DEPARTMENTAL SEMINARS (2002)
MOVING PICTURE: RADICAL POLITICS AND VERNACULAR LITERATURE IN COLONIAL
INDONESIA
Dr Keith Foulcher
Department of Chinese and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Sydney
Friday, 13 December 2002, 10.30 a.m. to 12.00 noon
ABSTRACT
In the early twentieth century, colonial policy in the Dutch East Indies encouraged the growth of a
distinctive form of cultural modernity. It was based on a visionary enthusiasm for a synthesis of
the achievements of ‘East' and ‘West', and it drew together liberal-minded Dutchmen and the
scions of indigenous aristocratic families under the banner of ‘association', the meeting of
cultures in the common pursuit of an enlightened modernity. In the early years of the century,
there was some tentative expression of this associationist modernity in Dutch-language literature
by Indonesians. As this was happening, however, a vernacular literature was coming into being
that grew out of a different model of modernity, and a different meeting of ‘East' and ‘West'. This
was the appearance in Indies Malay of a literature of ‘emphatic realism'. It was a literature that
used the lingua franca of the colonial city and indigenous understandings of story-telling to impart
the messages of Marxism, an alternative modernity which in the Dutch East Indies of the time
was the basis of a growing popular movement that challenged the progressive liberalism of the
associationist outlooks. By the 1920s, the two literary modernities had spawned rival vernacular
traditions.
This presentation is an attempt to build on existing commentaries on the radical vernacular
tradition in Indonesian literature between about 1915 and 1925. It is concerned primarily with
some examples of the literature which appeared in 1924 and 1925 in Api (Fire), a newspaper
published by the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in the Central Javanese port and industrial
city of Semarang. As in the title of Takashi Shiraishi's history of this period, An Age in Motion,
Popular Radicalism in Java, 1912-1926, it is a thought world characterised by a sense of
movement and the porousness of borders, both between coloniser and colonised and the
colonised subjects themselves.
THE SPEAKER
Dr Keith Foulcher teaches Indonesian language and literature in the Department of Chinese and
Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Sydney. He gained his PhD from the University of
Sydney in 1975 and taught at Monash University and the Flinders University of South Australia
before returning to Sydney in 1996. He has published widely in the field of modern Indonesian
literary studies and is currently engaged in a research project with Tony Day (University of North
Carolina, USA) exploring postcolonial approaches to Indonesian literature. Their edited book,
Clearing a Space: Postcolonial Readings of Modern Indonesian Literature, is due to be published
by KITLV Press, Leiden, in December 2002.
MIKE TYSON VS. RADEN GATHOTKACA: TELEVISION AND JAVANESE SHADOW
PUPPER THEATRE
Dr Jan Mrázek
University of Washington, Seattle
Tuesday, 12 November 2002, 10.30 a.m. – 12.00 noon
ABSTRACT
The two main characters in this story – Javanese shadow puppet theater (wayang kulit) and
television – each plays an important role in contemporary Javanese society. While there are great
differences between them, their roles and interests overlap enough so that the two tend to look to
each other, flirt, interact, even think about becoming one. Yet their interaction is also full of
tensions
and
conflicts.
Since
television
and
wayang
are
complex
media/technologies/institutions/socio-cultural practices, the interaction manifests many of the
different forces – tendencies, trends, desires, obsessions, conflicts, divisions, incongruities – in
Indonesian culture and society. The interaction between wayang and television involves
interaction of people from different segments of the society, people with very different
backgrounds and values. The seminar will discuss recent research focusing on the interaction of
the two media and their cultures.
THE SPEAKER
Dr Mrázek grew up in Czechoslovakia under a puppet government. He received his Ph.D. from
Cornell University, where he studied Southeast Asian arts and cultures, and later taught in the
Theater Arts, Music, and Asian Studies Departments. He has published a number of articles, and
a book based on his dissertation, Phenomenology of a Puppet Theater: Contemplations on the
Performance Technique of Contemporary Javanese Wayang Kulit, will be published by the KITLV
Press. He spent three and a half years as a postdoctoral researcher in the Verbal Arts in the
Audio-Visual Media in Indonesia Research Programme at Leiden University, The Netherlands.
His research and writing there focused on the interaction between television and theater in
Indonesia, and he taught courses on modern media in Indonesia. He also edited a collective
volume, Puppet Theater in Contemporary Indonesia: New Approaches to Performance Event,
which will appear in November 2002. Currently he is at the University of Washington, Seattle,
where he teaches courses on Southeast Asian arts and cultures.
THAI SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THE ANTI-ADB CAMPAIGN
Dr Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem
Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science,
University of the Philippines, Diliman
Tuesday, 1st October 2002, 3.30-5 p.m.
ABSTRACT
This seminar discusses the role of social movements in Thailand's democratization process,
particularly focusing on the Thai social movements' anti-Asian Development Bank (ADB)
campaign during the Bank's 33rd annual conference in May 2000 in Chiang Mai. The campaign
brought forth the recurring theme of “maldevelopment”, which included development at the
expense of the poor people who would suffer most from the ADB's policies. The more open
democratic environment which Thai social movements have fought for ever many years has
paved the way for protest actions which would not have been possible even a decade ago. Thus,
the anti-ADB campaigns also brought to light the nature of the strategies which grassroots
movements and NGOs had utilized to raise issues of concern. Much of the success of this antiADB campaign was attributed to the cooperation of these local people's alliances and their
effective linking up with regional and international people's alliances vis-à-vis the ADB.
THE SPEAKER
Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political
Science, University of the Philippines at Diliman, and currently the Visiting Scholar of the
Southeast Asian Studies Programme. She completed her PhD at the Department of Politics and
Public Administration, The University of Hong Kong. Her interests in non-governmental
organizations and cooperatives in particular and social movements in general in the
democratization process in the country led her to study Thai social movements and
democratization. Since 2000, she has received research grants from the ASIA Fellows Program
of the FORD Foundation and the ASIA Fellows Program. She was a Fellow at the Center for
Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto University, in April 2002, and at the Southeast Asian
Studies Programme, NUS, in May 2002.
A NEW KEYWORDS APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF INDONESIAN POLITICAL LANGUAGE
Dr Arndt Graf
Assistant Professor, University of Hamburg, Germany
Wednesday, 4 September 2002, 3.30-5 p.m.
ABSTRACT
Every analyst of Indonesian politics has to base his or her observations on the day-to-day political
discourse that finds its documentation in the media. Astonishingly, major works on the language
and rhetoric of Indonesian politics seem so far to be the early contributions of Benedict Anderson
(1966) and Michael van Langenberg's article “Analysing Indonesia's New Order state: A
keywords approach” (1986). Departing from theoretical considerations, van Langenberg suggests
a number of exactly 40 keywords as essential for the understanding of the New Order. The
development of information technology since 1986 allows for checking Langenberg's list with
methods from computer linguistics. In my study, I am analyzing a corpus of 76 interviews of postSuharto presidential candidates with tools from lexicography. The new approach generates
individual rhetorical profiles, highlighting the strategic use (and avoidance) of certain keywords by
politicians of certain parts of the political spectre. The landscape of Indonesian politics can thus
be analyzed in a much more differentiated way
THE SPEAKER
Dr Arndt Graf is an assistant professor of Austronesian Languages and Cultures at the University
of Hamburg, Germany. He also holds the permanent (part-time) lecturership in the Politics of
Southeast Asia at the Department of Political Science, George-August-University, Goettingen. His
publications include Religious Reform and the Changing Perception of the Forest in the Literary
Works of Mochtar Lubis and A Rhetorical Approach to the Study of Indonesia Media. A
Methodological Case Study of the Column ‘Catatan Pinggir' by Goenawan Mohamad. Dr Graf is
currently working on a monograph entitled The Public, Rhetoric, and Political Marketing in PostSuharto Indonesia.
A TALE OF TWO CENTURIES: THE GLOBALIZATION OF MARITIME RAIDING AND PIRACY
IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES
Professor James F. Warren
Visiting Fellow, Asia Research Institute, NUS
Tuesday, 20 August 2002, 3.30 p.m. – 5 p.m.
ABSTRACT
The comparative temporal perspective in this presentation ,which covers the latter part of two
centuries, the late eighteenth and the late twentieth centuries, lends explanatory power to my
treatment of the multi-faceted links and changes between the onset of Iranun Maritime raiding in
the 1780s, on the one hand, and on the other, modern day crime on the high seas in Southeast
Asia, with particular reference to the China connection, growing commodity flows, and the
fluctuations of the global economy. Iranun maritime raiding and slaving (human traffic) and space
age piracy and criminally related matters on the high seas of Southeast Asia were as much forces
of engagement with world commerce and economic growth then as globalization is a force for
maritime crime in Southeast Asia now.
THE SPEAKER
Dr James F. Warren is a professor in Southeast Asian Modern History at Murdoch University,
Perth, Australia, and currently a Visiting Fellow at the NUS Asia Research Institute. His main
research interests include Singapore Chinese History and Society since 1880; Climate, History
and Society in the Philippines; Slavery and the Slave Trade in Asia. Among Professor Warren's
major publications are The Sulu Zone, 1768-1898 (1981); Rickshaw Coolie: A People's History of
Singapore, 1880-1940 (1986); At the Edge of Southeast History (1987); Ah Ku and Karayuki-San:
Prostitution and Singapore Society,1870-1940 (1993); The Sulu Zone, the World Capitalist
Economy and the Historical Imagination (1998); and Iranun and Balangingi: Globalization,
Maritime Raiding and the Birth of Ethnicity (2002).
FROM FACT TO FICTION: A HISTORY OF THAI-MYANMAR RELATIONS IN CULTURAL
CONTEXT
Dr Sunait Chutintaranond
Director of the Thai Study Centre, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
Tuesday, 23 July 2002, 3.00 to 5.00 p.m.
ABSTRACT
Thailand and Myanmar not only share a long border but cultural values and an interesting history
dating back centuries. However, limited academic work has been undertaken in the area of
cultural exchanges. The two nations have engaged in the regional warfare over centuries, but
despite this, or perhaps due to such engagements, people on both sides of the Tenasserim
Range, Thai and Burmese, have benefited from cultural and social exchanges. Historical
literature, originating in Myanmar, has found its way into Thai school texts, plays, and television
series. A good example of this is the classical Mon-Myanmar literature entitled Rajadhirat.
Exchanges occurred during the long colonial period as well. Interestingly, there has been a
number of historical works and novels on the fall of the Konbaung Dynasty written and
circularized in Thailand since the reign of King Rama V over a century ago. This seminar intends
to review the history of Myanmar-Thai relations through historical novels and other documents,
including plays and movies, with an emphasis on comparing social and cultural values and
customs.
THE SPEAKER
Sunait Chutintaranond completed his Ph.D. in Southeast Asian history at Cornell University in
1990. He is now the Director of the Thai Study Centre, Faculty of Arts, and the Deputy Director
for the Academic Affairs, Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok.
VISION AND PARALLAX: Ngô Đình Diệm, THE AMERICANS AND NATION BUILDING IN
THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE COUNTRYSIDE (1954-1963)
Mr. Edward Miller
PhD candidate in History at Harvard University
Wednesday, 10th April 2002, 3.30 p.m. to 5.00 p.m.
ABSTRACT
In the years following the partition of Vietnam in 1954, the United States devoted great amounts
of money, expertise and prestige to the construction of a non-Communist nation in South Vietnam.
The Americans' plucky ally in this nation building venture was the President of South Vietnam,
Ngô Đình Diệm. Buoyed by Diệm's initial successes in the mid-1950s, US leaders hailed Diệm as
“the miracle man of Southeast Asia” who was using American aid and know-how to turn South
Vietnam into a stable and prosperous bastion of anti-communism. But by the early 1960s, the two
sides found themselves increasingly at odds over tactics and strategy, especially with regards to
the rising Communist guerilla insurgency in the countryside. In 1963, Diệm was ousted and
assassinated in an army coup backed by the US.
In their analyses of the rise and fall of the alliance between Diệm and the United States,
historians have tended to represent Diệm and South Vietnam as creatures of American policy,
manufactured by American leaders to serve Cold War exigencies. But because these historians
rely almost exclusively on US sources, they give short shrift to Diệm's vision - distinct from the
vision of the Americans - of how Vietnam could and should become modern. This paper will
examine how the differences between the American and Vietnamese visions led to friction and
tension in one particular part of the nation building agenda: agrarian reform in the South
Vietnamese countryside. By drawing on South Vietnamese published materials and internal
government documents in addition to US sources, this paper will explain how the joint
Vietnamese-American efforts to promote rural reform in South Vietnam were plagued by what can
be fairly described as a problem of parallax: although Americans and Vietnamese embraced
similar objectives, they viewed those objectives from different perspectives, and hence in different
ways.
THE SPEAKER
Edward Miller is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Harvard University. His presentation is based on
his dissertation research, which is a study of US-South Vietnamese relations during the Diệm
period (1954-1963). Miller is a Fulbright-Hays Fellow for 2001-2002, and he recently completed
six months of research work in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. He is currently a Visiting Associate
at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.
ASEAN PLUS 3 MINUS X: WHAT KIND OF REGIONALISM FOR SOUTHEAST ASIAN
COUNTRIES?
Dr Natasha Hamilton-Hart
Assistant Professor, Southeast Asian Studies Programme, NUS
3 April 2002, Wednesday, 3.30 p.m. – 5 p.m.
ABSTRACT
Since 1997, the most significant cooperation initiatives involving Southeast Asian countries have
not taken place on an all-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) basis. Rather,
formalized cooperation begun to develop on an ‘ASEAN plus' basis, linking ASEAN with countries
in Northeast Asia. In addition, more diffuse and ad hoc cooperative goals are being pursued on
an ‘ASEAN minus' basis: cooperation that involves some but not all ASEAN members,
sometimes along with non-ASEAN members. The most high-profile ‘ASEAN plus' initiative is the
‘ASEAN + 3' group, which has embarked on some substantive cooperation largely in the area of
financial crisis management. The ‘ASEAN minus' initiatives include some that are problemfocused coalitions of three or more countries. The rise of bilateral cooperation linking some
ASEAN countries with non-members, however, has been more significant. This seminar
discusses the underlying incentives for these new forms of cooperation, tracing the increasing
tendency to cooperate on either a broader or narrower basis than that of the ASEAN membership
to domestic political economy factors, prior levels of regional integration and international
developments. It then looks at some of the implications of these new forms of cooperation for
regional order.
THE SPEAKER
Dr Natasha Hamilton-Hart is an Assistant Professor in the Southeast Asian Studies Programme
at the National University of Singapore. Her research has focused on the political economy of
Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, as well as regional integration and cooperation. She is the
author of Asian States, Asian Bankers: Central Banking in Southeast Asia, published by Cornell
University Press, 2002 (forthcoming).
TOWARDS A “SECOND” GREEN REVOLUTION?: A CALL FOR A PARADIGM SHIFT IN
AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA
Dr Yunita T. Winarto
Lecturer, University of Indonesia
Wednesday, 20 March 2002, 3.30 p.m. – 5 p.m.
ABSTRACT
While the Green Revolution has brought about improved crop production in developing countries,
its sole emphasis on high productivity has been much criticised. Agronomists have called for a
move away from a mere focus on productivity to issues of farmer empowerment via institutional
and socio-economic reforms in agricultural development. This paper discusses this shift away
from the tenets of the Green Revolution through a case study of the Integrated Pest Management
Programme in Indonesia which places importance on empowering farmers. This Programme has
produced significant results in increasing farmers' self-reliance and a more sustainable
agricultural development in Indonesia. However, its implementation has met with serious
ecological, institutional and cultural impediments. Unpredictable ecological conditions,
government bureaucracy, the persistence of the Green Revolution's emphasis on productivity,
and profit-oriented culture of agricultural enterprises are some examples of the constraints faced.
In such a situation, how can a vision for sustainable agriculture and a prosperous farming
community be realised? This paper will examine these questions and explore institutional,
collective and individual efforts that can help achieve this vision.
THE SPEAKER
Dr Yunita T. Winarto is lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Social and Political
Sciences, University of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of the
Journal on Anthropologi Indonesia. Her recent publications include Seeds of Knowledge: the
Beginning of Integrated Pest Management in Java, Yale South East Asian Monograph Series,
Yale University Press. Dr Yunita is currently visiting the Southeast Asian Studies Programme
under the Meyer Fellowship.
ECONOMIC CULTURE AND BUSINESS COOPERATION IN SOUTHEAST ASIA:
OPPORTUNITIES AND RISKS IN INTERCULTURAL COOPERATIVE VENCTURE
UNDERTAKEN BY SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES
Dr Vincent Houben, Mr Steffen Henkel and Ms Claudia Ruppert
Friday, 15th March 2002, 3.30 p.m. – 5 p.m.
ABSTRACT
International co-operative business ventures mask a high potential for conflict that can often be
traced back to cross-cultural differences and misunderstandings between the business parties.
This research examines the special features of the Indonesian and Singaporean economic
culture and its effects on the collaboration of small and medium-sized German companies with
their Southeast Asian partners. The goal of this project is to analyse difficulties that are culturally
determined and to develop suitable solution strategies. In order to reveal the organisational and
the personal aspect of co-operations, our approach is twofold. By means of interviews with Asian
and German managers we are conducting information on both, the situation between
organisations and the situation between employees of different cultural backgrounds.
The research has been conducted in about 30 German medium-sized companies and their local
partners in Indonesia and Singapore. We are trying to identify the problems of international
business co-operation by using questionnaires in combination with interviews. The questions will
centre on cultural features such as perception of time, concepts of power, decision-making
processes, ways of communication and working methods. The research is embedded in a larger
research project that looks at the chances and risks of international business ventures. Within this
framework we are analysing reasons for an international co-operation and its success, networkrelations, concepts of trust and problems between co-operation partners. The data generated
aims at identifying the potential of international business co-operations and can further stimulate
German business activity in Singapore.
THE SPEAKERS
Steffen Henkel, a consultant and obtained a high degree in International Business and Culture
Studies at Passau University, Claudia Ruppert also studied at Passau University, Germany, and
Dr Vincent Houben is Professor of Southeast Asian History and Society at Humboldt University,
Berlin, Germany.
GENEALOGY OF A REBELLION NARRATIVE: LAW, ETHNOLOGY, AND LEGISLATION IN
COLONIAL BURMA
Dr Maitrii Aung-Thwin
Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Asian Research, NUS
Wednesday, 20th February 2002, 3.30 p.m. – 5.00 p.m.
ABSTRACT
This paper reassesses the history and historiography of the Saya San Rebellion, Burma's largest
anti-colonial uprising (1930-1932). By tracing the sources of the rebellion's narrative back to the
trial of Saya San, it is revealed that the version of events that became the standard history of the
Saya San Rebellion was almost entirely derived from the prosecution's case, which was later
codified in official reports that served as primary sources for subsequent scholars. This study
focuses primarily on the shaping of the rebellion narrative by relating how scholar-officials used
particular ideas about Burmese kingship, religion, and ritual to produce the profile of Saya San,
as the quintessential Burmese rebel. It will be suggested that the fashioning of this rebellion
narrative was both a product of and a justification for counter-insurgency policies that sought to
strengthen the Rangoon administration in the wake of talks that explored whether Burma should
be separated from India.
THE SPEAKER
Dr Maitrii Aung-Thwin is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Asian Research (AIR) at the
National University of Singapore. He completed a PhD degree in Southeast Asian history at the
University of Michigan, writing a dissertation entitled “British Counter-Insurgency Narratives and
the construction of a 20th Century Burmese Rebel.” His research interests include the production
of knowledge, law and historiography, ritual studies, anthropology of the colonial state, Maitreya
Buddha in Burmese studies, and resistance and rebellion in colonial Southeast Asia. Currently he
is working on a book that extends from the findings of his dissertation and it will tentatively be
titled Law and Narrative-Making in the History of the Saya San Rebellion.
TOWARDS A HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES, CA. 1967-1973
Professor Reynaldo Ileto
Southeast Asian Studies Programme
Wednesday, 6th February 2002, 3.30 p.m. to 5.00 p.m.
ABSTRACT
This presentation examines various factors that brought forth a virtual “Golden Age” in Southeast
Asian studies during the late 1960s and early 70s. It attempts to contextualize this phenomenon
in the politics of the times – not simply the Cold War and the rise of radical nationalism in
Southeast Asia but also the careers of, and tensions among, pioneering academics from D.G.E.
Hall on. The account is partly autobiographical, the speaker having been a graduate student in
the Cornell Southeast Asia Program during this period. This is a preliminary reflection on the
history of a field of study and its implications for the present, and contributions from the audience
are most welcome.
THE SPEAKER
Reynaldo Ileto is a Professor in the Southeast Asian Studies Programme. Prior to joining the NUS
last year, he was a Reader in the Faculty of Asian Studies at the Australian National University.
His latest book, Filipinos and their Revolution: Event, Discourse, Historiography, was published
by Ateneo University and the University of Hawaii in 1998. He is currently writing a microhistory of
a Tagalog town in the 19th century, as well as a history of post-1946 nation-building in the
Philippines as part of a series edited by Wang Gungwu.