaged in the pro-motion of Spanish Studies in Asia.This academic year, it has coordinateda PhD programme on ‘ContemporarySpain and Latin America’, held at Bei-jing Foreign Studies University. <

Professor Taciana Fisac is Titular Professor

of Chinese Language and Culture and Direc-

tor of the Centre for East Asian Studies,

Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain

[email protected]

Social and cultural effects of computer-

mediated interactive communications

technology in Europe and Asia

20–22 October 2003, Manila,

the Philippines

Dr R. Pertierra (University of the Philippines)

Prof. Daniel Miller (University of London, UK)

Social science and AIDS in Southeast Asia

10–11 November 2003, Chiang Mai,

Thailand

Dr Sophie Le Coeur (Chiang Mai University,

Thailand)

Dr Evelyne Micollier (Université de

Provence, France)

The Internet and elections in

Asia and Europe

13–15 November 2003, Singapore

Dr R. Kluver (Nanyang Technological

University, Singapore)

Dr Nicholas Jankowski (University of

Nijmegen, the Netherlands)

The security paradox of open borders:

surveillance and control of migrants

15–17 December 2003, Chiang Mai,

Thailand

Dr Carl Grundy-Warr (National University

of Singapore)

Prof. Didier Bigo (Sciences-Po, France)

Enabling role of the public sector

in urban housing development

July 2004, Beijing, China

Prof. Anne Power (London School of

Economics and Political Science, UK)

Prof. Tuan Yang (Chinese Academy of

Social Sciences, China)

Old-age vulnerabilities:

Asia and European perspectives

5–7 July 2004, Malang, Indonesia

Mr Warkum Sumitro

(Universitas Brawijaya, Indonesia)

Dr Ruly Marianti (Belle van Zuylen

Institute, the Netherlands)

The six selected proposals are:

For more information: www.asia-alliance.org

> ASEF/Alliance news

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By Heid i Tan

The term ‘Peranakan’ is usually taken to mean ‘local born’and is thought to have been used by the settled commu-

nities of Chinese, particularly during the late nineteenth cen-tury, to distinguish themselves from the new immigrants,whom they referred to as sinkeh (new guest) or, in Indonesia,as totok (migrant). The gender-specific terms ‘Baba’ and‘Nonya’ are honorific, suggesting the high status of therespective male and female Peranakans.

The origins and history of the Peranakan phenomena inSoutheast Asia remain contentious. It is not clear when Per-anakan Chinese began to settle in the region – the earliestChinese records of Chinese settlements date to the mid-four-teenth century, and Chinese communities lived in areas suchas Melaka long before the founding of the Straits Settlementsin 1826 (Rudolf 1998:196).

The assimilation of Malay cultural markers (a Baba patois,rituals and customs, food and fashion accessories) distin-guished the Peranakan Chinese. Their knowledge of localmatters enabled them to act as brokers between local andcolonial businesses, giving them a distinct economic advan-tage. Many eventually underwent an English education (orDutch, in the case of Indonesian Peranakans) and took uppositions in the colonial administration, earning themselvesthe title of ‘King’s Chinese’.

The ways in which cross-cultural transformations occurredalso remain unclear – through intermarriage between Chi-nese traders and indigenous women, or cultural adaptation?There are good reasons to suppose that both may have hap-pened. Chinese traders reliant on seasonal monsoons for trav-el would have stayed in the region for long periods and even-tually have married local women. The Confucian tradition oflooking after the ancestors required that Chinese women stayin China to fulfil this role, and it was not until the mid- to latenineteenth century that social unrest induced increasing num-

bers of Chinese women to emigrate to Southeast Asia.The need to adopt local customs may have prevailed

to a greater extent in certain areas, such as in Java,especially following ethnic conflicts such

as the Batavia Massacre in the mid-eigh-teenth century, or in Siam and the Philip-

pines, where the Chinese were more eas-ily assimilated (Chin 1991:18).

That the adaptation of local Malay cul-ture was transferred through the matri-

arch can be seen in early portraiture.These portraits were painted in the

home of Mr and Mrs Tan Beng Wan duringthe late nineteenth century. They pose appar-

ently surrounded by possessions suitably reflec-tive of their social standing (photos 1 and 2). The edu-cated upholder of Chinese culture and Confucianvalues, a role aspired to by the Babas, is apparent in

Mr Tan’s Chinese-style clothes, books, and porcelain

accessories. Mr Tan was appointed to the Chinese AdvisoryBoard for Singapore in 1890 and was also Municipal Com-missioner until his death the following year.

Mrs Tan’s portrait reflects the Malay cultural influence.She wears the early style of Peranakan dress, the Malay longtunic (baju panjang) with batik patterns, fastened by threebrooches or kerosang over a woven cotton sarong (kain chay-lay), a batik handkerchief in one hand and hair tightly pulledback in a bun secured by three hairpins (chabang tiga), as wascustomary of the Melakan and Singapore nonyas. She wearsslippers (kasut tongkang) – nonyas did not observe the Chi-nese custom of bound feet – that she probably decorated withEuropean glass beads herself. Wealth and status are furtherreflected in her accessories, including a betel (sireh) set withsilver receptacles and the required spittoon, in this case ofthe imported Chinese porcelain variety. Betel-chewing wasan important Southeast Asian custom, thought to have orig-inated in the Malay world, and a wealthy Peranakan homewould have elaborate sireh sets which were presented toguests on their arrival as a sign of hospitality. Interestingly,betel-chewing remained a female habit, while men usuallypreferred to smoke tobacco.

Cross-cultural fertilizationThe exhibition explores several themes with an underly-

ing concern to unravel diverse sources of cultural influence.The displays are organized around themes and materials –social customs such as betel-chewing and weddings, thenonyas’ own production of textile arts, stylistic developmentsin dress and jewellery fashions at the turn of the century, andthe important legacies of silver and porcelain that were hand-ed down as family heirlooms.

The cross-cultural fertilization of ideas, materials, anddesigns was often underpinned by the tastes of the nonyaswho commissioned craftsmen from different ethnic groups.Although fashions changed, a distinct Peranakan aestheticcan be seen in their taste for elaborate designs executed withexquisite skill borne out of the Malay sense of refinement(halus). This is illustrated by nineteenth-century examples ofthe Malay-style brooch (kerosang) with Malay rose-cut dia-monds (intan) and later examples with brilliant-cut diamonds(berlian) produced by Indian jewellers, whose new cuttingand setting techniques improved their sparkling quality(photo 3).

Metalwork was another important aspect of material cul-ture patronized by wealthy nonyas. They commissioned localMalay and Chinese silversmiths to produce a wide range ofitems, including pillow ends (bantal), ornamental vessels, teasets for weddings, ritual water sprinklers, and hangings todecorate wedding beds. Perhaps some of the best examplesdemonstrate the blending of Malay metalworking techniquessuch as repoussé and filigree work, often stained a rich orangetone, with Chinese designs that include auspicious motifssuch as the mythical qilin (signifying the birth of sons) andBuddhist emblems (photo 4).

Perhaps the best expressions of Peranakan taste are thosethat were produced by the nonyas themselves. Embroidery andbeadwork using imported European glass beads werepainstakingly undertaken by young unmarried nonyas to pro-duce accessories for their wedding trousseau. These demon-strated the ideal feminine virtues of industriousness, patience,

and artistic skill, as well as how much time the maker had freefor such labour, and were indicators of a family’s social stand-ing and a woman’s marriageability.

Contextualization and future developmentsOne of the curatorial challenges of the exhibition was to

address the need for greater contextualization, despite lim-ited collections. Small semi-contextual displays provide onesolution. These include a display of an ancestral altar and awedding bed, which, when fully dressed, becomes a focalpoint of the wedding chamber. Carved in nam wood in south-ern China, the ornate red-and-gold style bed with its embroi-dered silk curtains, canopy, cushions, and golden hangingflower baskets (bakul bunga), decorated profusely with everyimaginable Chinese auspicious motif, is in effect a ‘shrineto fertility and wealth’ (Lee & Chen 1998:72).

Designs include Buddhist and Daoist motifs, cranes andpeaches (emblems of longevity), plants in fruit (abundance),and the signature motif of the Peranakans, the phoenix andpeony (symbols of beauty, wealth, and status). Continuationof the patriarchal family line through the birth of sons wasof great concern. The ultimate rite to this end was the annch’ng ritual, in which a young boy rolled across the bed threetimes during preparations for the traditional twelve-day Chi-nese wedding. Anecdotal evidence informs us that the bed’sowner travelled continuously over the course of her child-bearing years between Singapore and her first home inPenang (where the bed was kept), in the belief that this par-ticular bed would ensure the safe births of her children.

Peranakan culture holds great nostalgia and significancefor local communities and is an attraction for overseas visi-tors who wish to uncover unique Southeast Asian cultures.The success of the exhibition has inspired the museum todevelop its collections and undertake further research on lesswell-documented Peranakan communities, such as the Indi-an Peranakans (or Chitty Melakans), the Dutch Eurasians inJava, and smaller communities in Indonesia, Burma, andThailand. The documentation of oral histories and living tra-ditions practised by Peranakans today will be given greaterpriority when the exhibition is revamped as part of ambitiousplans for a dedicated Peranakan museum. <

Agenda

The exhibition ‘Peranakan Legacy’ is on permanent display at the

Museum’s main wing in 39 Armenian Street, Singapore 179941.

References

- Chin, Edmond, Gilding the Phoenix. The Straits Chinese and their

Jewellery, Singapore: The National Museum, (1991).

- Lee, Peter and Jennifer Chen, Ruma Baba. Life in a Peranakan

House, Singapore: Singapore History Museum (1998).

- Rudolph, Jurgen, Reconstructing Identities. A Social history of the Babas

in Singapore, Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing (1998).

Heidi Tan is Curator-in-Charge of the Southeast Asia curatorial unit

at the Asian Civilisations Museum, which is working on a forth-

coming publication of Peranakan material culture.

[email protected]

The Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore is part of the

Asia-Europe Museum network. More information on ASEMUS:

www.asemus.org

‘Peranakan Legacy’ at the AsianCivilisations Museum, Singapore

Report >General

The permanent exhibition Peranakan Legacy, which was launched at the Asian Civilisations Museum’s main wing in 2000, hasreceived an overwhelmingly positive response from visitors and overseas institutions keen to borrow the collection. Its appeal islargely due to interest in the unique fusion of Chinese, Malay, and other cultures in the former Straits Settlements of Malaya andSingapore, the Dutch East Indies, and other areas of the region during the colonial period. The exhibition adds an importantdimension to the museum’s mission of exploring Singapore’s ‘ancestral cultures’ by demonstrating, in material culture terms, thevalue of such cross-cultural developments.

1 Portrait of Mrs Tan

Beng Wan. Tempera

on wood, late nine-

teenth century.

2 Portrait of Mr Tan

Beng Wan. Tempera

on wood, late nine-

teenth century. All

ph

oto

s: A

sian

Civ

ilis

atio

ns

Mu

seu

m,

Sin

gap

ore

4 Beadwork panel

with a pair of phoenix,

bats, and insects

amongst plants. Glass

beads, metallic-

wrapped threads, vel-

vet. Indonesia, late

nineteenth–early

twentieth century.

3 Kerosang serong.

Gold, with rose- and

brilliant-cut dia-

monds. Penang,

nineteenth century.

> ASEMUS news

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1 Extensively documented by Andrew Arato and Jean L. Cohen, Civil Society and

Political Theory, Cambridge (Mass.), London: MIT Press (Studies in Contem-

porary German Social Thought) (1992).

2 Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottaway (ed.), Funding Virtue. Civil Society and

Democracy Promotion, Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International

Peace (2000).

3 Marcel Gauchet, Le Désenchantement du monde. Une histoire politique de la

religion, Paris: Gallimard (NRF) (1985); Talcott Parsons, The Social System,

London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (1951).

Notes >

Civil Society, Religious Affiliation and Political Participation in East Asia

Agenda >East Asia

19-22 August 2003Singapore

By Ju l ië t te Van Wassenhove

Today, civil society is quite a fashionable notion, as attest-ed by its wide resurgence in the academic and political

worlds since the dismantlement of the communist block.1 Bi-and multilateral agencies, never tired of emphasizing civilsociety’s discourse and organizations part in the 1980s-1990spolitical transitions, have turned civil society into a tool fordemocracy assistance programmes. Civil society has becomea box to tick on the bureaucratic checklist of the righteous pathto development. This evolution is noticeable in the growingdiscourse on civil society, which tends to be both normativeand depoliticized – casting non-governmental organizations,and associations as the incarnation of the virtuous populace.2

Analyses of religion have been undergoing an opposite evo-

lution. For decades social sciences held that religious practicemainly provided for social integration and harmony. While itmay have made a modest contribution to consensus buildingand to supplying meaning and identity for individuals, it sure-ly had no salient political implications. Religion’s part wasthus played down in the study of political configurations as along-lasting consequence of the secularization theory and offunctionalist structuralism.3 The disruptive and highly polit-ical potential of religious systems of meaning and organiza-tions was thus underestimated. Today however, religions areno longer regarded as neutral with respect to politics. Thisrecent backlash is due to the importance of religious input indemocratization processes particularly in Eastern Europe, butalso in the increasing prominence of Islamic political proj-ects, from the 1979 Iranian Revolution onwards. The some-what excessive attention for Islam has concealed what otherreligions, including non-revealed, pantheistic ones, can con-tribute to our understanding of contemporaneous changes inthe relationship between society, politics, and religion.

There is thus a theoretical need to further explore politicalimplications of the increasing normativization of the notionsof civil society and religion, especially outside the Europeanand American cradle of modernity. The upcoming panel isunique in the way that it presents papers by young researchers(completing or having just completed their PhDs) working onthese problems in East Asian situations. The panellists all

shared the experience that the obverse point our fieldsimposed on us was the renegotiation of political participation,phrased in terms of civil society or religious affiliation.

In China for instance, state-society relations can be seenhistorically as the relationship between the official state reli-gion and local cult associations – a relationship character-ized by cooptation, mutual penetration, and repression of‘heterodox’ cults. This model has been challenged with therelative opening of the public space and economic transfor-mation. The possibility of speaking of a civil society in theChinese situation will be debated in two papers, one paperassessing the extent to which political power and social organ-ization in China remains defined in religious terms; the otherdocumenting the growing public involvement among entre-preneurs, based on the case of the Zhejiang province.

Simultaneously, Cambodian Buddhism is being reinvent-ed and used as a form of cultural capital for the re-creation ofcommunity and politics, after the violence of the Khmer Rougeera. In the Malay Muslim world, religion also appears instru-mental in voicing discontent as well as shared ideals, in thecontext of claims for Reformasi (reform) in Malaysia andIndonesia. Though different both in their movements’ soci-ology and projects, Malaysian and Indonesian Islamists areconcerned with countering and/or co-opting concepts suchas ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’ or ‘civil society’, by Islamizingthem. As they increasingly influence the public debate, MalayIslamists sketch out cross-border discursive genealogies anda regional theory of Islamic political participation, as will bediscussed in the fourth and fifth contributions. <

Juliëtte Van Wassenhove, MA is currently preparing a PhD in polit-

ical science, on ‘Civil Society in Malaysia and the Philippines: actors,

discourses and practices’, at the Centre of International Studies and

Research at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris (IEP-CERI).

[email protected] or [email protected]

Alternative sources of legitimacy, such as the ones encompassed in civil society or religion, (re-) appear and interact with classicalpolitical mechanisms in local political fields, while democracies across the world face challenges regarding representation. Thegrowing influence of civil society in the public sphere is widely held in positive regard, while religions provoke defiant reactions,especially when Islam is at stake. The ICAS3 panel this article means to introduce builds upon examples drawn from across EastAsia to show that civil society is not a ‘natural’ way through which contemporary societies can eventually voice peaceful politicaldiscontent, nor is religion a univocal departure from politics. The relationship between civil or religious organizations and politicsis a multi-faceted one and has not been given enough attention in the analyses of the East Asian context, which often focuses oneconomic modernization or the developmental state.

Public Health Care Strategies andSocio-Genetic MarginalizationAgenda >General

19-22 August 2003Singapore

By Margaret S leeboom

The point of departure is the conceptof socio-genetic marginalization in

Asia. It draws attention to the conse-quences of the practice of relating thesocial to the (assumed) genetic make-upof people, even when the relevance ofsuch a connection is doubtful. After all,it is from the cultural (including the spir-itual), socio-economic, and political con-text that we derive the sources thatendow our interpretations of geneticinformation with meaning. The conceptof socio-genetic marginalization, first ofall, refers to the isolation of social groupsand individuals as a consequence of dis-crimination on the basis of genetic infor-mation. With this in mind, my paper dis-cusses the vulnerable position of ethnicgroups in China, India, and Taiwan,when facing decisions about revealingtheir genetic identity by contributinggenetic samples to researchers, oftenunder pressure or in exchange for prom-ises of health care. Socio-genetic mar-ginalization also refers to the ‘special’position of socio-genetic risk groups thathave to deal with the psychological bur-den of the knowledge, feelings of social

ineptitude, and a sense of financialuncertainty. Drawing on a large multi-sited ethnographic research project,exploring infertility and medically-assist-ed conception in India’s five major cities,Aditya Bharadwai (Cardiff University,Wales) examines how a biological inabil-ity to reproduce not only disrupts repro-genetic futures of the infertile but alsoresults in bio-social marginalization.Finally, the socio-genetic marginaliza-tion also indicates forms of socio-eco-nomic marginalization when, forinstance, health care becomes too costlyfor the socio-economically disadvan-taged.

The development of priorities andpractices of screening and testing forcongenital diseases in different soci-eties varies. A central question is, whatare the health care needs and interestsof different population groups withregards to genetic testing, and how arethey reflected in health care policies?The health care strategies, priorities,and socio-psychological (de-)merits,and the economic rationale of preven-tive screening, will be central issues ofdebate. In this context, Jyotsna Gupta(Leiden University Medical Centre, the

Netherlands) questions the practice inIndia of diverting vast sums of publicsector health funds to studying the bur-den of genetic disease. A major part ofperinatal morbidity and mortality, aswell as infant mortality, may be ascribedto undernourishment and malnutritionof both mother and child, and a lack ofantenatal and postnatal services. Herpaper offers ideas for alternative healthcare strategies that lie in the sphere ofpublic policy-making and education.

The public debate on genomics mustgo beyond the mere dissemination ofknowledge. Some suggestions on howto organize the debate seem to beunworkable in the short-term. Thus, wecannot expect to realize the ideals ofpublic empowerment, client compe-tency, and democratic decision-makingconcerning the development and appli-cation of new genetic technologies intime to be effective, especially not on aglobal scale. To illustrate this point,Jing-Bao Nie (University of Otago, NewZealand) discusses the Chinese eugen-ics project, which relies on ideologiessuch as social Darwinism, biologicaldeterminism, statism, and scientismfor its execution, and is reductionist in

addressing complex social problems.Nie considers the possible damagingeffects of these ideologies, such as thefurther marginalization of the vulnera-ble, genetic victimization of the inno-cent, and the encouragement of author-itarian state policies and technocracy.

To start with, a more feasible targetwould be to aim at a better under-standing of the consideration of issuesamongst different interest groups. Inthis spirit, Tsai Duujian (National YangMing University, Taiwan) explores theinteractions between these groups, aswell as the interaction between suchgroups and the Taiwanese Govern-ment. He proposes a concept of partic-ipatory democracy that may avoidpotential conflicts between technolog-ical development and humanistic inter-est, and could coordinate industry,medical societies, and patient groupsin working collectively to shape genom-ic policy. Kaori Muto’s paper (ShinshuUniversity, Japan) explores the conceptof genetic citizenship in her study ofJapanese families with Huntington’sDisease. The notion of genetic citizen-ship will gain importance, as genomicswill be increasingly socialized throughdevelopments in molecular epidemiol-ogy. This will require new strategies ofpublic health care. <

Dr Margaret Sleeboom is Director of the

Socio-Genetic Marginalization in Asia

Programme (SMAP) at the IIAS.

[email protected]

The increased public and political concern about developments of new genetic technologieshas led to an increased scrutiny of the role played by medical experts and public healthauthorities in their introduction into the health care system. Public discussion,recommendations of professional organizations, legislation, and reliable technologicalassessment are relied upon to prevent any adverse effects on society. It is also important toorganize discussions on an international level. The aim of this ICAS3 panel, confined todevelopments in China, Japan, India, and Taiwan, is to make a contribution to that effect.

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> ICAS news

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I I A S N e w s l e t t e r | # 3 1 | J u l y 2 0 0 35 2

By Robert Cr ibb

The struggle over identity and political destiny in theIndonesian archipelago in the first half of the twentieth

century was not just between Dutch and Indonesian ideas ofsociety and of the future. A third identity, which we can callIndisch, hovered in the background.

The meaning of Indisch lurks somewhere between eth-nicity – mainly mixed race Indo-European/Eurasian – andculture, standing for the whole complex of cultural adjust-ments between East and West which took place in theIndonesian archipelago and which involved not only Euro-peans and indigenes but also Chinese and other Asians.Indisch culture was marked by distinctive uses of language,dress, cuisine, entertainment, recreation, housing, familystructure and so on, all of them loosely speaking hybridbetween Western and Asian cultures. The term ‘identity’,however, implies both a collective identity and a sense of thepolitical implications of that identity.

In these terms, it is very difficult to identify an Indischidentity either in the late colonial period or immediately after-wards. There was very little by way of a claim for politicalrights or political consideration on the basis of being Indisch.In fact, a conscious Indisch identity emerged first in theNetherlands and only from the late 1950s, following the massexpulsion of Dutch citizens from Indonesia in 1957.

It is intriguing to ask, however, just why an Indisch identity– and a corresponding political programme – did not emergeto dominate the political stage at end of the colonial era.

Most European colonies with a settler society followed adifferent trajectory. In virtually all regions of European set-tlement, the settler communities began rather quickly to dif-ferentiate themselves from the culture of the homeland. Inthis respect, the rich history of cultural hybridization in theNetherlands Indies, which Taylor, Gouda, and others havedescribed as unremarkable. Most such settler societies, how-ever, passed on to a second phase in which the emerging set-

tler culture became the basis for a new identity distinct fromthe metropolitan identity both culturally and politically.

In the Philippines, for instance, the term Filipino was onceanalogous to Indisch. It described the Spanish who had set-tled in the Philippine archipelago, as opposed to the penin-sulares from Iberia. During the nineteenth century, however,the term Filipino came to encompass all who lived in thePhilippines, including the ‘natives’ (Indios), as a categoryseparate from (and antagonistic to) the Spanish. This processmade the Philippines, at least incipiently, a nation and under-pinned the 1898 revolution against Spanish rule. Similarly,‘Australian’ once denoted a sub-category of the broader iden-tity known as ‘British’, but it subsequently developed as anidentity which no longer connoted Britishness (at least notto most people). Implicit in this second phase was decolo-nization. In both cases, moreover, the emergence of a sepa-rate identity was related to a political agenda, anti-clericalismin the Philippines and social democracy in Australia. BeingFilipino or Australian stood not just for cultural practices butfor distinct political values. Ben Anderson has described thisphenomenon as ‘creole nationalism’.

Indisch identity also failed to develop as a foil to the ideaof Indonesia. The striking contrast here is with the Afrikan-ers in South Africa or the pieds noirs in Algeria. In both casessettler identity generated a vision of the future which was asmuch at odds with indigenous nationalism as it was withcolonial rule. Although it is not difficult to uncover examplesof Indisch opposition to Indonesian nationalism, the trulyremarkable fact is that the Indisch alternative was so weak.Alongside the practical difficulties that plagued the Dutch intheir colonial war from 1945 to 1949, the lack of any kind ofdeveloped Indisch alternative to Indonesian nationalism wasa fundamental weakness.

Just why Indisch identity failed to develop a strong anti-colo-nial or anti-Indonesian character is difficult to say, especiallysince we can see the clear outlines of such a character in thename and programme of the Indische Partij, founded in 1911.The Indische Partij, with its slogan, ‘The Indies for those whomake their home there’, represented the beginnings of a cre-ole nationalism which failed to take definitive shape.

The failure of creole nationalism is likely to have had com-plex causes. The colonial authorities’ suppression of theIndische Partij and the exile of its leaders may have been deci-sive. The Ethical Policy, with its emphasis on protecting nativewelfare, also drove a wedge between Eurasians and indige-nous Indonesians.

It is often argued that the Dutch system of racial classifi-cation, which divided the Netherlands Indies population intoEuropeans, Natives, and Foreign Orientals, entrenchedamongst Indonesians a fundamentally racist view of theworld in which non-Natives could never be unambiguouslyIndonesian. Yet, apart from the fact that this observation doesnot explain why Indisch identity also failed to confrontIndonesian identity, it runs counter to what we know aboutthe baroque complexity of Netherlands Indies society. Colo-nial Indonesia was not an archipelagic South Africa with asystem of racial classification that permeated every aspect ofsociety. Class, religion, law, region, and culture all blurredthe boundaries in hundreds of ways. Nor does this argumenthelp us to understand the relatively easy acceptance of Indi-

ans, Siamese, and Arabs. Classified as ‘Foreign Orientals’they were also legally separate from the Indonesian popula-tion, though their separate legal status gave them fewer priv-ileges than those enjoyed by the Europeans.

It has also been argued that the Indisch community, like theChinese, held an intermediate position in colonial society andaligned itself with colonial conservatism because it feared aloss of privilege if independence were achieved. In manycolonies, however, the mixed-race intermediate classes were aspearhead of the nationalist movement because they had themost to gain from eliminating the metropolitan authorities.

My suspicion is that an important part of the explanationlies in the fact that the Indisch community, to the extent thatit lacked ‘Inlands’ (Native) status, was largely barred fromowning rural land. This lack of access to land was not absolute– the ban on alienation of land came into force only in 1870and significant tracts of land had come into the hands ofIndisch people before that time, but that access had beenfrozen and lack of land became a powerful perception on bothsides of the ethnic divide. It had at least two important con-sequences.

First, it worked against the development of agriculturalattachment to the land as happened in the white settlercolonies of North America, Australasia, and southern Africa.Although we now tend to be strongly aware of the ecologicaldestructiveness of the European intrusion into these regions,many of the settlers quickly developed a passionate attach-ment to their lands, not just as a source and sign of wealthbut also as a symbol of belonging.

Lack of access to land also insulated the Indisch commu-nity from the single most difficult and controversial issue inIndonesian politics. The issue of land ownership and controllay at the heart of the confrontation between colonialism andnationalism. It was an issue which was to contribute sub-stantially to the massacre of hundreds of thousands of peo-ple in parts of Indonesia in 1965-66 and it is a leading sourceof tension in contemporary Indonesia. Yet the Indisch com-munity, like the Chinese, had no significant interest in thisissue. No wonder they seemed like bystanders in the strug-gle for independence.

The dilemma split the Indisch community. Some confirmedthemselves as Dutch, becoming in time the ‘Indisch gemeen-schap’ (Indies community); others chose to be Indonesiansand became the suku Belanda-Indo (sometimes suku Indis).Despite their cultural similarities, each of these identitiesbecame lodged firmly within a broader national identity.Perhaps ‘firmly’ is the wrong word, for each community sitsin a zone of uncertainty, not quite local, but not quite foreign.In neither case, however, do these identities become a signif-icant challenge to the broader national identities.

The Indisch and Belanda-Indo communities combine ele-ments from both Western and Asian cultures. The Belanda-Indo community in Indonesia is identified with Christiani-ty in general, with entertainment, with the police and withcrime. The community suffers formal discrimination – noneof its members can be elected president – but faces few prac-tical difficulties. Although members of the Indisch commu-nity faced significant problems of adjusting to life in theNetherlands and have significant grievances over their treat-ment especially by the authorities, they have suffered rela-tively little overt discrimination in Dutch society in compar-ison with other minorities in Europe. Most strikingly, thereis an almost complete lack of political engagement betweenthe two communities, despite their common heritage.

The second consequence is darker: because they were seenas not having a natural commitment to either side, theIndisch community faced a deep distrust on the part ofIndonesian nationalists, especially at the more militant endof the nationalist movement. The violence they faced in thebersiap period, which in fact helped propel many who hadbeen undecided into the arms of the Dutch, reflected a feel-ing that they could be intimidated into loyalty and should bepunished for disloyalty.* <

Professor Robert Cribb is Senior Fellow in the Division of Pacific &

Asian History, Australian National University, Canberra.

[email protected]

‘Indisch’ Identity and Decolonization

Report >Indonesia

* I wish to thank Remco Raben, Peter Post, and other

colleagues in the NIOD Research Project ‘From the

Indies to Indonesia’ for their helpful comments on ear-

lier drafts of this article.

Note >

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One of the key issues running through all the projects within the NIOD programme ‘From the Indies to Indonesia’ is the way thatpolitical, social, and economic change affected the different ethnic groups in the Dutch East Indies. In this article, Robert Cribbspeculates on the reasons the mixed-race ‘Indisch’ community did not take a more prominent role in the nationalist movement.

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> NIOD news

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I I A S N e w s l e t t e r | # 3 1 | J u l y 2 0 0 3 5 3

est to a larger public, but has otherwisereceived relatively little attention, exceptin discussions of concrete issues suchas R.G. Wasson’s identification of theSoma plant of ancient Vedic ritual witha hallucinogenic (entheogen) mush-room – which was accepted by some(cf. Staal 2001) and contested by others(cf. Nyberg 1995).

There are examples from other reli-gious and cultural contexts where theuse of psychoactive substances is notoriginal but provides a shortcut invision quests etc. on which othersembark without making use of them(cf. Nyberg 1995 and his entirelydifferent view on the Siberian fly-agaricwhich plays a major role in Wasson’stheory). Some of the substances, such

as tobacco, are currently well known fortheir recreational use, but elsewherehave been employed in seriousshamanistic contexts, such as in ritualsto contact forefathers (Wilbert 1972). Alarge part of the shamanistic ‘experi-ence’ of contacting forefathers wouldseem to be either a product of culturalconstruction (cf. Katz 1983), or due tospecific psycho-physiological prepara-tions which recreational users oftobacco lack, or a combination of both.

The contrasts and controversies brieflyoutlined above suggest that not only thetheories, but also the primary data areproblematic, and that they are to be con-sidered by specialists in various domainsand disciplines, including anthropology,philology, religious science, archaeolo-

gy, ethno-botany, ethno-pharmacology,plant systematics, pharmacognosy, andpsychophysiology.

The purpose of the ‘Psychoactive sub-stances in ritual and religion’ sympo-sium is to bring together various disci-plines that take on or touch onethno-botany and ethno-pharmacology.It will deal with specific cases of the rit-ual or religious use of plants or sub-stances, or even of psycho-physiologicalpreparations (such as fasting and stay-ing awake) that do not require such sub-stances. Contributors may address oneor more questions such as: - What is the identity of the plant or sub-

stance used in the religion or ritual? - Are the plants or substances known

to have relevant experimental effects,

e.g. hallucinogenic, stimulant, anti-depressant?

- If no direct botanical or chemical iden-tification is possible, which descrip-tions of the plants, substances, effectsand experiences are available whichmay be conducive to identification?

- Which contexts, procedures, devicescan be identified to contribute to theconceptual and emotional construc-tion of experiences associated with theplant or substance? <

Psychoactive Substances in Ritual and Religion

Agenda >General

According to the theory of the‘entheogen’ origin of religions,

man would originally have known thepsychoactive properties of specificplants, and religions would be based onthe visions produced by these plantsand substances (‘entheogens’) derivedfrom them. Wasson et al. (1986) pre-sented this theory on the basis of sig-nificant examples in ancient Indianreligion (Vedic ritual) and ancientGreek religion (Eleusian mysteries).*

The theory has become of some inter-

Prof. J. Houben

[email protected]

Prof. R. Verpoorte

[email protected]

Contact >

* For full references to the men-

tioned publications, you may

contact the organizers.

Note >

17-18 November 2003Leiden, the Netherlands

Food & Foodways

Agenda >Indonesia

The Hong Kong Heritage Museumis presenting the Food Culture

Festival in 2003-2004 with a series ofexhibitions and public programmesto explore Hong Kong’s food culturefrom different perspectives. To tie inwith the festival, an international con-ference will be jointly organized withthe Department of Anthropology, theChinese University of Hong Kong toexplore the food cultures of the city aswell as its neighbouring areas.

Food provides a comprehensiveinsight to social relations, family and

class structure, gender roles, and cul-tural symbolisms, and is one of themost important cultural markers ofidentity in contemporary Asian soci-eties. This conference looks at the pol-itics of food and investigates how, bywhom, when, where, and why differ-ent kinds of food are produced, pre-pared and supplied. We seek papersthat examine how food is cultivated,gathered, farmed and mass produced,and how cuisine is invented, concep-tualized, and marketed in variousAsian societies. We invite scholarswho are conducting research on theproduction of food and foodways onlocal/regional levels, looking into

issues such as transnational exchange,globalization and localization, ecolo-gy and natural resources manage-ment, transformation of traditions andtechnical interventions, ideas of fusionfood, etc.

Papers should provide an ethno-graphic description and analysis ofthe production of one or more signif-icant ingredients and how they inter-act with the social and political com-plexities in specific cultural contexts.The conference is intended to beinterdisciplinary and we welcome dif-ferent disciplines, such as anthropol-ogy, sociology, history, and genderstudies. <

1-2 September 2003Jakarta, Indonesia

Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD)

Kuniko Forrer, MA, Project [email protected]

Dr Peter Post, Programme Secretary

[email protected]

www.niod.nl

More info >

Agenda >General

Revolution destroyed an unknown but substantial number ofthese manuscripts. Interestingly, a great number still survived,mainly due to their protection by the army of the PR China.

These original Sanskrit manuscripts rank among the world’sgreatest cultural treasures. Their preservation with the bestavailable techniques and providing their accessibility to thescholarly community are of utmost importance and would con-stitute an invaluable contribution to international cooperationin the area of the humanities. Many of these manuscripts con-tain texts from the Indian Buddhist tradition that until todayhave only been known in their Tibetan translations or not

known at all. The enormous value of these texts in the historyof pre-modern ideas for the world community of scholars, forthose Asian societies whose populations are still predominantlyBuddhist, and indeed for all mankind goes without say.

For many years, various individual scholars and academicinstitutions attempted to make the responsible institutions inBeijing and Lhasa aware of the need of making these treasuresavailable to scholarship. Ernst Steinkellner will present a gen-eral survey of the history these manuscripts, their origins andpresent state, and of their possible future return to the worldof knowledge. <

With the spread of Buddhism in Tibet, from the seventh tothe fourteenth centuries AD, numerous Buddhist San-

skrit manuscripts on palm leaves and, later, on paper werebrought to Tibet and subsequently translated. After their trans-lation, these Sanskrit manuscripts were only rarely used forstudy and as a rule carefully kept in special chapels. In this way,they survived until the twentieth century, when the Cultural

Agenda >Central Asia

21 November 2003Amsterdam, theNetherlands

Gonda Foundation

[email protected] / [email protected]

www.knaw.nl/cfdata/agenda/agenda_detail.cfm?agenda__id=261

More info >

Agenda >General

18-20 March 2004Hong Kong

Ms Viki Li, [email protected] >

Back to theFuture

Sanskrit Manuscripts in Tibet 11th Gonda Lecture by E. Steinkellner

The Open Science Meeting is supported by:

International Research, Science and Technology Coopera-

tion, Ministry of Research and Technology, Indonesia;

Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical

Research; Netherlands Organisation for Scientific

Research; Scientific Programme Indonesia – Netherlands;

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

Johan Stapel

[email protected] and [email protected]

www.knaw.nl/cfdata/agenda/agenda_detail.cfm?agenda__id=263

More info >

The Netherlands Institute for WarDocumentation (NIOD) has initi-

ated the three-year research pro-gramme ‘Dutch and Japanese Encoun-ters in Europe and Asia since the Endof the Pacific War’ within the frame-work of the historical research pro-

gramme ‘Japan and the Netherlands’,which is sponsored by the Japanese-government. This programme, thataims to stimulate Japanese-Dutch sci-entific cooperation in this field, focus-es on the general development of post-war relations between Japan and theNetherlands, and the ways their inwhich shared war history has influ-enced Japanese-Dutch encounters inAsia and Europe in the post-war period.

The programme studies differentaspects of these post-war encounters. Italso intends to chart Japanese andDutch reactions to a number of post-war social processes in Asia and Europe

in a comparative perspective. Theresults of this research will be madeavailable as a series of English- andJapanese-language publications. NIODhereby invites proposals for projectswithin the scope of this programme.

We offer (1) funds for a Japanese-Dutch workshop and publication; (2)writing and publishing subsidies; and(3) ‘matching funds’ for post-graduateresearchers. Proposals must besubmitted by 1 September 2003.Requests for one-off subsidies forindividual scientific activities from the‘contingency fund’ can be madethroughout the year. <

Indonesia and the Netherlands have arich history in contemporary scientific

cooperation. The Open Science Meet-ing ‘Back to the Future’ aims to showthe impact of this scientific cooperationover the last decades on modern socie-ty, specifically in Indonesia.

Examples from recent history illus-trate the added value of scientific co-operation for future society. Keynotelecturers and convenors will presentcase studies of scientific achievementsas an introduction to the parallelsessions, where present-day researchprojects are presented.

The following fields will be con-cerned; technology (including energy,ICT, aerospace technology, and biotech-nology), food and health, marine andcoastal sciences, natural and environ-mental science and resource manage-ment, sustainable development andglobal change, and social sciences andhumanities. <

Dutch and Japanese Encounterssince the Pacific War

> On the Agenda

Page 54: Mega- Urbanization in Asia - International Institute for Asian ...

I I A S N e w s l e t t e r | # 3 1 | J u l y 2 0 0 35 4

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Info

rmat

ion

: Joh

an S

tape

l

joha

n.st

apel

@bu

reau

.kna

w.n

l or

kodi

jat@

rist

ek.g

o.id

ww

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naw

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cfda

ta/a

gen

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4-6

Sept

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dam

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ands

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thr

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anel

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d R

oun

dtab

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is-

cuss

ion

on

‘Pir

acy

in t

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sian

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s’

Con

ven

or: D

r D

erek

John

son,

Cen

tre

for

Mar

itim

e R

esea

rch

(MA

RE)

, Am

ster

dam

,

the

Net

herl

ands

Info

rmat

ion

: djo

hnso

n@

mar

ecen

tre.

nl

or j.

stre

mm

elaa

r@le

t.le

iden

univ

.nl

4-7

Sept

embe

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03

Jaka

rta,

Indo

nesi

a‘S

ufis

m a

nd t

he “

mod

ern”

in Is

lam

’

Con

ven

ers:

Julia

Day

How

ell,

Gri

ffit

h U

niv

ersi

ty, B

risb

ane,

Aus

tral

ia

J.H

owel

l@gu

.edu

.au

Mar

tin

van

Bru

ines

sen,

Utr

echt

Un

iver

sity

, the

Net

herl

ands

Mar

tin

.van

brui

ness

en@

let.

uu.n

l

6-12

Sep

tem

ber

200

3

Oxf

ord,

Uni

ted

Kin

gdom

Inte

rnat

iona

l Ass

ocia

tion

for T

ibet

an S

tudi

es,

10th

sem

inar

Con

tact

: Cha

rles

Ram

ble,

con

ven

or

iats

@w

olfs

on.o

x.ac

.uk

ww

w.w

olfs

on.o

x.ac

.uk/

iats

/

11-1

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ptem

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200

3

Lond

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nite

d K

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med

ical

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ons:

Eur

ope

and

Asi

a, 1

600

–20

00’

ASE

F-A

sia

Alli

ance

wor

ksho

p

Con

ven

ors:

D

r Sa

njo

y B

hatt

acha

rya

(Wel

com

e Tr

ust C

entr

e fo

r th

e H

isto

ry o

f

Med

icin

e, U

K) a

nd D

r R.K

. Che

m (N

atio

n-

al U

nive

rsit

y of

Sin

gapo

re).

Info

rmat

ion

:

sanj

oy.b

hatt

acha

rya@

ucl.a

c.uk

ww

w.a

sia-

allia

nce.

org/

wor

ksho

pser

ies

17-2

0 S

epte

mbe

r 20

03

Kun

min

g, C

hina

‘Ope

ning

up

to th

e fu

ture

: the

role

of v

isua

l

anth

ropo

logy

in th

e tw

enty

-firs

t cen

tury

’, In

ter-

CES

Scon

f@fa

s.ha

rvar

d.ed

u

http

://c

ess.

fas.

harv

ard.

edu/

8 O

ctob

er 2

00

3

Leid

en, t

he N

ethe

rlan

ds‘S

ufis

, w

arri

ors,

and

mer

chan

ts:

soci

al

dyna

mic

s in

Mug

hal I

ndia

’

Sem

inar

in h

onou

r of

D.H

.A. K

olff

Co-

spon

sore

d by

IIA

S

Con

veno

r: D

r Jo

s G

omm

ans

Info

rmat

ion:

j.j.l

.gom

man

s@le

t.lei

denu

niv.n

l

9-11

Oct

ober

20

03

Leid

en, t

he N

ethe

rlan

ds‘C

ount

ry tr

ade

and

Euro

pean

em

pire

in th

e

Ara

bian

sea

s in

the

sev

ente

enth

and

eig

h-

teen

th c

entu

ry’

IIA

S w

orks

hop

Con

veno

r: D

r R

.J. B

aren

dse

Info

rmat

ion:

iias

@le

t.le

iden

univ

.nl

r.bar

ends

e@w

orld

onlin

e.nl

ww

w. i

ias.

nl

13-1

7 O

ctob

er 2

00

3

Leid

en, t

he N

ethe

rlan

ds‘L

aw in

Cen

tral

Asi

a: a

n hi

stor

ical

ove

rvie

w’

Su

pp

ort

ed b

y th

e H

um

bold

t-S

tift

un

g

Bon

n an

d II

AS

Con

veno

rs: P

rof.

Wal

lace

John

son,

Pro

f.

Her

bert

Fra

nke,

and

Pro

f. D

enis

Sin

or

Info

rmat

ion

: wjo

hn

son

@u

kan

s.ed

u o

r

iias@

let.

leid

enun

iv.n

l

17 O

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er 2

00

3

Leid

en, t

he N

ethe

rlan

ds‘S

ome

Ref

lect

ions

on

Mul

itnat

iona

lity

- The

Exam

ple

of F

orm

er E

mpi

res i

n Ea

st A

sia’

IIA

S A

nnua

l Lec

ture

by P

rof.

Her

bert

Fra

nke

Info

rmat

ion:

iias

@le

t.le

iden

univ

.nl

17-1

9 O

ctob

er 2

00

3

Leed

s, U

nite

d K

ingd

omA

nnua

l con

fere

nce

of th

e A

ssoc

iatio

n of

Sou

th-

East

Asia

n St

udie

s of t

he U

nite

d Ki

ngdo

m

Con

tact

: Dun

can

McC

argo

,

Scho

ol o

f Pol

itic

s an

d In

tern

atio

nal S

tud-

ies,

Uni

vers

ity

of L

eeds

d.j.m

ccar

go@

leed

s.ac

.uk

http

://w

eb.s

oas.

ac.u

k/as

easu

k/in

dex.

htm

24-2

5 O

ctob

er 2

00

3

Cam

brid

ge (M

A) U

nite

d St

ates

New

Eng

land

Ass

ocia

tion

for A

sian

Stu

dies

2003

Con

fere

nce

Con

tact

: Jor

ge E

spad

a

ne_a

as@

fas.

harv

ard.

edu

ww

w.f

as.h

arva

rd.e

du/~

asia

ctr/

neaa

s/

inde

x.ht

m

20-2

1 N

ovem

ber

200

3

Hon

g K

ong,

Chi

naE

ast-

Wes

t id

enti

ties

: glo

balis

atio

n, lo

cali-

sati

on, a

nd h

ybri

disa

tion

Con

tact

: Ms

Jane

Che

ung,

Off

ice

of In

ter-

nat

ion

al

Co

op

erat

ion

an

d

Exc

han

ge

(OIC

E), l

ewi@

hkbu

.edu

.hk

ww

w.h

kbu.

edu.

hk/~

lew

i/co

nfer

ence

s/

iden

titi

es.h

tm

21 N

ovem

ber

200

3

Am

ster

dam

, the

Net

herl

ands

Sans

krit

man

uscr

ipts

in T

ibet

: a s

urve

y of

thei

r hi

stor

y an

d fu

ture

11th

Gon

da L

ectu

re b

y Er

nst S

tein

kelln

er

Info

rmat

ion:

Gon

da F

ound

atio

n

bern

adet

te.p

eete

rs@

bure

au.k

naw

.nl

chan

tal.k

ruiz

inga

@bu

reau

.kna

w.n

l

ww

w.k

naw

.nl/

cfda

ta/a

gend

a/ag

enda

_

deta

il.cf

m?a

gend

a__i

d=26

1

21-2

3 N

ovem

ber

200

3

Bon

n, G

erm

any

‘Art

his

tory

and

art

in C

hina

’

A s

ympo

sium

abo

ut th

e hi

stor

y of

art

and

art c

olle

ctin

g

Con

cept

: Pro

f. Lo

thar

Led

dero

se, U

nive

r-

sity

of H

eide

lber

g

Info

rmat

ion:

info

@ka

h-bo

nn.d

e

ww

w.b

unde

skun

stha

lle.d

e

21-2

3 N

ovem

ber

200

3

Stoc

khol

m, S

wed

enN

ew p

ersp

ecti

ves

in E

uras

ian

arch

aeol

ogy

ASE

F-A

sia

Alli

ance

wor

ksho

p

Con

veno

rs: D

r M

agnu

s Fi

skes

jö (

Mus

e-

um

of

Far

East

ern

An

tiqu

itie

s, S

wed

en)

and

Che

n X

ingc

an (

Chi

nese

Aca

dem

y of

Soci

al S

cien

ces,

Chi

na).

mag

nus.

fisk

esjo

@os

tasi

atis

ka.s

e

21-2

4 N

ovem

ber

200

3

Auc

klan

d, N

ew Z

eala

ndA

sia:

imag

es, i

deas

, ide

ntit

ies

Con

tact

: Dr

Xin

Che

n

x.ch

en@

auck

land

.ac.

nz

ww

w.n

zasi

a.or

g.nz

/con

fere

nce/

Con

fere

nceH

omeP

age.

htm

27-2

8 N

ovem

ber

200

3

Can

berr

a, A

ustr

alia

Vie

tnam

Upd

ate

2003

Aus

tral

ia N

atio

nal U

nive

rsit

y

Co

nve

ner

s: D

r P

hili

p T

aylo

r, P

rofe

sso

r

Ben

Ker

kvlie

t, P

rofe

ssor

Dav

id M

arr

Info

rmat

ion

: htt

p:/

/rsp

as.a

nu

.ed

u.a

u/

pols

oc/V

ietn

am/

28-3

0 N

ovem

ber

200

3

Mat

ara,

Sri

Lan

ka

Tang

dyn

asty

and

cal

ligra

phy

of t

he S

ong

dyna

sty’

Co

nve

no

r: P

rof.

Wo

lfga

ng

Ku

bin

, U

ni-

vers

ity

of B

onn

Info

rmat

ion:

info

@ka

h-bo

nn.d

e

ww

w.b

unde

skun

stha

lle.d

e

16-1

8 Ja

nuar

y 20

04

Gai

nesv

ille

(FA

) Uni

ted

Stat

esSo

uthe

ast

Asi

an C

onfe

renc

e of

the

Ass

oci-

atio

n fo

r A

sian

Stu

dies

43rd

Ann

ual M

eeti

ng

Con

tact

: Dr

S. Y

umik

o H

ulve

y

yhul

vey@

aall.

ufl.e

du

ww

w.li

b.du

ke.e

du/r

efer

ence

/ken

b/

sec-

mai

n.ht

m

FEBRU

ARY 2

004

13-1

4 Fe

brua

ry 2

00

4

Ber

kele

y (C

A) U

nite

d St

ates

19th

Ann

ual S

outh

Asi

a co

nfer

ence

Info

rmat

ion:

Eliz

abet

h In

ouye

csas

asst

@uc

link.

berk

ely.

edu

http

://i

as.b

erke

ley.

edu/

sout

hasi

a/

conf

eren

ce.h

tml

13-1

5 Fe

brua

ry 2

00

4

Bon

n, G

erm

any

‘Aes

thet

ics i

n Ea

st a

nd W

est:

Art

and

iden

tity’

A s

ympo

sium

on

the

theo

ry o

f aes

thet

ic

and

the

prac

tice

of a

rt

Con

cep

t: P

rof.

Wol

fgan

g K

ubin

, Un

iver

-

sity

of B

onn

Info

rmat

ion:

info

@ka

h-bo

nn.d

e

ww

w.b

unde

skun

stha

lle.d

e

13-1

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

00

4

Seat

tle

(WA

) Uni

ted

Stat

es‘B

reak

ing

barr

iers

and

bui

ldin

g br

idge

s:

hum

an r

ight

s an

d th

e la

w in

Sou

th A

sia’

Nat

iona

l Sou

th A

sian

Law

Stu

dent

Ass

o-

ciat

ion

Con

fere

nce

200

4

Con

tact

: Reg

ina

Pau

lose

,

paul

osr@

seat

tleu

.edu

ww

w.la

w.s

eatt

leu.

edu/

sals

a

MARC

H 200

45-

7 M

arch

20

04

San

Die

go (C

A) U

nite

d St

ates

AA

S (A

ssoc

iatio

n fo

r Asi

an S

tudi

es)

annu

al

mee

ting

200

4

Info

rmat

ion:

ww

w.a

asia

nst.

org/

annm

tg.h

tm

18-2

0 M

arch

20

04

Hon

g K

ong,

Chi

na‘T

he p

rodu

ctio

n of

food

and

food

way

s in

Asia

’

Con

tact

: Ms

Vik

i Li

Food

conf

eren

ce@

cuhk

.edu

.hk

ww

w.c

uhk.

edu.

hk/a

nt/

10-1

4 M

ay 2

00

4

Cop

enha

gen,

Den

mar

k‘N

ew C

hine

se m

igra

nts:

glo

balis

atio

n of

Chi

nese

ove

rsea

s m

igra

tion

’

Fift

h c

on

fere

nce

of

the

Inte

rnat

ion

al

So

ciet

y fo

r th

e S

tud

y o

f C

hin

ese

Ove

r-

seas

(IS

CC

O)

IIA

S sp

onso

red

conf

eren

ce

Org

aniz

er:

Un

iver

sity

of

Co

pen

hag

en/

NIA

S

Con

tact

: Met

te T

huno

e

w_t

huno

e@w

orld

onlin

e.dk

20-2

2 M

ay 2

00

4

Avi

gnon

, Fra

nce

Chi

ldre

n an

d sl

aver

y

Con

tact

: Gw

yn C

ampb

ell

gwyn

.cam

pbel

l@un

iv-a

vign

on.f

r

gcam

pb31

95@

aol.c

om

JUNE

2004

16-1

9 Ju

ne 2

00

4

Leid

en, t

he N

ethe

rlan

ds‘T

he P

hilip

pine

s: c

hang

ing

land

scap

es,

man

scap

es a

nd m

inds

cape

s in

a g

loba

liz-

ing

wor

ld’

Seve

nth

Inte

rnat

iona

l Phi

lippi

ne S

tudi

es

Con

fere

nce

(IC

OP

HIL

)

Con

veno

r: P

rof.

Ott

o va

n de

n M

uijz

enbe

rg

ovan

den

mui

jzen

berg

@fm

g.uv

a.nl

ww

w.ii

as.n

l

JULY

2004

6-9

July

20

04

Lund

, Sw

eden

18th

Euro

pean

con

fere

nce

on M

oder

n So

uth

Asi

an S

tudi

es

Org

aniz

ers:

SA

SNET

and

Lun

d U

nive

rsity

Con

tact

: Dep

uty

Dir

ecto

r La

rs E

klun

d

Lars

.Ekl

und@

sasn

et.lu

.se

ww

w.s

asne

t.lu

.se/

rese

arch

f.ht

ml

AUGU

ST 20

0416

-21

Aug

ust 2

00

4

Mos

cow

, Rus

sian

Fed

erat

ion

‘Uni

ty in

div

ersi

ty’

ICA

NA

S-37

Org

aniz

ers:

Ori

enta

list

So

ciet

y o

f th

e

Rus

sian

Aca

dem

y of

Sci

ence

s

Con

tact

: Pro

fess

or D

mit

ry D

. Vas

ilyev

ivra

n@or

c.ru

.

SEPT

EMBE

R 200

414

-17

Sept

embe

r 20

04

Lond

on, U

nite

d K

ingd

om10

thIn

tern

atio

nal c

onfe

renc

e

Euro

pean

Ass

ocia

tion

of S

outh

east

Asi

an

Arc

haeo

logi

sts

Con

tact

: Dr

Rut

h P

rior

Eura

seaa

10@

yaho

o.co

.uk

Con

tact

: Dr

Ooi

Kea

t Gin

kgoo

i@ho

tmai

l.com

Gen

eral

E

nqu

irie

s:

Mrs

T

hila

gava

thi

Vasu

deva

n, S

ecre

tary

, Org

aniz

ing

Com

-

mit

tee

vthi

la@

usm

.my

26 Ju

ly -

7 A

ugus

t 20

03

Los

Ang

eles

(CA

) Uni

ted

Stat

es‘T

he w

orld

of A

sian

liter

atur

e’,A

sia

Inst

itute

’s

annu

al s

umm

er s

emin

ar fo

r tea

cher

s

Info

rmat

ion:

Cla

yton

Dub

e

cdub

e@in

tern

atio

nal.u

cla.

edu

http

://i

nter

nati

onal

.ucl

a.ed

u/as

ia

28-3

0 Ju

ly 2

00

3

Man

assa

(Bal

i), I

ndon

esia

‘7th

inte

rnat

iona

l sym

posi

um o

n N

usan

-

tara

man

uscr

ipt’

Org

aniz

er: U

daya

na U

nive

rsity

, Man

assa

Bal

i

Con

tact

: Id

a B

agus

Jela

ntik

man

assa

bali@

yaho

o.co

m

idab

agus

jela

ntik

@ya

hoo.

AUGU

ST 20

0310

-14

Aug

ust 2

00

3

Kun

min

g, C

hina

‘Eth

nic

cult

ures

and

glo

baliz

atio

n’ I

nter

-

nati

onal

con

fere

nce

Co-

orga

nize

r: C

ente

r for

Stu

dy o

f Chi

nese

Sou

thw

est’

s B

ord

erla

nd

Eth

nic

Min

ori-

ties

of C

hin

a Yu

nnan

Uni

vers

ity

Con

tact

: Ms

Zh

ang

Jin

pen

g, C

ente

r fo

r

Stud

y of

Chi

nese

Sou

thw

est’s

Bor

derl

and

Ethn

ic M

inor

itie

s of

Yun

nan

Uni

vers

ity.

ynxb

zx4@

ynu.

edu.

cn

Mr

He

Xin

glia

ng,

Ch

ines

e E

thn

olog

ical

Soci

ety

jlja@

263.

net

11-1

2 A

ugus

t 20

03

Cam

brid

ge, U

nite

d K

ingd

om‘K

now

ledg

e, p

edag

ogy

and

citi

zens

hip

in

Chi

na’

Con

tact

: Rac

hel M

urph

y

ram

25@

cam

.ac.

uk

ww

w.cr

assh

.cam

.ac.

uk/e

vent

s/ev

ents

2003

/

chin

a.ht

ml

15-1

6 A

ugus

t 20

03

Mel

bour

ne, A

ustr

alia

‘Isl

am a

nd t

he W

est:

the

im

pact

of

Sep

-

tem

ber

11?’

Co

nta

ct:

Ele

na

Mo

gile

vski

, S

cho

ol

of

Pol

itic

al a

nd S

ocia

l Inq

uiry

Mon

ash

Uni

vers

ity

Elen

a.M

ogile

vski

@ar

ts.m

onas

h.ed

u.au

ww

w.a

rts.

mon

ash.

edu.

au/p

olit

ics/

conf

eren

ce/

JULY

2003

2 Ju

ly 2

00

3

Bri

sban

e, A

ustr

alia

‘Inn

ovat

ion

and

resi

stan

ce in

Japa

n’

Jap

anes

e S

tud

ies

Ass

oci

atio

n o

f A

us-

tral

ia 2

00

3 bi

enni

al c

onfe

renc

e

Que

ensl

and

Uni

vers

ity

of T

echn

olog

y

Pan

el p

ropo

sals

: Dr C

hris

toph

er P

okar

ie

c.po

kari

er@

qut.

edu.

au

Con

fere

nce

orga

niza

tion

: Jas

on T

hom

as

jw.t

hom

as@

qut.

edu.

au

4 Ju

ly 2

00

3

Sing

apor

eB

abel

or B

ehem

oth:

Lan

guag

e Tr

ends

in A

sia

Nat

iona

l Uni

vers

ity

of S

inga

pore

ww

w.a

ri.n

us.e

du.s

g/La

ngua

geTr

ends

.htm

4-8

July

20

03

Sing

apor

e W

orks

hop

on P

erfo

rman

ce T

rans

lati

on

Asi

a R

esea

rch

In

stit

ute

, N

atio

nal

Un

i-

vers

ity

of S

inga

pore

and

The

atre

wor

ks

ww

w.a

ri.n

us.e

du.s

g

5-9

July

20

03

Mos

cow

, Rus

sian

Fed

erat

ion

Inte

rnat

iona

l con

fere

nce

on S

outh

Asi

a lit

-

erat

ures

and

lang

uage

s (I

CO

SAL)

Org

aniz

er: I

nsti

tute

of A

sian

and

Afr

ican

Stud

ies,

Mos

cow

Sta

te U

niv

ersi

ty

Con

tact

: Dr

Lud

mila

V. K

hokh

lova

(la

n-

guag

es)

khok

hl@

iaas

.msu

.ru

Dr A

lexa

nder

M. D

ubya

nski

y (l

iter

atur

es)

dubi

an@

iaas

.msu

.ru

7-8

July

20

03

Ula

anba

atar

, Mon

golia

‘Int

erna

tion

al se

curit

y an

d th

e A

sian

hea

rt-

land

’

Inte

rnat

iona

l sym

posi

um o

rgan

ized

by

the

Scho

ol o

f For

eign

Ser

vice

of t

he N

atio

nal

Uni

vers

ity

of M

ongo

lia,

in c

oope

rati

on

with

the

IIA

S an

d th

e N

ethe

rland

s In

stitu

te

of In

tern

atio

nal R

elat

ions

‘Clin

gend

ael’

Co

nve

no

rs:

Pro

f.

Kh

. B

ayas

akh

(t

he

Scho

ol o

f For

eign

Ser

vice

of t

he N

atio

n-

al U

niv

ersi

ty o

f M

on

golia

) an

d D

r P

aul

Mee

rts

(th

e N

eth

erla

nd

s In

stit

ute

of

Inte

rnat

ion

al R

elat

ions

‘Clin

gend

ael’)

Info

rmat

ion:

bay

asak

h@ho

tmai

l.com

pmee

rts@

clin

gend

ael.n

l

7-10

July

20

03

Sing

apor

e‘S

elf a

nd o

ther

s’

Th

e A

ust

rala

sian

So

ciet

y fo

r A

sian

an

d

Com

par

ativ

e P

hilo

sop

hies

20

03

ann

ual

conf

eren

ce

> On the Agenda

Page 55: Mega- Urbanization in Asia - International Institute for Asian ...

I I A S N e w s l e t t e r | # 3 1 | J u l y 2 0 0 3 5 5

Con

fere

nce

Ann

ounc

emen

t and

Cal

l for

Pan

el P

ropo

sals

7th

Inte

rnat

iona

l Con

fere

nce

on P

hilip

pine

Stu

dies

The

Phi

lippi

nes:

Cha

ngin

gLa

ndsc

apes

, Man

scap

es, a

ndM

inds

cape

s in

a G

loba

lizin

g W

orld

16-1

9 Ju

ne 2

00

4

Leid

en, t

he N

ethe

rlan

ds7t

h In

tern

atio

nal C

onfe

renc

e on

Phi

lippi

ne S

tudi

es (

ICO

PH

IL)

‘The

Phi

lippi

nes:

Cha

ngin

g

Land

scap

es, M

ansc

apes

, and

Min

dsca

pes

in a

Glo

baliz

ing

Wor

ld’

Con

veno

r:

Pro

f. O

t van

den

Mui

jzen

berg

A li

st o

f pos

sibl

e to

pics

is p

rovi

ded

on th

e co

nfer

ence

web

site

.

Dea

dlin

e: O

ctob

er 2

00

3.

For

regi

stra

tion

and

info

rmat

ion,

plea

se v

isit

ww

w.ii

as.n

l/iia

s/ag

enda

/ico

phil

Pane

l pro

posa

ls s

houl

d be

sen

t to

IIA

S:

F +

31-7

1-52

7 41

62

iias@

let.

leid

enun

iv.n

l

Incr

ease

the

publ

ic e

xpos

ure

of y

our

conf

eren

ce li

stin

g!

Pub

lish

your

con

fere

nce

listi

ng in

Age

nda

Asi

a an

d le

t us

cons

ider

incl

udin

g

your

con

fere

nce

in th

is n

ewsl

ette

r by

sub

mit

ting

you

r co

nfer

ence

det

ails

on

ww

w.ii

as.n

l/ga

tew

ay/n

ews/

agas

ia

natio

nal c

onfe

renc

e on

visu

al a

nthr

opol

ogy

Org

aniz

ed b

y EA

IVA

and

Yun

nan

Uni

vers

ity

Dr

Kar

sten

Krü

ger

(Vic

e-D

irec

tor)

eaiv

akk@

publ

ic.k

m.y

n.cn

An

drea

Ste

lzne

r (M

anag

ing

Dir

ecto

r)

eaiv

aas@

publ

ic.k

m.y

n.cn

ww

w.e

aiva

.org

19-2

0 S

epte

mbe

r 20

03

Cam

brid

ge, U

nite

d K

ingd

om‘C

hine

se c

omm

erci

al la

w’

Info

rmat

ion

: Pat

rici

a M

irrl

ees

pw22

9@ca

m.a

c.uk

ww

w.e

ai.c

am.a

c.uk

/con

fere

nce

s/

com

mla

w.h

tml

22-2

4 Se

ptem

ber

200

3

Veld

hove

n, t

he N

ethe

rlan

dsG

loba

lizat

ion

and

Nat

iona

l Env

irom

enta

l

Pol

icy

Tilb

urg

Uni

vers

ity

ww

w.t

ilbu

rgu

niv

ersi

ty.n

l/gl

obal

izat

ion

-

con

fere

nce

23-2

5 Se

ptem

ber

200

3

Mos

cow

, Rus

sian

Fed

erat

ion

‘Chi

na: c

hanc

es a

nd c

halle

nges

of g

loba

l-

izat

ion’

Con

tact

: Dr

Olg

a V.

Poc

hagi

na

poch

agin

a@if

es-r

as.r

u

ww

w.ife

s-ra

s.ru

/gra

ph/k

onf/

defa

ulte

ng.h

tm

24 S

epte

mbe

r 20

03

Aal

borg

, Den

mar

k‘I

nter

net,

gov

erna

nce

and

dem

ocra

cy i

n

Den

mar

k an

d A

sia.

Dem

ocra

tic tr

ansi

tions

:

will

the

Inte

rnet

bri

ng a

bout

mor

e de

moc

-

racy

and

bet

ter

gove

rnan

ce?’

Con

tact

: Lar

s To

rpe

lars

to@

socs

ci.a

uc.d

k

26-2

7 Se

ptem

ber

200

3

Can

berr

a, A

ustr

alia

‘Ind

ones

ia u

pdat

e 20

03: c

hang

es a

nd c

hal-

leng

es in

bus

ines

s’

Ind

on

esia

Pro

ject

, Au

stra

lian

Nat

ion

al

Uni

vers

ity

Con

ven

or: D

r P

ierr

e va

n d

er E

ng

pier

re.v

ande

reng

@an

u.ed

u.au

pvan

dere

ng@

econ

.sei

kei.a

c.jp

OCTO

BER 2

003

2-3

Oct

ober

20

03

Cop

enha

gen,

Den

mar

k‘F

ield

wor

k m

etho

dolo

gy a

nd p

ract

ice

in

Chi

na,

Nor

dic

Inst

itute

of A

sian

Stu

dies

wor

ksho

p

Con

tact

: And

ers

Høj

mar

k A

nde

rsen

ande

rs@

nias

.ku.

dk

ww

w.n

ias.

ku.d

k/ch

inaf

ield

wor

k

2-5

Oct

ober

20

03

Cam

brid

ge (M

A) U

SAC

ESS,

four

th a

nnua

l mee

ting

Con

tact

: Joh

n S

choe

berl

ein

24-2

6 O

ctob

er 2

00

3

Mad

ison

(Wis

cons

in) U

SA32

nd A

nnua

l Con

fere

nce

on S

outh

Asi

a

Uni

vers

ity

of W

isco

nsin

-Mad

ison

ww

w.w

isc.

edu/

sout

hasi

a/co

nf/a

bout

.htm

l

24-2

6 O

ctob

er 2

00

3

Cai

ro, E

gypt

‘Rel

igio

us n

etw

orks

bet

wee

n th

e M

iddl

e

East

and

Sou

thea

st A

sia’

IIA

S/K

NAW

/CN

WS/

ISIM

wor

ksho

p of

the

rese

arch

pro

gram

me

‘Isla

m in

Indo

nesi

a’

in c

olla

bora

tion

with

the

Am

eric

an U

nive

r-

sity

in C

airo

and

the

Dut

ch In

stitu

te in

Cai

ro

Con

veno

rs: D

r Mon

a A

baza

and

Dr N

ico

Kap

tein

Info

rmat

ion:

iias

@le

t.le

iden

univ

.nl

ww

w.ii

as.n

l

29-3

0 O

ctob

er 2

00

3

Par

is, F

ranc

e‘P

ast

as t

he p

rese

nt: a

dis

cour

se o

n So

uth

Asi

an s

ocie

ty’

MSH

, Par

is a

nd IC

SSR

, New

Del

hi, U

GC

,

New

Del

hi a

nd C

NR

S, P

aris

.

Info

rmat

ion:

Dr B

adri

Nar

ayan

, G.B

.Pan

t

Soci

al S

cien

ce In

stit

ute,

Alla

haba

d

bnti

war

i-gbp

i@re

diff

mai

l.com

NOVE

MBER

2003

1-5

Nov

embe

r 20

03

Han

oi, V

ietn

am‘F

orgi

ng p

artn

ersh

ip?

A c

ompa

rati

ve st

udy

of i

nsti

tuti

onal

res

pons

es t

o N

ordi

c an

d

Japa

nese

aid

in A

sia’

Co

nta

ct: A

nd

ers

Hø

jmar

k A

nd

erse

n o

r

Mar

ie S

oder

berg

ande

rs@

nias

.ku.

dk o

r JA

PM

S@hh

s.se

ww

w.n

ias.

ku.d

k/ac

tivi

ties

/con

fer-

ence

s/d

ocu

men

ts/F

orgi

ngP

artn

ersh

ip-

Web

site

Text

_00

1.do

c

14-1

6 N

ovem

ber

200

3

Cam

brid

ge (M

A) U

SA‘A

mat

ter o

f cho

ice:

cri

tica

l pol

icy

stud

ies o

f

Chi

na’

Pol

icy

Cul

ture

Pro

ject

, Asi

a C

ente

r

Con

tact

: Jin

g W

ang

jing@

mit

.edu

Tony

Sai

ch

anth

ony_

saic

h@ha

rvar

d.ed

u

ww

w.f

as.h

arva

rd.e

du/~

asia

ctr/

pc/p

c_

wor

ksho

p.ht

m

17-1

8 N

ovem

ber

200

3

Leid

en, t

he N

ethe

rlan

dsSy

mpo

sium

on

psyc

hoac

tive

sub

stan

ces

in

ritu

al a

nd r

elig

ion

Co-

spon

sore

d by

IIA

S

Con

veno

rs: P

rof.

Jan

Hou

ben

(Eco

le P

ra-

tiqu

e de

s H

aute

s Et

udes

, Par

is)

and

Prof

.

Rob

Ver

poor

te (

Inst

ituut

Bio

logi

e Le

iden

)

Info

rmat

ion:

J_E_

M_H

oube

n@ya

hoo.

com

‘Sri

Lan

ka a

t cr

ossr

oads

: co

ntin

uity

and

chan

ge’

Nin

th I

nte

rnat

ion

al C

on

fere

nce

on

Sri

Lank

a St

udie

s

Coo

rdin

ator

: Pro

fess

or S

arat

h A

mar

as-

ingh

e, U

nive

rsit

y of

Ruh

una,

Cont

act:

sara

tham

aras

ingh

e@ho

tmai

l.com

ww

w.ic

sls.

org

DECE

MBER

2003

1-3

Dec

embe

r 20

03

Arm

idal

e, A

ustr

alia

‘Mig

rant

labo

ur in

Sou

thea

st A

sia:

nee

ded,

not

wan

ted,

Inte

rnat

iona

l Con

fere

nce

Sp

onso

rs: T

he

Jap

an F

oun

dat

ion

, UN

E

Asi

a C

entr

e, S

choo

l of E

cono

mic

s U

NE

Con

tact

: Am

arjit

Kau

r

akau

r@m

etz.

une.

edu.

au

8-12

Dec

embe

r 20

03

Leid

en, t

he N

ethe

rlan

ds‘S

outh

-Eas

t A

sian

pop

mus

ic in

a c

ompa

r-

ativ

e pe

rspe

ctiv

e’ w

orks

hop

Info

rmat

ion:

Pro

fess

or K

ees

van

Dijk

, KIT

LV

vdijk

@ki

tlv.

nl

11-1

3 D

ecem

ber

200

3

Am

ster

dam

, the

Net

herl

ands

‘Dec

olon

izin

g so

ciet

ies:

reor

ient

atio

n of

Asia

n

and

Afr

ican

liv

elih

oods

und

er c

hang

ing

regi

mes

’ NIO

D c

onfe

renc

e

Info

rmat

ion:

Ms

Els

Bog

aert

s, M

A, C

oor-

din

ato

r o

f th

e R

esea

rch

Pro

gram

me

Indo

nesi

a ac

ross

Ord

ers

indi

e-in

done

sie@

niod

.kna

w.n

l

17-1

9 D

ecem

ber

200

3

Yang

on, B

urm

a/M

yanm

a(r)

‘Tra

diti

ons o

f kno

wle

dge

in S

outh

east

Asi

a’

Co

nta

ct:

Dr.

Kh

in H

la H

an,

Hm

we

or

Than

t Syn

uhrc

@uh

rc-e

du.g

ov.m

m

18-2

1 D

ecem

ber

200

3

New

Del

hi, I

ndia

‘Rel

igio

ns in

the

Indi

c ci

vilis

atio

n’

IAH

R R

egio

nal

con

fere

nce

on

the

stu

dy

of r

elig

ions

in In

dia

Con

veno

r: M

adhu

Kis

hwar

mad

huk@

csds

delh

i.org

mad

huki

shw

ar@

indi

crel

igio

ns.c

om

ww

w.in

dicr

elig

ions

.com

/

JANU

ARY 2

004

3-6

Janu

ary

200

4

Cal

cutt

a, In

dia

‘Lan

guag

e, c

onsc

ious

ness

and

cul

ture

: Eas

t-

Wes

t pe

rspe

ctiv

es’

The

Soci

ety

of In

dian

Phi

loso

phy

& R

elig

ion

Con

tact

: Dr

Cha

ndan

a C

hakr

abar

ti

chak

raba

@el

on.e

du

16-1

7 Ja

nuar

y 20

04

Bon

n, G

erm

any

‘The

art

of

inte

rpre

tati

on:

poet

ry o

f th

e

25-2

7 M

arch

20

04

New

Yor

k C

ity

(NY)

Uni

ted

Stat

es‘A

ntiq

uari

anis

m a

nd th

e ea

rly

mod

ern

age:

pers

pect

ives

on

Euro

pe a

nd C

hina

’

An

in

terd

isci

plin

ary

con

fere

nce

at

the

Bra

rd G

radu

ate

Cen

ter

Con

tact

: Fra

ncoi

s Lo

uis

loui

se@

bgc.

bard

.edu

MAY 2

004

May

20

04

Kua

la L

umpu

r, M

alay

sia

‘Fes

tiva

l of

lit

erat

ure

and

cult

ure

of t

he

Isla

mic

wor

ld’

Inst

itute

of M

alay

Lan

guag

e an

d Li

tera

ture

Con

tact

: Dat

o’H

aji A

. Azi

z D

eram

an

aziz

@db

p.go

v.m

y

ww

w.d

bp.g

ov.m

y

7-9

May

20

04

The

Lake

Dis

tric

t, U

nite

d K

ingd

om‘G

ener

atio

nal i

nter

acti

on a

nd c

hang

e’

Pak

ista

n w

orks

hop

200

4

Con

tact

: Dr

Stev

e Ly

on

S.M

.Lyo

n@du

rham

.ac.

uk

Pro

fess

or P

nina

Wer

bner

P.W

erbn

er@

keel

e.ac

.uk

http

://p

sg.a

nthr

opol

ogy.

ac.u

k/

Wor

ksho

p20

04

OCTO

BER 2

004

Oct

ober

20

04

Law

renc

e (K

A) U

nite

d St

ates

‘In

God

zilla

’s fo

otst

eps:

Jap

anes

e po

p cu

l-

ture

icon

s on

the

glo

bal s

tage

’

The

Cen

ter

for

East

Asi

an S

tudi

es a

t th

e

Un

iver

sity

of

Kan

sas

Inte

rdis

cip

linar

y

Sym

posi

um

Con

tact

: Will

iam

M. T

suts

ui o

r Mic

hiko

Ito

btsu

tsui

@ku

.edu

mit

o@ku

.edu

ww

w.is

op.u

cla.

edu/

eas/

cfp/

cfp-

kans

as20

03.

asp

ww

w.c

eas.

ku.e

du

JANU

ARY 2

005

6-8

Janu

ary

200

5

Leid

en, t

he N

ethe

rlan

ds‘B

etw

een

stre

ss a

nd t

one’

IIA

S sp

onso

red

conf

eren

ce

Con

veno

r: D

r B

ert R

emijs

en

a.c.

l.rem

ijsen

@le

t.le

iden

univ

.nl

Summ

er 20

05Su

mm

er 2

00

5

Leid

en, t

he N

ethe

rlan

dsIn

tern

atio

nal

asso

ciat

ion

of

Chi

nese

lingu

isti

cs, I

IAS

conf

eren

ce

Con

veno

r: D

r R

int S

ybes

ma

r.p.e

.syb

esm

a@le

t.le

iden

univ

.nl

19-2

2 A

ugus

t 20

03

Sing

apor

e‘T

hird

Int

erna

tion

al C

onve

ntio

n of

Asi

a

Scho

lars

(IC

AS3

)’

Org

aniz

er: N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of S

inga

pore

Info

rmat

ion:

icas

3sec

@n

us.e

du.s

g

ww

w.f

as.n

us.e

du.s

g/ic

as3

ww

w.ic

asse

cret

aria

t.or

g

21-2

3 A

ugus

t 20

03

Cop

enha

gen,

Den

mar

k‘L

ocal

land

use

str

ateg

ies

in a

glo

baliz

ing

wor

ld: s

hapi

ng s

usta

inab

le s

ocia

l and

nat

-

ural

env

iron

men

ts’

In c

oope

ratio

n w

ith th

e In

stitu

te o

f Geo

g-

raph

y, U

nive

rsit

y of

Cop

enha

gen

Spon

sore

d by

IIA

S

Con

ven

ors:

Dr

Ree

d W

adle

y (U

niv

ersi

ty

of M

isso

uri)

wad

leyr

@m

isso

uri.e

du

Dr O

le M

ertz

(U

nive

rsity

of C

open

hage

n)

om@

serv

er1.

geog

r.ku.

dk

22-2

3 A

ugus

t 20

03

Yogy

akar

ta, I

ndon

esia

‘Min

i wor

ksho

p at

UG

M’

IIA

S su

bsid

y

Con

tact

: Pat

rici

a Sp

yer

spye

r@fs

w.le

iden

univ

.nl

25-2

9 A

ugus

t 20

03

Dun

huan

g, G

ansu

Pro

vinc

e, C

hina

‘Con

serv

atio

n of

anc

ient

sit

es o

n th

e S

ilk

Roa

d’

Seco

nd

inte

rnat

ion

al c

onfe

ren

ce o

n t

he

con

serv

atio

n o

f gro

tto

site

s

Con

tact

(ou

tsid

e C

hin

a): K

athl

een

Louw

(The

Get

ty C

onse

rvat

ion

Inst

itut

e)

klou

w@

gett

y.ed

u

Con

tact

(w

ithi

n C

hina

): S

u B

omin

g (T

he

Dun

huan

g A

cade

my)

cidh

a@pu

blic

.iz.g

s.cn

ww

w.g

etty

.edu

/con

serv

atio

n

27-3

0 A

ugus

t 20

03

War

saw

, Pol

and

Euro

pean

Ass

ocia

tion

for J

apan

ese

Stud

ies

(EA

JS),

10t

hin

tern

atio

nal c

onfe

renc

e

Con

tact

: Ber

nha

rd S

chei

d

bern

hard

.sch

eid@

oeaw

.ac.

at

Bir

git S

taem

mle

r

birg

it@

stae

mm

ler.d

e

ww

w.e

ajs.

org/

wha

tsn

ew/w

arsa

w.h

tml

28-3

1 A

ugus

t 20

03

Shan

ghai

, Chi

na‘F

irst

Wor

ld F

orum

on

Chi

na S

tudi

es’

Con

tact

: S

ecre

tari

at,

Wor

ld F

orum

on

Chi

na

Stu

dies

, S

hang

hai

Aca

dem

y of

Soci

al S

cien

ces

(SA

SS)

chin

afor

um@

sass

.org

.cn

ww

w.s

ass.

org.

cn/c

hin

afor

um

Nat

iona

l Uni

vers

ity

of S

inga

pore

Info

rmat

ion:

phi

anht

n@nu

s.ed

u.sg

http

://a

p3.fa

s.nu

s.ed

u.sg

:80

00

/app

l/w

e

b9/A

SAC

P/a

nnou

ncem

ent.

htm

7-25

July

20

03

Nor

wic

h, U

nite

d K

ingd

om‘C

onfli

ct r

esol

utio

n an

d pe

ace

build

ing

in

war

-tor

n so

ciet

ies’

cou

rse

Uni

vers

ity

of E

ast A

nglia

Con

tact

: Sar

ah S

cott

sara

h.sc

ott@

uea.

ac.u

k

ww

w.o

dg.u

ea.a

c.uk

/pag

es/t

rain

ing.

htm

l

11-1

2 Ju

ly 2

00

3

Bon

n, G

erm

any

‘The

rest

ruct

urin

g of

old

indu

stri

al a

reas

in

Euro

pe a

nd A

sia’

ASE

F-A

sia

Alli

ance

wor

ksho

p

Con

veno

rs: D

r R

. Has

sink

(U

nive

rsit

y of

Bon

n, G

erm

any)

an

d D

r Sh

in D

ong-

Ho

Nat

iona

l Uni

vers

ity

of S

inga

pore

Info

rmat

ion:

has

sink

@gi

ub.u

ni-b

onn.

de

ww

w.a

sia-

allia

nce

.org

/wor

ksho

pser

ies

14-1

8 Ju

ly 2

00

3

Hel

sink

i, Fi

nlan

d12

th W

orld

San

skri

t co

nfer

ence

Inst

itu

te f

or A

sian

an

d A

fric

an S

tud

ies,

Uni

vers

ity

of H

elsi

nki

Con

tact

: pet

teri

.kos

kika

llio@

hels

inki

.fi

ww

w.h

elsi

nki.f

i/hu

m/a

akkl

/12w

sc

20-2

3 Ju

ly 2

00

3

Shef

fiel

d, U

nite

d K

ingd

om‘T

ouri

sm a

nd p

hoto

grap

hy:

still

vis

ions

-

chan

ging

live

s’

Shef

fiel

d H

alla

m U

nive

rsit

y

Info

rmat

ion:

Dr

Dav

id P

icar

d

slm

dp@

elec

tra.

shu.

ac.u

k

ww

w.t

ouri

sm-c

ultu

re.c

om

21-2

7 Ju

ly 2

00

3

Leh

and

Kar

gil,

Indi

a‘L

adak

h: a

rt, c

ultu

re a

nd la

ngua

ges’

11th

IALS

Col

loqu

ium

Con

tact

: Naw

ang

Tser

ing

Shak

spo

snts

erin

g52@

yaho

o.co

.uk

23-2

6 Ju

ly 2

00

3

Hei

delb

erg,

Ger

man

y‘B

hakt

i in

curr

ent

rese

arch

200

1–20

03’

Nin

th in

tern

atio

nal

con

fere

nce

on

ear

ly

devo

tion

al li

tera

ture

s in

New

Indo

-Ary

an

lang

uage

s

Con

tact

: Pro

f. M

onik

a B

oehm

-Tet

telb

ach

an9@

ix.u

rz.u

ni-h

eide

lber

g.de

24-2

7 Ju

ly 2

00

3

Pen

ang,

Mal

aysi

a‘S

outh

east

Asi

a si

nce

1945

: ref

lect

ions

and

visi

ons’

Org

aniz

ers:

Asi

a P

acif

ic R

esea

rch

Un

it

(AP

RU

), S

choo

l of

Hu

man

itie

s, U

niv

er-

siti

Sai

ns M

alay

sia

> On the Agenda

Page 56: Mega- Urbanization in Asia - International Institute for Asian ...

I I A S N e w s l e t t e r | # 3 1 | J u l y 2 0 0 35 6

Index

IIAS Newsletter 31

July 2003

56 pages

Editorial Office

Visiting address: Nonnensteeg 1-3, Leiden

Mailing address: IIAS, P.O. Box 9515, 2300 RA

Leiden, the Netherlands

T +31-71-527 2227

F +31-71-527 4162

[email protected]

www.iias.nl

Editorial Staff

Editors – Maurice Sistermans & Natasja Kershof

Guest Editor – Peter Nas

Central Asia Editor – Touraj Atabaki

South Asia Editor – Netty Bonouvrié

Insular Southwest Asia Editor – Sandra Evers

Mainland Southeast Asia Editor – Stephan van

Galen

Insular Southeast Asia Editor – Thomas

Lindblad

East Asia (China) Editor – Mark Meulenbeld

East Asia (Japan) Editor – Margarita Winkel

East Asia (Korea) Editor – Koen De Ceuster

Asian Art & Cultures Editor – Kristy Phillips

Photography: Photopoint

English language corrections: Takeo David

Hymans, Judy Laffan, Jane Nijssen, and

Elizabeth Saville

Contributors

Jan Annerstedt, Greg Bankoff, Anna Beerens,

Henk Blezer, Els Bogaerts, Richard Boyd,

Rebecca Brown, Nandana Chutiwongs,

Freek Colombijn, Robert Cribb, Remy Cristini,

Tony Day, Meine Pieter van Dijk, Leo Douw,

Hormuz Ebrahimnejad, Alisa Eimen, Greg Fealy,

Taciana Fisac, Shuji Funo, Namrata Ganneri,

Arndt Graf, Ann Heylen, Jan Houben,

Huang Shizheng, Caroline Hughes,

Harald Leisch, Viki Li, Lim Kim-Hui,

Lin Wei-sheng, Roald Maliangkay, Roel Meijer,

Evelyne Micollier, Pamela Moro, Irina Morozova,

Nagatsu Kazufumi, Peter Nas, Sanjaasuren

Oyun, Peter Post, Pratiwo, Leeke Reinders,

Hans Schenk, Soheila Shahshahani, Sara

Shneiderman, Johan Silas, Shihan de Silva

Jayasuriya, Shauna Singh Baldwin, Margaret

Sleeboom, Melvin Soudijn, Patricia Spyer,

Johan Stapel, Rint Sybesma, Yasser Tabbaa,

Heidi Tan, Antonio Terrone, Edgar Tijhuis,

Mark Turin, Juliëtte Van Wassenhove, Willem

Visser ‘t Hooft, Thomas Voorter, Marijke de Vos,

Suzanne Wagenaar, Pim Willems, Jan Wuisman,

Dominik Wujastyk, Zhang Xiaohong

Design and production

JB&A raster grafisch ontwerpers, Delft

ISSN

0929-8738

Circulation

22,000

Next issue

Deadline: 15 September 2003

Release: 15 November 2003

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Submission: 10 October 2003

Subscriptions

IIAS Newsletter is published by the IIAS and is

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The responsibility for facts and opinions expressed

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and their interpretations do not necessarily reflect

the views of the institute or its supporters.

> Colophon> IIAS Staff> I

ndex

IIAS N

ewsle

tter #

31Ed

itoria

l Pag

e2

Edit

oria

l / M

auri

ce S

iste

rman

s

2G

row

ing

Toge

ther

: T

he

Aca

dem

ic

Invi

gora

tion

of t

he A

sia

Euro

pe B

usi-

ness

For

um /

Jan

Ann

erst

edt

Gene

ral N

ews

1Fr

om t

he Y

ear

of t

he W

hite

Hor

se t

o

the

Year

of

the

Bla

ck H

orse

: Mon

go-

lia A

fter

Tw

elve

Yea

rs o

f Tr

ansi

tion

/

Sanj

aasu

ren

Oyu

n(p

. 1&

3)

3H

atin

g A

mer

ican

s: Je

maa

h Is

lam

iyah

and

th

e B

ali B

om

bin

gs /

Gre

g Fe

aly

(p. 3

-4)

Them

e: Me

ga-U

rban

izatio

n in A

sia5

Ecum

enop

olis

in A

sia

/ P

eter

Nas

6Th

e D

eclin

ing

Cap

ital

/ S

huji

Funo

7T

he

Sky

is t

he

Lim

it:

Th

e E

con

om

ic

Glo

baliz

atio

n o

f B

eijin

g /

Hu

ang

Shiz

heng

8Fr

om M

uslim

Str

eet t

o B

rilli

ant P

laza

:

Con

stru

ctio

ns o

f Urb

an S

pace

in K

un-

min

g /

Leek

e R

eind

ers

8Z

hu

jian

g E

lect

ron

ic R

oad

, N

anjin

g,

Chi

na /

Mei

ne P

iete

r van

Dijk

(p. 8

-9)

9T

he

Go

vern

men

t P

lan

s, t

he

Peo

ple

Act

/ H

aral

d Le

isch

10C

hic

ks

and

C

hic

ken

: S

inga

po

re’s

Expa

nsio

n to

Ria

u /

Free

k C

olom

bijn

11V

uln

erab

ility

an

d F

loo

din

g in

Met

ro

Man

ila /

Gre

g B

anko

ff

12G

reat

er S

urab

aya:

The

For

mat

ion

of a

Pla

nni

ng R

egio

n /

Joha

n Si

las

12M

arke

ts a

nd M

alls

in Ja

kart

a /

Prat

iwo

13P

hnom

Pen

h: B

eaut

ifica

tion

and

Cor

-

rupt

ion

/ C

arol

ine

Hug

hes

14M

igra

nts

, Squ

atte

rs, a

nd

Evic

tion

s /

Han

s Sc

henk

15Te

hra

n:

Par

ado

x C

ity

/ S

ohei

la

Shah

shah

ani

Rese

arch

and R

epor

ts16

Hu

mo

ur

in I

nd

on

esia

n P

olit

ics:

A

Cas

e St

udy

of th

e P

olit

ical

Mar

keti

ng

of G

us D

ur /

Arn

dt G

raf

17Yo

un

g Ja

pan

ese

Res

earc

her

s o

n

Sout

heas

t Asi

a Se

ries

/ R

ogie

r Bus

ser

17Is

lam

izat

ion

of

the

Sam

a D

ilau

t in

Saba

h, M

alay

sia

/ N

agat

su K

azuf

umi

18El

ite

Mus

ic a

nd N

atio

nalis

m in

Sou

th

and

S

ou

thea

st

Asi

a:

Ho

w

Mu

sic

Bec

omes

Cla

ssic

al?

/ P

amel

a M

oro

19S

hif

tin

g Id

enti

ties

in

Kal

i S

alw

aar

/

Thom

as V

oort

er &

Mar

ijke

de V

os

20M

oder

niza

tion

, Med

icin

e, a

nd P

ower

in N

inet

eent

h-C

entu

ry Ir

an /

Hor

muz

Ebra

him

neja

d

21In

dian

Med

ical

Tho

ught

on

the

Eve

of

Col

onia

lism

/ D

omin

ik W

ujas

tyk

22A

dam

Sta

into

n’s

Cu

ltu

ral

Obs

erva

-

tio

ns:

A

P

lan

t H

un

ter

in

the

Him

alay

as /

Mar

k Tu

rin

23D

igit

al H

imal

aya

/ Sa

ra S

hnei

derm

an

24R

evo

luti

on

ary

Mo

ngo

ls, L

amas

an

d

Bud

dhis

m (

1921

-194

1) /

Iri

na M

oro-

zova

25P

rese

rvin

g Ti

beta

n C

ultu

ral H

erit

age

/ P

im W

illem

s

25Th

e G

ift o

f a D

augh

ter /

Sha

una

Sing

h

Bal

dwin

25Ti

beto

logi

cal C

olle

ctio

ns

& A

rchi

ves

Seri

es /

Hen

k B

leze

r

26U

topi

an Id

enti

ties

, Rea

l Sel

ves

/ To

ny

Day

26A

nth

rop

olo

gica

l Fu

ture

s /

Pat

rici

a

Spye

r(p

. 26-

27)

27G

ay L

iter

atur

e fr

om C

hina

: In

Sea

rch

of a

Hap

py E

ndin

g /

Rem

y C

rist

ini

28H

uman

Car

go /

Mel

vin

Soud

ijn

28T

he R

esea

rch

Net

wor

k fo

r th

e St

ud

y

of

Ch

ines

e C

om

mu

nit

ies

in

the

Net

herl

ands

/ L

eo D

ouw

28M

alay

Con

tact

s w

ith

Sri L

anka

/ S

hi-

han

de S

ilva

Jaya

suri

ya(p

. 28-

29)

29Th

e Ill

icit

Tra

de in

Chi

nese

Ant

iqui

ties

/ M

elvi

n So

udijn

& E

dgar

Tijh

uis

30T

he

VO

C T

rad

e in

Tai

wan

/ L

in W

ei-

shen

g

31B

udi a

s th

e M

alay

Min

d /

Lim

Kim

-Hui

32Se

x an

d C

han

el: Y

oun

g Fe

mal

e W

rit-

ers

in C

hina

/ Z

hang

Xia

ohon

g

Publi

catio

ns33

Sura

baya

, Cit

y of

Wor

k /

Jan

Wui

sman

34S

itu

atin

g S

oci

al

His

tory

O

riss

a /

Nam

rata

Gan

neri

34Li

tera

ry C

ult

ure

s in

His

tory

/ J

an

Hou

ben

(p. 3

4–35

)

35K

amik

aze,

C

her

ry

Blo

sso

m,

and

Nat

iona

lism

/ M

arga

ret S

leeb

oom

36M

akin

g M

erit

, M

akin

g A

rt:

A T

hai

Tem

ple

in

Wim

bled

on

/ N

and

ana

Chu

tiw

ongs

37R

ule

of

Law

in

Eas

t an

d S

ou

thea

st

Asi

a? /

Will

em V

isse

r ‘t

Hoo

ft

37M

adri

gals

, Man

dari

ns, a

nd B

udge

tary

Pol

itic

s /

Ric

hard

Boy

d

38Is

Tib

et (

real

ly)

Ch

ines

e? /

An

ton

io

Terr

one

39Im

Kw

on-T

aek:

The

Mak

ing

of a

Kor

e-

an

Nat

ion

al

Cin

ema

/ R

oald

Mal

iang

kay

40Th

e H

aun

tin

g Fe

tus:

Abo

rtio

n, S

exu-

alit

y, a

nd

the

Spir

it W

orld

in T

aiw

an /

Evel

yne

Mic

ollie

r

40M

emor

ies

of th

e Fu

ture

/ A

nn H

eyle

n

41B

ooks

Rec

eive

d

Asian

Art &

Cultu

res

42A

rtic

ula

tin

g th

e M

od

ern

: N

eo-

Tan

tris

m a

nd

th

e A

rt o

f P

.T. R

edd

y /

Reb

ecca

Bro

wn

43H

ow D

o La

titu

des

Bec

ome

Form

s?/

Alis

a Ei

men

43Le

sso

ns

fro

m L

oo

tin

g: T

he

Pla

ce o

f

Mus

eum

s in

Iraq

/ Y

asse

r Ta

bbaa

(p.

43-4

4)

44K

azar

i / A

nna

Bee

rens

45A

sian

Art

Age

nda

(p. 4

5-46

)

IIAS N

ews

47T

he

Exp

ress

ion

of

Ten

se in

Ch

ines

e

Lang

uage

s /

Rin

t Syb

esm

a

47T

he

Egy

pti

an I

slam

ist

Exp

erie

nce

in

Asi

a /

Roe

l Mei

jer

48II

AS

Res

earc

h Fe

llow

s

56II

AS

Staf

f

ASEF

/ Allia

nce N

ews

49C

entr

o de

Est

udio

s de

Asi

a O

rien

tal,

Spai

n /

Taci

ana

Fisa

c

49A

llian

ce P

artn

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49Eu

rope

an A

llian

ce fo

r A

sian

Stu

dies

49A

llian

ce A

sia-

Euro

pe W

orks

hop

Seri

es

200

3/20

04

ASEM

US Ne

ws50

‘Per

anak

an L

egac

y’ a

t the

Asi

an C

ivil-

isat

ions

Mus

eum

, Sin

gapo

re /

Hei

di

Tan

ICAS N

ews

51C

ivil

Soci

ety,

Rel

igio

us A

ffili

atio

n an

d

Po

litic

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arti

cip

atio

n in

Eas

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51P

ubl

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ealt

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are

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ateg

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and

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o-G

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argi

naliz

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Mar

-

gare

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eboo

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51II

AS

Pan

els

at IC

AS3

NIOD N

ews

52‘I

nd

on

esia

acr

oss

Ord

ers:

Th

e re

or-

gani

zatio

n of

Indo

nesi

an s

ocie

ty’ /

Els

Bog

aert

s

52‘I

ndis

ch’ I

dent

ity

and

Dec

olon

izat

ion

/ R

ober

t Cri

bb

On th

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nda

53D

utch

and

Japa

nese

Enc

ount

ers

sinc

e

the

Pac

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War

/ P

eter

Pos

t

53Sa

nsk

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Man

usc

rip

ts in

Tib

et –

11t

h

Gon

da L

ectu

re b

y Er

nst S

tein

kelln

er /

Suza

nne

Wag

enaa

r

53Fo

od a

nd F

oodw

ays

/ V

iki L

i

53P

sych

oac

tive

Su

bsta

nce

s in

Rit

ual

and

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n /

Jan

Hou

ben

53B

ack

to th

e Fu

ture

/ Jo

han

Stap

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54In

tern

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nal

Con

fere

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Age

nda

(p.

54-5

5)

55IC

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04

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rtise

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Cam

brid

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nive

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6IS

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11Si

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Uni

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Pre

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13M

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15C

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nive

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Hon

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19A

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Fol

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20H

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28A

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32Sc

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aus

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33C

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AS

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IIA

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r

Website:www.IIAS.nl

Staff

Prof. W.A.L. Stokhof (Director)

Dr A.P. Sey (Deputy Director)

Dr R.B.P.M. Busser (Coordinator of Academic Affairs)

A.J.M. Doek, MA (WWW)

I.M. van Dijk (Secretary)

W. Feldberg, MA (Fellow Programme Coordinator)

N. Kershof, MA (Editor)

E.F.P. Haneveld (IT-Manager)

H.M. van der Minne, MA (Secretary Branch Office Amsterdam)

A.M. Petit (Secretary)

M. Rozing, MA (Financial Manager, Seminar Coordinator)

M.F. Sistermans, MA (Editor)

L.M. Scheen (Project Coordinator)

R. Sondaite-van Soest, MA (Coordinator ASEM website)

I.J.M. van Steijn (Secretary)

J. Stremmelaar, MA (Executive Manager)

V. Traag (Database Assistant)

Dr O.G.A. Verkaaik (Coordinator Branch Office Amsterdam)

Board

Prof. P. van der Veer – Chairman (University of Amsterdam)

Prof. J.L. Blussé van Oud Alblas (Leiden University)

Prof. B.J. ter Haar (Leiden University)

Dr J. de Jong (Groningen University)

Prof. R. Kersten (Leiden University)

Prof. M. van der Linden (IISG/University of Amsterdam)

Prof. M. Sparreboom (Erasmus University, Rotterdam)

Academic Committee

Dr C. Touwen-Bouwsma – Chairman (NIOD)

Dr J. van Bremen (Leiden University)

Dr P.P.S. Ho (Wageningen University)

Dr G.K. Lieten (University of Amsterdam)

Prof. C.I. Risseeuw (Leiden University)

Prof. B.C.A. Walraven (Leiden University)

Prof. E.J. Zürcher (Leiden University)

IIAS Extraordinary Chairs

Prof. Henk Schulte Nordholt (the Netherlands)

Special Chair at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, ‘Asian History’

1 October 1999 – 1 October 2007

Prof. Hein Steinhauer (the Netherlands)

Special Chair at Nijmegen University,

‘Ethnolinguistics with a focus on Southeast Asia’

1 September 1998 – 1 September 2004

Prof. Barend Terwiel (the Netherlands/Germany)

Special Chair at Leiden University,

‘Cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia’

1 September 1999 – 1 September 2004

International Representatives

Prof. J.G. Vredenbregt (Jakarta, Indonesia)

Dr W.G.J. Remmelink, Japan-Netherlands Institute (Tokyo, Japan)

Dr J.G.G.M. Kleinen (Hanoi, Vietnam)

Subscriptions

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pleted subscription form to the IIAS secretariat.

Subscription forms can be obtained from either

the secretariat or the website.

[email protected]

www.iias.nl/iiasn/subscribe.html

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